We’ve all been there. Setting goals to “eat well and workout” everyday only for the humdrum and pressures of life to boot it off our schedules day after day. We know in some way we will feel better if we actually went, but seriously, time and energy are not infinite resources. Apple TV+’s new series Physical follows Sheila Rubin, a mother and wife who harnesses the power of the leotard to change her life. Every day Rubin, played by Rose Byrne, fails to meet the expectations of the life she wants for herself, until she stumbles into an aerobics studio. After her husband loses his job, she joins the studio as a teacher. From there, she and her new coworker seek to build a workout empire while uplifting the women around them. The vicious voice in Byrne’s head keeps pushing her forward, but it may be beyond her limits.
Set in ‘80s San Diego, there’s no absence of leg warmers, perms and expectations of women to be perfect mothers and doting wives, even if that means setting themselves aside. All in all, it looks like what happens when a mom signs up for Orange Theory (we all know it’s kind of a cult, right?). Executive produced and written by Annie Weisman (Desperate Housewives), Physical is directed by Craig Gillespie, Liza Johnson and Stephanie Laing.
Physical premieres on Apple TV+ June 18.
29 Comments
This trailer actually left me intrigued by the concept as now I get more of the general tone and why this time period for this story. Before it just felt so random that we were getting a Byrne 80s aerobic show.I am curious, though, if they will examine aerobics and why it specifically rose up as the exercise for women in the 80s as, just like so many things fitness related, there were some interested dynamics involved in that.
I just want to get practical advice on how to firm up my butt.
Roller derby should do the trick!
So…there are movies that people remember, and movies that for some reason never made it into general consciousness. In particular, this makes me think of Perfect (1985), which had John Travolta, Jamie Lee Curtis, Marilu Henner, and Lorraine Newman, and, like both Saturday Night Fever and Urban Cowboy, was based on journalism about a current lifestyle fad and turned into a Travolta movie. Those other two are wildly famous and on TV all the time; nobody remembers Perfect. It can’t be that bad…can it? (Well, the Wikipedia article suggests that, at the time at least, the answer was “yes”.)
There’s a very specific scene from Perfect that I think plenty of people remember (in .gif form).
I’d love to remember that, but search “perfect gif” doesn’t exactly narrow it down. I added a couple of likely names but not sure what scene we’re going for here.(BTW, speaking of the slight-less-likely of the two candidates I was thinking of, the woman in HBOMax’s Hacks who isn’t Jean Smart is Lorraine Newman’s daughter.)
I caught most of Perfect on cable years ago and vaguely recall it being pretty terrible. Chief among its problems were that Travolta’s character is supposed to be a reporter for Rolling Stone, and Rolling Stone editor gadfly Jann Wenner wound up playing a thinly-veiled version of himself in a vanity role. Travolta and Jamie Lee Curtis were nominated for Razzies, but they should have also given one to Wenner.
I saw Perfect in the theaters in 1985 as a teenager. At the time it was sort of horrifying but just another marginal escalation of how horrifying the 80’s were. The trailer for Physical looks like it could be an honest retelling of how that scene and culture began, with Perfect as its culmination five years later. Perfect had brief cultural visibility due to its stars but then vanished as anything but a source of future GIFs.
There was also a 1984 B-movie on HBO Heavenly Bodies that’s basically Flashdance for aerobics, where rival instructors dance each other to physical injury and win the hot guy. It might have more in common with Physical for its cheap seediness.
A Communist Plot by Hanoi Jane. All Reaganoids knew that.
I keep forgetting she’s an Aussie.
This feels like Apple trolling Netflix subscribers who loved GLOW.
It worked on me. the whole time I was thinking “I’d rather have season 4 of GLOW.”
GLOW did have a season 3.
Of course it did. That’s why my comment specifically says “season 4.”;)
Netflix just bought three separate jazzercise series.
Looks like the making of a Kate Bush video.
“From the director of I, Tonya”
Yup, I’m in.
Man, Rose Byrne is cool. She does it all. Kids movies, SciFi, horror, drama and she plays a great “straight man” in comedy. I’ll have to check this out.
I agree, and I also kind of felt like she was better than the material in everything I’ve ever seen her in. This looks interesting enough, I hope it’s good.
+1 for scoring this trailer to Expose. Really nicely done.
I just got a flashback to the Aerobicise videos that used to air on Showtime. They were definitely not very instructional and especially hard to ignore as a pre-pubescent boy.
Hmm, ya. Probably a good thing I didn’t have access to cable TV during the 80’s. Ah well, I still had the lovely ladies of Star Trek: The Next Generation lol.
Hah! You must be a couple years older than me, I was a Major Kira guy all the way.
Heh, well I was a young teenager and a huge Trek nerd when DS9 premiered so of course I was all in love with Major Kira as well. I actually got to meet Nana Visitor briefly at a small Star Trek convention in Oregon around ‘96 or so. Super nice gal! 🙂
I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.
This sounds like the TV series version of Perfect, the John Travolta-Jamie Lee Curtis movie that was yet another Travolta film about a lifestyle fad (see also Urban Cowboy, Saturday Night Fever). It was weirdly recursive/self-congralutatory (it was written by a Rolling Stone lifestyle writer and featured a protagonist who was, wait for it, a Rolling Stone lifestyle writer) and it bombed. Here’s hoping this is better; I loved GLOW and Rose Byrne is great.
I want to look at the IMDB page, but I’m afraid it might spoil any possible cameos that I’m hoping for – Denise Austin, Richard Simmons, Cameo.
The trailer certainly drives home how nothing is new, ie. “eat clean.” And as a child of 70s-80s San Diego the setting and scene check out.At first I wondered if we were getting a modern remake of 1984’s Heavenly Bodies, if just because Rose Byrne looks like the lead actress. The aerobics and 80’s fitness crazes merit a more honest retelling than they got at the time, with plucky dance-offs to physical ruin between rival gyms.Not to mention 1985’s Perfect only attempts to be critical of sensational journalism and not any of what brought THIS about.
That scene from Perfect has to be the inspiration for Eric Prydz’s video