Will Jessica Chastain star in 'The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo'? She responds to fan castings
Taylor Jenkins Reid's bestselling novel "The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo" is coming to Netflix!
The book, which is a tell-all from a dying Hollywood diva, has an enormous following on TikTok, and the fanbase has seemed to reach a consensus about their dream casting for Evelyn Hugo's fellow starlet Celia St. James: Academy Award-winning actor Jessica Chastain.
But would Chastain be up for the role?
"I love how excited the fans are,” Chastain told "E! News" in an interview published Dec. 28. “When I was working on Broadway, every single day, they’d be outside, when I was signing, with the books. I just love how wonderful that fan base is.”
But unfortunately for book fans, she said there's “zero possibility” she'd play Celia in the upcoming film.
“I look forward to watching it and I’m sorry to disappoint everyone out there!” she said.
Netflix announced the book-to-film adaptation in 2022. Here's everything we know so far about the “The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo” film.
What will the movie be about?
In a press release, Netflix shared what fans can expect to see in the movie, based on the 2017 book of the same name:
"In a long awaited interview with a young journalist, Evelyn Hugo, an aging Hollywood starlet, pulls back the curtain on her seven marriages, and as she tells tales of Hollywood scandals, betrayals, and woe, she unveils shocking truths about her own life and the lives of everyone around her."
Who is cast in the film?
The cast list for “The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo” has yet to be announced, but that hasn't stopped fans from creating their own dream cast.
Chastain commented on the fan casting earlier this year on “Watch What Happens Live,” telling host Andy Cohen she's interested in the film.
“Sure, send me a script,” she said in January.
However, in April, she tempered fan expectations when she explained why she's not going to sign fans' copies of the book, saying it simply “feels wrong.”
“I’ve been asked multiple times by fans, to sign books that I’m not attached to contractually. Because it feels wrong, and like Im taking credit for someone else’s work, I’ll say I cant sign because I’m not doing it. That doesn’t mean I’ve read a bad script,” she tweeted at the time.
Opposite Chastain, other fan-favorite castings include Ana de Armas and Sofía Vergara as Evelyn Hugo.
Who will direct the movie?
Leslye Headland has signed on to direct the feature film adaptation of Reid's bestselling novel.
She has previously worked on "Russian Doll," "Bachelorette," "About Last Night," "Sleeping With Other People" and more.
Who is writing the movie?
Liz Tigelaar is set to write the script for “The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo."
Tigelaar is known for her book-to-screen adaptations. She adapted Cheryl Strayed's "Tiny Beautiful Things" into a 2023 miniseries and served as the showrunner of "Little Fires Everywhere," based on the bestselling book by Celeste Ng.
Who will produce the movie?
Reid is set to serve as an executive producer of the film, along with Margaret Chernin, who is known for producing Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum's 2022 film, "The Lost City."
Liza Chasin from 3Dot Productions and Brad Mendelsohn from Circle of Confusion will also act as producers.
Which stars influenced Reid's characters in the book?
In a 2017 interview with Huffpost, Reid said it was inevitable that her character Evelyn was going to have some parallels to the late Elizabeth Taylor, who was married eight times.
“You can’t write about an iconic Hollywood star of the ‘60s without bumping up against Elizabeth Taylor,” she said. “And, obviously, the many marriages is a very striking thing Evelyn and Liz have in common. I tried to craft a realistic portrayal of a deeply glamorous and scandalous woman. And when you do that, you’re bound to hit some of the same beats as the great Elizabeth Taylor.”
Reid also told PopSugar in 2017 that she drew inspiration from Ava Gardner and Rita Hayworth for Evelyn.
Reid noted that she was very taken with Gardner's book, "The Secret Conversations," which was published well after the actor died. The juicy biography about Gardner's marriages to Mickey Rooney, Frank Sinatra and Artie Shaw made Reid feel like she could create a similar novel.
She said she thought to herself: “'How great if you could do an entire book that feels like the juiciest part of this Ava Gardner book?' So I started to think about this idea of a fictional memoir of a Hollywood star. Then I got really into the idea that you have a device of her telling her story to someone else and those two stories intersecting in interesting ways.
"I started doing all this research about Hollywood and actresses and various scandals and coverups and all that, which is maybe the most fun research I’ve ever done in my life," Reid continued.
As for Hayworth, she said the late star was a "really big inspiration" to her because "she was Spanish, and she came to Hollywood and she was getting roles that weren’t leading roles the way that she wanted,” Reid said.
“So she changed her name, and she became Rita Hayworth,” the author continued. “She went red, she curled up her hairline (to look like) a white woman. She also had that famous line, ‘Men go to bed with Gilda but wake up with me.’ Those two things I thought could really inform Evelyn’s life, given Evelyn is Cuban and she has that same decision to make.”
This article was originally published on TODAY.com
