Rooney Mara, Claire Foy, Jessie Buckley and Ben Whishaw will join three-time Oscar winner Frances McDormand in Sarah Polley's new movie Women Talking, which has also added Judith Ivey, Sheila McCarthy, Michelle McLeod, August Winter, Liv McNeil and Kate Hallett to its impressive ensemble cast.
Polley (Stories We Tell) is writing and directing the feature adaptation of Miriam Toews’ bestselling novel for MGM's Orion Pictures label and Brad Pitt's company Plan B Entertainment, which is producing alongside McDormand and her Hear/Say Productions banner.
Women Talking is a critically acclaimed novel that follows a group of women in an isolated religious colony as they struggle to reconcile their faith with a series of sexual assaults committed by the colony’s men.
Deadline broke the news of the cast, which has come together quite nicely. Mara has already earned a pair of Oscar nominations, while Foy won an Emmy for The Crown and Buckley has been building a strong resume that will surely result in nominations down the line -- possibly as soon as this fall, since her wicked turn in Fargo Season 4 is eligible this awards season.
Mara will soon be seen in Guillermo del Toro’s Nightmare Alley, while Buckley has Alex Garland's A24 movie Men on the horizon along with Maggie Gyllenhaal’s directorial debut The Lost Daughter. As for Foy, she next stars in My Son opposite James McAvoy, and she has also wrapped The Electrical Life of Louis Wain, which pairs her with Benedict Cumberbatch. Both Mara and Foy previously played hacker extraordinaire Lisbeth Salander in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and The Girl in the Spider's Web, respectively.
Ivey is a two-time Tony Award-winning stage actress as well as an Emmy nominee, while McCarthy recently appeared in the hit Netflix series The Umbrella Academy and the well-reviewed romance The Broken Hearts Gallery. McLeod's credits include My Spy and the title role in the film Don’t Talk to Irene opposite Geena Davis, whereas Whishaw will reprise his role as gadget guru Q in the next James Bond movie No Time to Die, which is poised to blow up theaters in October. I wonder if he'll play one of the colony's abusive men in Women Talking, or a trusted confidante of some kind. We'll see...