One of the best debuts of the past few years was Marielle Heller’s The Diary of a Teenage Girl and this fall, the director will make her return with the Melissa McCarthy-led biopic Can You Ever Forgive Me?. The film follows the true s tory of a once-famous entertainment writer who starts to forge letters from deceased celebrities. Ahead of an October release, the first trailer has now arrived courtesy of Fox Searchlight.
“There are pitfalls to biopics that are hard to get away from. There’s an expectation that you’re doing a certain amount of journalistic storytelling that’s going to give an exact play-by-play showing someone’s entire life from cradle to grave. This does none of that,” Heller tells EW. “I like telling stories about women who would otherwise be [ignored],” says Heller. “[Lee] wishes…. that she could have been a part of this great intellectual roundtable of people back in the day, but she finds herself living in the ‘90s where that culture is kind of dying and people don’t think writing books about Fanny Brice is interesting anymore…. we tried to tap into the essence of this woman who was very specific in her idiosyncrasies.”
See the trailer and poster below for the film also starring Richard E. Grant, Jane Curtin, Anna Deavere Smith, Dolly Wells, and Jennifer Westfeldt.
Melissa McCarthy stars in the adaptation of the memoir CAN YOU EVER FORGIVE ME?, the true story of best-selling celebrity biographer (and friend to cats) Lee Israel (Melissa McCarthy) who made her living in the 1970’s and 80’s profiling the likes of Katharine Hepburn, Tallulah Bankhead, Estee Lauder and journalist Dorothy Kilgallen. When Lee is no longer able to get published because she has fallen out of step with current tastes, she turns her art form to deception, abetted by her loyal friend Jack (Richard E. Grant).
Can You Ever Forgive Me? opens on October 19.