You know how dumb I am? I’m so dumb that it’s taken me this long, where I just realized a few minutes ago that Angelina Jolie chose the timing of her mastectomy announcement to just after Mother’s Day. I didn’t even put that together before now. That her choice was about her mother and how Angelina wants to be around for her children, and she chose to announce it 24 hours after Mother’s Day (in America). Anyway, I’m not sure what to make of this story – sources claim that Angelina wants to play her late mother in a bio-pic produced by Brad Pitt?
ANGELINA JOLIE is to play her own mother in a film to be made by loyal partner Brad Pitt. The star, who last week revealed she has undergone a double mastectomy and now plans to have her ovaries removed, will play Marcheline Bertrand, who died from ovarian cancer in 2007.
The biopic celebrating her life goes into production next year with Brad’s company Plan B.
Long before her daughter emulated her, Marcheline was deeply involved in humanitarian work, helping women Afghan refugees and launching the Give Love Give Life organisation to help fight gynaecological cancers.
Angelina, 37, is still haunted by her mother’s suffering and death aged just 56. She had the drastic surgery after discovering she carries the faulty BRCA1 gene, which gave her an 87 per cent chance of developing breast cancer and a 50 per cent chance of developing the ovarian cancer her mother succumbed to. She is now planning to have a hysterectomy too.
Angelina describes her mother as “grace incarnate”. She said recently: “I feel blessed that she was around to see both my brother and I in a nice place. She waited till everyone was OK. Then she closed her eyes.”
Everyone is reporting this but I can’t find the original source. Who claimed this first? I don’t know. Sources say the bio-pic will go into production next year. While I am interested in Marcheline’s life – she always sounded like a lovely woman – I’m not sure what kind of interest there would be in a bio-pic? It’s a beautiful thought of course. But… how about a documentary? That would seem more logical, right?
Additionally, Radar has a funny/weird story about Ann Curry and Angelina. After dumping Ann and treating her poorly over and over again, NBC bosses are now begging Ann to score the first interview with Angelina post-mastectomy. Jolie and Curry are especially close – Angelina has gone to Ann with many exclusives over the years, so much so that I consider Ann to be the Head Brangeloonie Journalist in American media.
Ex-TODAY show cohost Ann Curry has been asked by NBC’s top brass to secure the first interview with Angelina Jolie after she stunned the world with the announcement that she’d secretly had a double mastectomy, RadarOnline.com has learned.
The award-winning journalist — dumped from TODAY last summer — has interviewed Jolie, 37, numerous times over her careers.
Now, news division chiefs at the Peacock want Curry, 56, to capitalize on that close relationship and “convince her to give her first television interview about the procedure,” said one source. The network is prepared to offer the Academy Award-winning actress a two-hour, primetime special for the interview, along with airtime on TODAY, the insider added.
“Ann would be prominently featured in all of the promotions and publicity if Angelina agreed to do it,” the source said. “Angelina made it known after Ann was demoted from TODAY that the only journalist to interview her from the Peacock network would be Curry.”
All of the major networks, including ratings-challenged CNN, are clamoring to get the first interview with the mother-of-six, another television executive revealed, noting 60 Minutes, CNN’s Anderson Cooper and ABC’s Cynthia McFadden have all expressed interest in securing the interview.
“Her first television interview will be a ratings bonanza,” the insider said.
Unfortunately for NBC, however, a source close to Curry told RadarOnline.com that she isn’t doing a full court press to secure the tell-all.
“Ann just doesn’t operate that way,” the source said. “Of course she’d love to do the interview with Angelina, but she isn’t going to exploit her friendship with her to get it. Ann has sent flowers to Angelina and reached out to Brad Pitt’s camp because Jolie doesn’t have a publicist. If and when Angelina is ready to discuss the possibility of doing the interview, she knows how to reach Ann.”
I could see Angelina giving her first interview to Ann, but perhaps only as some kind of Dateline special, or some kind of special evening programming as opposed to something for the Today show. Of course, I could also see Angelina wanting to go with Anderson Cooper (who is also a friend and a Brangeloonie) on CNN or 60 Minutes. Or she could with someone with a medical background like Dr. Sanjay Gupta. I actually think Sanjay is probably in the mix – he’s interviewed her before, his medical background is impeccable and she would really be able to discuss her surgeries in depth.
