'A League of Their Own' Stars Abbi Jacobson and D'Arcy Carden Dish on Decades-Long Best Friendship (Exclusive)

Diane Garrett “Broad City” co-creator Abbi Jacobson and “Mozart in the Jungle” executive producer Will Graham give “A League of Their Own” a modern makeover for the upcoming Amazon Prime Video series, emphasizing LGBT storylines and the struggles of Black female athletes to play baseball during the World War II era. The show, which debuted this weekend, follows the basic outline of Penny Marshall’s 1992 movie of the same name: A catcher with a husband away at war quickly becomes a team leader, played in the update by Jacobson.

Prime Video series of the same name.The result is entertaining enough and should win over nostalgic fans — but it’s not quite a home run.Now streaming, “A League of Their Own,” has a similar premise to the movie, which starred Tom Hanks, Geena Davis, Rosie O’Donnell, Madonna, and Jon Lovitz. Created by Will Graham (“Mozart in the Jungle”) and Abbi Jacobson (“Broad City”), who also stars, the series is set in 1943 and follows the Rockford Peaches, a women’s team in the new All American Girls Professional Baseball League, formed because World War II has threatened the existence of Major League Baseball with men off fighting overseas.The series begins with Carson Shaw (Jacobson) taking a train from Idaho to Chicago for baseball tryouts.

BreAnna Bell In light of its Aug. 12 premiere, producers behind Amazon’s “A League of Their Own” spinoff series admit they’ve already started making plans for a Season 2 – which could be starting sooner than you’d think.“We’ve already started writing and bringing the story for Season 2.

By Warning: A League of Their Own spoilers ahead.Watching D’Arcy Carden kiss shoulder for the third time in one Zoom call, it’s easy to see how their 15-year friendship survived the time star was cut from the pilot of .Over a decade ago, Carden and Jacobson met at an Upright Citizens Brigade improv class called On-Camera Commercial Acting. “I don't think either of us thought we were gonna get on a show. It was like, let's get on a commercial,” Jacobson says with a laugh.

A League of Their Own (★★★★☆), Amazon’s sweeping, 1940s-set dramedy created by Will Graham and Abbi Jacobson, doesn’t rehash or reprise characters made famous in Penny Marshall’s beloved 1992 film. Dottie, Kit, Doris, and “All the Way” Mae aren’t in the lineup, and neither is Tom Hanks’ irascible Jimmy Dugan, manager of the Rockford Peaches in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League.Of course, there’s still no crying in baseball — the movie’s best-remembered quote does earn a reprise — and the spotlight is still on the Peaches of Rockford, Illinois.

Jazz Tangcay Artisans Editor“A League of Their Own” costume designer Trayce Field wanted to give each character her own costume arc and palette to help tell a visual story about women, many of whom had been housewives, leaving home for the first time to live their dreams.Based on Penny Marshall’s 1992 movie, the series, coming to Prime Video on Aug. 12, is a fictional story based on the real women’s baseball league that started during World War II.Abbi Jacobson’s Carson and Chanté Adams’ Max are both homemakers at the start of the series. Carson is prim and proper, while Max, a Black woman, feels trapped.

Extra innings? Abbi Jacobson has a lot of stories to tell in Prime Video’s A League of Their Own — and is making it count in season 1.

Growing up, D’Arcy Carden had three career aspirations: “rock star, actress, baseball player.” Of course, she’s already seen success as an actor with memorable roles as Janet in “The Good Place” and Natalie in “Barry.” But in Amazon Prime Video’s “A League of Their Own,” which premiered in a binge on Aug. 12, Carden had the chance to make another one of those childhood dreams come true, hitting a grand slam as fiery Rockford Peaches player Greta Gill. The new series from “Broad City” co-creator Abbi Jacobson and “Mozart in the Jungle” showrunner Will Graham is based on Penny Marshall’s beloved 1992 film of the same name — but don’t call it a reboot. The retelling includes what Carden calls “kisses to the original,” but features all-new characters, while tackling queer storylines and racism.  “We really haven’t seen this time period through a queer lens.

Abbi Jacobson is making A League of Their Own — her own. The Broad City alum is accomplishing what she set out to do by exploring topics of sexuality and racism in her new Prime Video adaptation of the 1992 film of the same name.

is the TV series adapted from Penny Marshall’s classic 1992  film about the formation of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL) in the 1940s. Co-created by Will Graham and Abbi Jacobson, who also stars as catcher Carson Shaw, the series widens the lens to explore the authentic and diverse lives of the league's many players, with season 1 largely focused on the women that made up the Rockford Peaches. But it also feels very familiar, capturing the essence of what made the movie, which recently celebrated its 30th anniversary, such a long standing favorite. In fact, there are several homages and Easter eggs or what D’Arcy Carden, who plays Peaches player Greta, calls “little kisses to the movie” that many fans will instantly recognize.

Madonna’s Mae Mordabito in the 1992 film, Rosie O’Donnell has returned to the famed women’s baseball franchise in a role created specifically for the Prime Video series.Creators Will Graham and Abbi Jacobson, who also stars as Rockford Peaches catcher Carson, as well as the cast -- including D’Arcy Carden and Melanie Field, who play Mae and Doris prototypes, Greta and Jo, respectively — open up to ET about the inspiration behind O’Donnell’s character, how her role played into a key moment in season 1 and what it was like having her on set. “I mean, Rosie being in the show is huge,” says Roberta Colindrez, who plays Peaches pitcher Lupe, adding that “she was the most gracious, cool, generous co-star.”[: Some spoilers for season 1 of ]With the series wanting to expand upon the film to include the untold queer stories of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL), Jacobson couldn’t help but acknowledge O’Donnell’s own impact on the LGBTQ storytelling landscape.  “We were trying not to do a lot of cameos on the show to really differentiate it from the film, but because we are telling a lot of these queer stories and Rosie is like, a huge part of queer history, of American history, it just felt so special to have her not only approve of the show but wanna be in it and really wanna play a character that’s so different from the one that she is in the film,” Jacobson says, revealing that O’Donnell stopped by the writers’ room early in the production on season 1.

