Entertainment

June & Brooklyn Are 'Grace and Frankie' Highlights

by Kayla Hawkins

While Grace and Frankie may be about a pair of friends in their 70s, the show will also give Netflix audiences a look at their families, including their adult children, who have all been cast as well as Lily Tomlin and Jane Fonda as the two leads. Who's playing Jane Fonda's two daughters? They're a reflection of Grace's influence and how each one took away very different aspects of her personality as they've grown up. And in order to emphasize just how different they are, Netflix cast two actresses who could not be more different: comedian and writer June Diane Raphael and former model Brooklyn Decker. Both are very successful in their chosen professions, and make good performers, but they're as different as their characters in Grace and Frankie.

And those characters are a big source of conflict for their mother, Jane Fonda's Grace. She made a show of being the perfect, perfect looking mother, but in reality she's a lot more shallow and image-obsessed than she'd admit. So it's fitting that her younger daughter is a mockery of everything she wishes she could return to — a happy, contented wife and mother. And her older daughter, played by Raphael, is more acerbic, and she's not afraid to tell it like it is, which betrays Grace's true nature.

And just like Netflix is playing with opposites in their two characters, Raphael and Decker are seriously different (though they do have some similarities), but will make for a great combination. Where one is lacking, the other will be right there to dial it up.

Brooklyn Costars In Huge Movie Comedies, While June Writes Small Television Comedies

One big difference? Decker has been working in mainstream fare since her onscreen debut in the Adam Sandler movie Just Go With It, while for the past few years, Raphael has been making some of the best TV parodies around, between Burning Love and NTSF:SD:SUV::.

Both Got An Early Start

According to her former manager, Evolution Talent Agency, Decker started modeling at just fifteen years old, while Raphael started performing comedy at UCB right after she graduated from college. So even though they're both young, they each have been working for over 10 years.

Brooklyn's A Solo Artist, And June's A Collaborator

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When acting and modeling, you don't normally form a close partnership, while comedy is all about bouncing off of someone else's ideas. Casey Wilson has been Raphael's creative partner since their UCB days, and they cowrote Ass Backwards and Bride Wars together. Raphael's also worked with her husband, Paul Scheer.

Both Are Charitable

Raphael works with fellow comic Kulap Vilaysack, Raphael created UCB Cares, a way for the theater's hundreds of performers to give back. Decker supports her husband, tennis pro Andy Roddick, in his foundation, which was designed to give back to underprivileged kids in his native Texas.

June Uses Her Voice, While Brooklyn Uses Her Face

Raphael co-hosts "How Did This Get Made," a bad-movie podcast where the hosts break down the hilarity and bafflement that come from Hollywood's biggest mistakes. Meanwhile, Brooklyn worked as a successful model, distilling her appeal down to a single look. Obviously you need both for a TV comedy — one to deliver a complicated joke, and the other to give the perfect reaction.

Both Are Better Adjusted Than Their Characters

Both Raphael and Decker are successful and have families, missing out on the neuroses of both of their Grace and Frankie characters. These two may be different, but because they're both successful, driven women — and experienced actresses — these two will turn those differences into incredible chemistry.

Image: Melissa Moseley/Netflix (2); Getty Images