TAP FOURTEEN TV

I remember being like, “That’s where it is, man.” would go to thrift stores and buy skater clothes and never, even once, did I think I attempted to get on a skateboard. I remember wishing my family would move to Seattle. 1994 was also exactly when the grunge era was, and I was all obsessed with Pearl Jam, Nirvana, and everything that came with that. I had joined an outside-of-school theater company that year that completely took over my social life. I was obsessed with a few things, as all junior high students are. What were you up to as you were finishing junior high? My 14-year-old, 8th-grade life and my 14-year-old, 9th-grade life are completely different times in my life. The funny thing about 14, which was half of 8th grade and half of freshman year, is that these are two wildly different interviews. I grew up in a cute little town called Danville, like 30 minutes east of San Francisco, close enough to be cool but totally suburban and not cool. With A League of Their Own, Carden has finally found the perfect balance of theater, sports, and angst.īelow, Carden reminisces about her early acting days, trying cigarettes, and loving Pearl Jam more than anyone else. “We became an actual baseball team first, and the show was the secondary thing.” They giggled their way through night shoots that joy is transparent on screen. The cast spent months playing baseball together before the cameras began rolling. “Sometimes you can’t see yourself or what you are capable of, but you have to trust the people around you.” She leaned on Jacobson, the show’s creator and star, for support. I was like, damn, she is cool and confident, and she has a lot of swag,” says Carden, adding that the role is not usually in her wheelhouse. “When I first read the script, I just sort of idolized Greta. It was a unique challenge playing a character that demands the attention of every room (and baseball stadium) she walks into, but Carden was determined to rise to the occasion. While the actor is best known for her turn as the Amazon Alexa-inspired Janet in The Good Place, she more than pulls off Greta’s undeniable sexiness.

TAP FOURTEEN TV

In Prime Video’s TV reboot, Carden plays the smooth-as-hell Greta, the Rockford Peaches’ first basewoman who pulls the show’s lead Carson (Abbi Jacobson) into her orbit. “When I watched the movie, I was like, I want to be a part of that - get me up there with them,” she says of the 1992 baseball film. In a nostalgic twist of fate, this is the role her younger self always dreamed of. Now 42, Carden is getting ready for another change, a jump from comedic character actor to charming leading lady in A League of Their Own. It was one of the biggest changes I ever went through.” “Looking back on the beginning of my 14th year versus the end of my 14th year, I almost couldn't recognize myself. High school brought the joys of parties and homemade bongs crafted out of fruit.

“I was making out and doing drugs,” she says. “Fourteen was one year but two separate lives.”īut for Carden, the summer of 1994 - the months between middle school and high school - changed everything. “I was trying to figure out who I was between sports and music and theater,” Carden tells Bustle.

At the same time, she was a full-blown theater kid, landing ensemble roles at a Bay Area community theater. She cried so hard on the day Kurt Cobain died she almost couldn't play in her basketball game. She was a certified grunge girl with photos of Eddie Vedder plastered over her bedroom wall. D’Arcy Carden was straddling two different worlds at 14.

Tap fourteen