Photos courtesy of Time, WENN.
i also think that rather than benefiting Brad Pitt’s WWZ, her timing is more beneficial to the film “Decoding Annie Parker”
http://www.marketplace.org/topics/life/angelina-jolies-boon-small-film-headed-cannes
basically, they’re now getting more requests for screening (up to double the amount before AJ wrote her op-ed) when before they had a hard time selling.
also, they’re getting more coverage at Cannes than they hoped they would.
I read about this too.
Also, we can expect Brad’s movie promotion getting more coverage for sure. Still, a very corageous decision from Angelina.
It’s funny that people keep claiming Angelina’s double mastectomy is a publicity stunt for Brad’s movie yet the only place his movie is ever mentioned is in the comments not in the actual story. Besides his movie comes out in a month. If it was about promoting Brad, Angelina would have announced it much closer to the release. I never understood the belief that personal issues made people want to watch a movie they never wanted to see in the first place.
I’m so tired of the gerund.
i apologize. english is not my first language.
Total BS… she has a hard time talking about her mother. I don’t see her doing this ever. I think the tabs are just desperate to add to the story. She did her op ed and that has been the only statements she has made. Time asked her for an actual interview and she declined. Not like always they are printing lies. If these so called sources know about movie plans, why didn’t they leak the other info
well it sure didn’t take them long to pick up where they left all. Total lies.
playing her mom or selling her mom’s story doesn’t seem like something she would do. plus it would involve her dad to some degree (the story). then again, it is hollyweird so who knows. i think she’d prefer her mother to remain an enigma to the public.
I call BS for three months the mdiea didn’t know any about her mastectomy and know they want to claim to know what’s she up to. It looks like they are try save face because they all mist the biggest story of the year so far.
Who would care about a movie about Marcy Bertrand? I mean no disrespect to her as a person and as a woman who battled a horrible condition, but it’s clear Jolie thinks very highly of herself and that everything and everyone revolves around her and what she knows. She’s not the one with cancer, so she’ll resurrect her mother to make a movie.
If this is even remotely true, Angie must be a very obnoxious creature. This would redefine the term “vanity project”.
@Mordor, who wrote: “Who would care about a movie about Marcy Bertrand? I mean no disrespect to her as a person and as a woman who battled a horrible condition, but it’s clear Jolie thinks very highly of herself and that everything and everyone revolves around her and what she knows. She’s not the one with cancer, so she’ll resurrect her mother to make a movie.”
I don’t understand your comment. You’re obviously giving an underhanded compliment of some kind, but are you slamming Angelina Jolie, her mother, or both? And it’s “only clear Jolie thinks very highly of herself and that everything and everyone revolves around her and what she knows” to those who hate her and, more importantly, don’t ‘know’ her or if she ‘really’ thinks that.
mordor: So you were so tight with Angelina’s mother you call her Marcy? Either that or it was a cheap shot.
It might be a cheap shot, but she was born Marcia Lynne in Illinois, not Marcheline in Paris or Quebec as some people believe.
Laura: Thanks for letting me know that (seriously), but it was a cheap shot.
Celebrities change their names and personae all the time, so I’m not going to throw stones on that one.
@mordor – I don’t think this story is true, so I was going to take issue with your comment, but then I remembered that one does not simply talk sense into Mordor. 😉
Wait, people are questioning the Great Angelina? I feel dizzy, I think I need to lay down. Next I’m going to read that the magnetic poles have shifted. 😉
No. Super unreliable sources, and usually only the trades are reliable when it comes to casting. I really, really want Jolie to star in that long gestating film about the woman who married into the Gucci family and committed murder. There was talk about her doing that film for years, but it has died down.
I thought she already denied that one? Angelina seems only interested in directing now. There was something on Hawaii news sites that claimed she is filming a movie there in July… As a director, not the star. I haven’t read about it anywhere else tho.
I’m sure her mother was a lovely woman, but I think family members tend to overestimate the interest of the general public in their personal stories.
Don’t believe anything about upcoming movies until you read it in Deadline. Nikki Fink would know and there hasn’t been anything about a movie or an interview with Angelina by any network. As usual, the rags are a day late and are trying to catch up with made up lies from their “sources.”
