A version of this story on Genevieve Angelson first appeared in the print edition of TheWrap Magazine’s Fall TV Issue.
“I feel like I’ve spent my whole life researching this period,” Genevieve Angelson said of her new show, “Good Girls Revolt.”
And what a period. Amazon’s new series is set during the feminist awakening of the late 1960s and early ’70s, when a group of women writers and researchers at Newsweek, including the then-unknown Nora Ephron, filed suit against the publication for sex discrimination.
At the time, the movement was called “women’s liberation” and feminists were sometimes derided as “women’s libbers.”
Angelson was born in 1987, long after the events depicted on “Good Girls.”
But the era of tie-dye and headbands comes naturally to her. “I knew every Beatles lyric in fourth grade,” she said. “I’ve seen every movie made in America between 1967 and 1980.”
Not yet 30, Angelson has already built an enviable career on stage and screen. A graduate of Wesleyan University and NYU Tisch School of the Arts, she grabbed some early guest spots on “The Good Wife” and “Army Wives.”
That quickly led to a recurring role on “House of Lies” and a leading role in “Backstrom.” On Broadway, she was in Christopher Durang’s Tony-winning play “Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike.”
Her new show is based on “The Good Girls Revolt,” the 2012 book by Lynn Povich that described how 46 women took on one of the most powerful magazines in America. Angelson plays Patti Robinson, a hippie who’s coming to terms with the limits of her newfound freedom.
“I never wear a bra,” she said of her character. “I smoke pot all the time.” When the series opens, Patti finds herself indulging nearly every temptation a young woman of the era could find, but as time goes on she finds herself pulling back.
As for Angelson, working on the show has made the pull of nostalgia stronger than ever. “I wish I were born in time to be in my 20s in the ’70s,” she said.
“Good Girls Revolt” begins streaming Oct. 28 on Amazon.
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