“A League of Their Own is such a gay film and not gay at all, simultaneously,” laughs Abbi Jacobson. The Penny Marshall-directed sports dramedy, telling a fictionalised account of the real life All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, has been reclaimed as a queer cult classic since its 1992 release due to its sapphic themes and subversion of traditional gender roles. Queer awakenings sparked by Madonna’s tough-as-nails centre field Mae Mordabito and Rosie O’Donnell’s butch, third base bouncer Doris Murphy, as well as the iconic scene of Geena Davis’ Dottie Hinson effortlessly catching a baseball with her bare hand, have all contributed to its enduring queer legacy. While the film respectably tackled issues pertaining to sexism, gender and exclusion, it didn’t authentically honour the behind-the-scenes queerness of the league. With Prime Video’s new reimagining, Jacobson – who stars and co-created the series with Will Graham – is aiming to change that. 

“Will and I are both queer, and it was part of our initial conversation of what types of stories we felt were not told in the film,” the star tells GAY TIMES. “The more research we did, the more we found out that the league in particular was really queer. Also, queer people didn’t just show up in Stonewall, we’ve been around forever! So, what was queer life inside the All-American Girls League and outside, in general, in 1943? What was that like?” Jacobson, best known for her beloved role as Abbi Abrams in Comedy Central’s Broad City, which she co-created with Ilana Glazer, stars in the lead role as Carson Shaw, an endearingly awkward yet talented baseball player who abandons her home and army husband to pursue a career with the league, called the Peaches. Carson, who is in a comfortable marriage but has been forced to live in the closet, subsequently finds her “community” with the Peaches including D’Arcy Carden’s Greta, a cool Mae Morbadito-type who she passionately locks lips with in the premiere and embarks on a forbidden romance with across the series.