Fuck your nostalgic sequel, Murray’s going presidential.
Signing on with director Roger Michell and writer Richard Nelson, who has adapted his own BBC radio play into a film script, Billy Murray will be portraying Franklin D. Roosevelt in Hyde Park on the Hudson. The film revolves around the first visit of any British monarchs to America (hey… monarchs? Hello OSCAR!), and more specifically the affair FDR supposedly carried out with his 4th or 5th cousin, Margaret Suckley, during said visit.
While historians have long been dismissive of Suckley’s role in FDR’s life, it’s clear that she was at least an important companion to the president- one of the few to be near him when he died, and the only person to photography him in his wheelchair at home. There’s not much evidence to say they carried on a legitimate affair, but they definitely had a John and Abigail Adams-style romantic correspondence type thing going on. Regardless, the film, which again is an adaptation of a radio play, makes the relationship definitively sexual [Suckley joke here] and sets it during that monumental 1939 royal visit. Most of the story takes place on FDR’s estate in New York.
Dunno about you, but I’ll take Murray doing something badass and interesting like this over a dumb, far-too-late sequel any day of the week. Murray’s special blend of wry melancholy seems like it would suit FDR nicely, while still giving the actor plenty of room to stretch and challenge himself.
Director Roger Michell, of Notting Hill and Venus fame, plans to shoot the film this year, and now that he’s got an exciting lead there should be nothing stopping him. Not even other stupid FDR projects.
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Source | Vulture (photo via Vulture commenter)