Carla Gugino has been tapped to play Hollywood screen legend Vivien Leigh in the forthcoming biopic “The Florist.”
The film is directed by Nick Sandow (star of “Orange is the New Black”) and will explore Leigh’s struggle with bipolar disorder in the 1960s, as she prepares to lead the Broadway production of John Gielgud’s Chekhov adaptation of “Ivanov.” Screenwriter Jayce Bartok (“The Cake Eaters”) put the script together based on a box of love letters.
Leigh earned her place in cinema history as Scarlett O’Hara, the central character in 1939’s “Gone With the Wind,” opposite Clark Gable. Leigh also played the landmark role of Blanche DuBois opposite Marlon Brando in 1951’s “A Streetcar Named Desire.”
“I couldn’t be more excited about the opportunity to excavate a woman as complex, contradictory, and compelling as Vivien. From the moment I read the script, I knew ‘The Florist’ was a journey I had to pursue,” Gugino told Variety.
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Set for production at the end of the summer in Philadelphia, Gugino’s Leigh collides with Joseph Penn — a WWII veteran and blue-collar florist who encounters Leigh on a delivery. At the same time, the star attends a local psychiatric facility for electroconvulsive therapy. “Amidst the backdrop of madness,” a synopsis said, “Leigh and Penn become each other’s sources of truth, beauty, and love.”
Veteran performer Gugino recently garnered awards attention for her role in the Netflix limited series “The Fall of the House of Usher” and currently stars in the HBO original “The Girls on the Bus.” Additional credits include “The Haunting of Bly Manor,” “Californication” and the beloved “Spy Kids’ film franchise. She is represented by UTA, Untitled Entertainment and Kopeikin Law.
The film will be produced by former CAA Agent Lauren Hale-Rieckhoff, in association with Vinyl Foote Productions. Jenna Mack will co-produce. Avy Kaufman cast the leads and supporting players are expected to be announced shortly.
“What drew me to the project was the script and how it brings together, for a fleeting moment, two human beings who seemingly couldn’t be more different,” said director Sandow, who is represented by Innovative Artists. “I was excited by taking these two discordant existences and making them touch, and seeing what that says about things like love, artistry, mental illness, and celebrity.”
Writer Bartok is managed by JMason Entertainment, and Vinyl Foote by Sloss Eckhouse Dasti Haynes. Hale-Rieckhoff is represented by Marc Simon at Fox Rothschild.