Michelle Williams – Peggy Lee
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Actress Michelle Williams and director Todd Haynes will collaborate for the third time on a biopic dedicated to singer Peggy Lee.
Todd Haynes / Cannes 2017 – Photo Philippe Prost for CineChronicle
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Entitled Fever – named after the planetary hit that Peggy Lee recorded in 1958 – the feature film will look back on the fragmented and dissolute life of the singer, actress and composer who died in 2002 at the age of 81.
It is with these two titles Somebody Else Is Taking My Place and Why Don’t You Do Right ? that Peggy Lee had her first success in the early forties.
Recognized for being an excellent composer, she then collaborated with jazz artists such as Benny Goodman, Dave Barbour, Sonny Burke, Victor Young, or even Duke Ellington.. Songwriter, she wrote the lyrics for the Walt Disney movie The Lady and the Tramp (1955), for which she also lent her voice to four characters. As an actress, she was nominated for an Oscar for her supporting role in Pete Kelly’s Blues (1955).
With 1,200 tracks recorded over more than sixty years of career, Peggy Lee has crossed musical fashions, influencing Paul McCartney as well as Bette Midler, Madonna and Kd Lang, and more recently, singer Billie Eilish, winner of several Grammys.
Billie Eilish
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According to Deadline, Eilish is in talks to join the film as an executive producer alongside Marc Platt, Reese Witherspoon, Pamela Koffler and Christine Vachon through their production company Killer Films.
However, this project on Peggy Lee is not recent. First in development at Fox 2000 Pictures with Reese Witherspoon in the title role, this biopic was dropped after the death of director Nora Ephron, who wrote the original screenplay in 2012. The arrival of Michelle Williams in the cast allows today to relaunch it. MGM is also in the running.
After I’m not there (2007) and The Museum of Wonders (2014), this biopic written by Doug Wright marks the third collaboration between Todd Haynes and Michelle Williams. This will be the second incarnation of an icon of the fifties for the actress after the film dedicated to Marilyn Monroe, My Week with Marilyn for which she also won the Golden Globe for best actress in 2012.
In his projects, Williams will find director Kelly Reichardt for Showing Up. This will be their fourth collaboration after Wendy et Lucy, The Last Track and Certain Women. Most recently she starred in the series Fosse / Verdon, here he at valu a Emmy for her portrayal of Gwen Verdon, and has just finished filming the sequel to Venom : Let There Be Carnage.
No release date for Fever has not yet been announced.
Odile Lefranc
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