Marisa Davila makes a star-making turn in Paramount+’s Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies. If you can stand toe-to-toe with Sandy Olsson and Stephanie Zinone, you are in good shape, but Davila is excited for new audiences to discover the true beginning of the Pink Ladies. Jane Facciano had an idea of what Rydell was going to be like, but she had no idea that she was going to have to break down people’s expectations of her so she could stand on her own.
The first time we meet Davila’s character she is at the drive-in being romanced by Jason Schmidt’s Buddy Aldridge. When Jane receives his letterman jacket, she steps out of his car and immediately becomes gossip fodder after she sings her verse on “Grease Is the Word.” This is the only musical callback to the original film in the entire series, and it felt like a baton was being passed.
“That song in particular was exciting, because it was the only one we were covering,” Davila says. “It helped transition fans of the Grease world into something new. Here are the colors, here is the direction. I loved that everyone got their own verse, and, when you listen to how each character is positioned, they did a good job of assigning the verses to go along with what that character is going through in the moment. I thought that was genius. I had such a blast. The original “Grease,” sung by Frankie Valli, was very much made for radio play, so it didn’t have much to do with the story. When I got into the studio to record for the first time, I had that idea in mind. It was very sultry and pop with a more filled-out tone. I had to think of how Jane would sing it. It reminded me that we were telling a story. Having that as the target was very helpful.”
The relationship between Jane and Buddy transforms throughout the season. If this iteration was created ten years ago, Jane would be caught in a love triangle between Buddy and Richie and she wouldn’t have as much agency. Jane and Buddy go from love interests to political adversaries to something closer to friends by the end of the first season. It’s maturely written for a show that centers on the tribulations of high school.
“I love how complex it is, and a lot of our fans would consider it to still be a love triangle. It’s something that our director of episode five, Jennifer Morrison, discussed with me. Jane never hated Buddy but that love and hate lived on the same side of the same coin. Passion was still present, so she encouraged me to remember that even if Jane was really mad at Buddy. She gets worked up because of that relationship, and it was great to dig all through that. The maturity of where Jane and Buddy end their relationship at the end of season one is something that you don’t see of shows until subsequent seasons. There is so much regret between the two of these characters.”
At the end of the season, Jane is referred to as an “unshakeable optimist” by one of her fellow Pink Ladies. That optimism is tested towards the end of the first season, but we should never perceive that optimism as weakness. On the contrary, Jane uses her niceness as a tool in her arsenal. Is that quality hard for Jane to hold onto?
“Yes, I think so,” she admits. “In episode nine, I wouldn’t say she is an optimist since we see her break for the first time. She can rise to the occasion in the finale because of her friends–they remind her that she can’t lose that. Whether they know that that is her best quality, they can recognize when she loses it. She loses her light, and, therefore, she is becoming lost. I think that’s a testament of who you surround yourself with. Your friends can recognize the best parts in you. I think optimists are some of our greatest warriors, because it’s a conscious choice to look on that bright side. It’s sometimes the harder option.”
“I Want More” is a highlight from the first half of the season, and Davila informs me that it wasn’t in the original script. The song is all about Jane’s want and how she is is desperate to show this side of her. Davila shows incredibly vocal range and never loses her grip on the notes. It goes to magical places (“it’s my Matilda moment,” she laughs), and it never loses sight of what Jane is truly after.
“It was a mountain for me–that’s the best way that I can put it,” Davila says. “It was one of the last songs that I shot since it didn’t originally exist in the episode. It originally had “Girl Gang” and “Imagine a World Without Boys,” and those happen towards the beginning and the end of that episode. We went a while without having a song in the middle, and it wasn’t until near the end of our shooting schedule that Paramount thought that we should slide something in there. Since I had never been on a project of this scale, I didn’t even know that was something that we could do.
It is a big, intimate moment for Jane since she is singing it alone. It matches the rage that she has in the basement with Buddy, and that’s something that she rarely accesses in front of people. It shows that she is comfortable to show that side with him. In terms of the song, they wanted to show that Jane was at her peak of her patience. It was also the peak of my range, and I never thought that I would be able to push myself. Even when I see people online covering it, it blows my mind. Kudos to them, because it shows a lot of range. Getting to do a lot of choreography, I felt that I got a chance to truly show off all my training and everything that I’ve invested in myself. Since it was at the end of the schedule, and I think it showed the oomph that we were all feeling. I very much refer to this song as Jane’s Bond. At the end of with all the papers, they let me go. As a musician’s kid, it was goal to hit all the beats in the moment, but it was more about letting lose. One of my favorite moments is a paper landed on my face, and I grabbed it in the moment and chucked it off of me. I loved filming that number so much.”
In the first episode, Assistant Principal McGee (the incomparable Jackie Hoffman) tells Jane, “A reputation is all a girl has,” and that line that ominous life throughout Rise’s first season. Jane and the other Pink Ladies are continually fighting against what other students, parents, and society thinks of their behavior. It’s something Davila is proud to stand against.
“I think it sticks out, because it hasn’t really changed since the ’50s,” she says. “She says the phrase, ‘a girl,’ and men don’t really have to think about that when they make mistakes. The boys moon and get away with it, but the girls don’t–that’s the perfect example of it. Girls are expected to be straight-laced, not get in the way, not cause any waves, and, from that point on, we are all like, ‘Screw that.’ That’s the key line that drove a lot of the show. They say these things to scare young women into not breaking out of society’s molds for them. With our show, we have discovered that there is no bigger villain to women than the ’50s. People like Susan can be seen as antagonists, but that’s the norm.”
Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies is streaming now on Paramount+.