This is BS from tabloid Daily Mirror
I hope not, to the movie and to the Ann Curry interview.
Why on Earth would anyone care about this ‘biopic’? She can’t get hired for a real movie so she has to have Brad make one for her, and about her own mother? Just weird and completely misguided, if true.
Yeah thats why she just earned $20 million for Maleficent.Angie ‘s next project is directing Unbroken
Not just 20 Million, but backend on the 1st dollar gross and an exec producer credit. VERY few women ever get such a lucrative deal, and even fewer consistently like Angie. Julia R did a few times, but no more. Sandra B occasionally & Meryl sometimes. So, yeah, haters can spew their “not relevant” b.s., but Hollywood compensates her as super-duper relevant.
First, I call BS on the Marcheline movie. If Angelina can’t talk about her mom without tearing up, I can’t picture her getting into her mother’s head space and depicting her in a movie. If it was a segment in a documentary that requires home movies or something, then I can see that. Plus, it’s much too soon for her to take on something like that. While the NYT article was informative, I think Angelina is keeping the emotional aspect of her decision private.
Next… I can’t see Ann Curry even thinking about interviewing Angelina, especially for NBC. I suspect that Ann is going to see how her contract with NBC plays out, although if I was her, I would be looking elsewhere and finding ways to get out of the contract. And even if she got out of her NBC contract, I still can’t see her calling Angelina and giving her new network an exclusive. Not to put Ann on a pedestal, but I think that if her feelings that her femininity was critiqued by the higher ups on NBC (the gray hairs and clothing choices), it would inform her choice in approaching Angelina, although the public saw Angelina during various stages of her surgeries and didn’t notice anything being different.
Really hoping this isn’t true. That would be one self-absorbed, self-important project.
Tabloids fiction as usual they were too clueless to know she had multiple medical procedures so they make up this stuff.
I’m on the fence about whether this is true or not (time will tell), but there’s just no audience for this.
Minor correction: hysterectomy is uterus removal. oophorectomy is ovary removal. One may have a hysterectomy without their ovaries being removed. One may have their ovaries removed and keep their uterus.
No to Ann Curry for anything. She’s obnoxiously officious.
What did Mme Bertrand do to make her bio interesting to movie-goers? No shade on the woman, just wondering why there’d be an audience.
I highly doubt that Angelina would make a movie about her mother, maybe if it somehow would benefit some kind of research project?? I still very much doubt this rumor is true.
I’d believe it if they have a real source with a real name. I read an old link about Jolie from Lainey and find it more interesting than this rumor.
http://www.esquire.com/women/women-we-love/angelina-jolie-interview-pics-0707
Thanks for posting this.
It was a great read, albeit an unnecessarily long one, but then again, Brad’s Esquire article suffered from the same problem. I was glad that someone seemingly responded to the US Weekly Twisted Double Life cover story because that particular hatchet job really got under my skin.
If it’s true (and I seriously doubt it is) it would be a shockingly self-indulgent project given that 99% of the population has no idea who Marcheline Bertrand was.
This is a false story. It’s laughable that people actually believe it. There’s nothing spectacular about Angelina’s life to warrant a movie. Brad and Angelina are still business people and wouldn’t waste time and money on a definite failure of a movie.
If she funds it she can make a movie about whatever the hell she wants.
If I were Angelina, I would choose Ann Curry.
1- As a woman, Ann Curry can relate to the topic and ask questions, perhaps, most women would.
2- I’d rather have someone like Ann fangirling a star, but making him/her comfortable than making them uncomfortable. Ultimately, it helps them to open up.
3- I think the only interview that I ‘ve ever enjoyed of AJ was with Ann Curry when she got very emotional talking about her mom.
I would like that whoever gets a sit-down interview with her makes some sort of round table with the best specialists in the field to discuss the pros and cons of this topic. That would be really interesting.
Angelina has always said that her portrayal of Christine Collins in The Changeling was her tribute performance to her mother. Not to mention the ongoing tributes that Angelina, James and Bill Day post on YouTube every few months. I have been following Marcheline’s work all that I can, considering there is not much of hers readily available. But I have seen the episode of Ironside that she guest stars in. She was beautiful and is very much the essence of who Angelina has become. I would love to see a Marcheline Bertrand biopic, but I’m not sure of how reliable these sources are.