Doris was always a talker! The Rockford Peaches may huddle in their locker room before hitting the field, but it was Rosie O’Donnell who they surrounded in-between takes of Prime Video’s A League of Their Own.

A League of Their Own” TV show, streaming on August 12.The show is a reboot of the classic baseball flick from 1992, but instead of the all-star team of Tom Hanks, Geena Davis, Madonna and Rosie O’Donnell, this TV series adaptation will star a brand new lineup.Abbi Jacobson of “Broad City” fame, who co-created the show with Will Graham, stars in the series. Also in the dugout are Nick Offerman, Chanté Adams, Kelly McCormack and more.

Anna Tingley If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, Variety may receive an affiliate commission. The 1993 classic “A League of Their Own” starring Tom Hanks, Geena Davis and Madonna, gets a modern update in a new series that hits Amazon Prime Video this Friday.The series remake features all new characters in a similar storyline that centers around the formation of an all-girls baseball league during World War II. Like in the Penny Marshall-directed film, the series is set in 1943. New character Carson (played by “Broad City’s” Abbi Jacobson) finds herself enthralled by the sport of baseball after her husband is deployed overseas. While Carson’s character seems to be lightly inspired by Davis’s portrayal of Dottie in the original film, her teammate Greta played by D’Arcy Carden has hints of Madonna’s glamorous Mae. The biggest departure from the original film is a larger emphasis on race relations. Chanté Adams stars as a Black woman athlete named Max who is excluded from tryouts because of her race and takes a factory job in the hopes of playing for the men’s team.“Max’s storyline brings a blast of outright painful drama into the world of ‘League,’ and it’s welcome,” writes Variety‘s chief TV critic Daniel D’Addario in his review of the series. “The refusal to allow this series to play with nostalgia without engaging who was left out in a past era brings a not-unpleasant astringency to a series that makes other critiques in quieter, lighter manners.”All eight episodes of “A League of Their Own” arrive on Prime Video on Friday, Aug. 12. In order to stream the series, you’ll have to subscribe to Amazon Prime for $14.99/month or sign up for a 30-day tree trial here.

Daniel D'Addario Chief TV CriticThere’s something that feels a bit overextended about Amazon Prime Video’s new series adaptation of “A League of Their Own,” and it isn’t just the runtimes.With episodes of this eight-part season flirting with the hour mark — meaning that there’s several times as much series as there was of the 1992 film about the all-women Rockford Peaches baseball team — this show seems at times unsure of what to say next, or where to take its story. And attempts to broaden the scope of that story can alternately present an admirable curiosity about what more can be said about the history of women in baseball and a tendency to avoid engaging history on its own terms.Here, as in the Penny Marshall-directed film, we’re in 1943 and following a group of female athletes, this time led by Carson (Abbi Jacobson, who also co-created the series with Will Graham).

A league of Their Own was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress which cited it as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” due to it’s fictionalized storytelling around the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. But while the 1992 movie is considered a feminist classic, the storyline left out the narratives of non-white women in baseball — an omission the new Prime series aims to correct.On the red carpet of this year’s ESPY awards, we spoke with co-creator Abbi Jacobson, who also stars in the series, about finally bringing the project to light during its 30th anniversary year and how it differs from the original film in centering the stories of Black women.“It was never about remaking this movie, it does not need to be remade,” Jacobson told ESSENCE, pointing out that she and the cast have been working on the series since 2017.

On the heels of its 30th anniversary, “A League of Their Own” from director Penny Marshall has been reimagined for television in the streaming age by Abbi Jacobson (“Broad City”) and Will Graham (“Mozart In The Jungle”). Taking inspiration from the 1992 screenplay by Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel, who in turn based their screenplay on a story by Kelly Candaele and Kim Wilson, the new Amazon Prime Video show seeks to make explicit aspects of history that were merely implied in the original film.

debuted in theaters, the movie has been adapted by Abbi Jacobson and Will Graham into an expanded, original TV series for Prime Video with Jacobson also starring as catcher Carson Shaw. The historical period drama will not only tell the story about the formation of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL), but also chronicle the authentic and diverse lives of its many players — with season 1 largely focused on the women that made up the Rockford Peaches. It’s a series that will be familiar to many, while exploring new territory not previously seen on screen in this way before.

Gallery: ‘You’re learning about life. It’s a part of growing up. . . ' The straight stars who have had same sex encounters (BANG Showbiz)At the premiere, Abbi chose to wear a floor-length red dress whilst Jodi opted for a long pink dress with one white boot and one red boot.

Inspired by the true story of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, which operated from 1943 to 1954, Penny Marshall’s 1992 film “A League of Their Own” is a ’90s comedy classic starring Tom Hanks, Geena Davis, Lori Petty, Rosie O’Donnell, and Madonna. It spawned a short-lived television show of the same name and was added to the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress in 2012 for being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.”  READ MORE: The Best TV Of 2022… So Far For many people of a certain age, the film was not just a foundational text but a movie so ubiquitous in their lives that they can’t remember life without it.

Gallery: ‘I didn't even feel like picking out a dress’: Celebrities who cancelled their weddings (BANG Showbiz)The pair were attending the premiere for 'A League of Their Own', with Abbi choosing to wear a floor-length red dress whilst Jodi opted for a long pink dress with one white boot and one red boot. The supposed engagement comes just under a year after the pair first announced they were dating in October 2021 and had kept it secret for a year.