Books, Films, News, Television

Kyra Sedgwick to Make Directorial Debut with Lifetime Coming-of-Age Drama

Kyra Sedgwick in “Reach Me”

Kyra Sedgwick is stepping behind the camera. The “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” actress is set to make her directorial debut with “Story of a Girl,” an adaptation of Sara Zarr’s YA novel, a finalist for the 2007 National Book Award. The film will debut on Lifetime in 2017 after a run on the festival circuit.

Despite being published nearly 10 years ago, the book’s premise feels all-too-timely: the coming-of-age story centers on Deanna Lambert, a teen girl whose sex tape with her older brother’s best friend goes viral. Deadline writes that three years after the incident, “Deanna is still dealing with the fallout of the video, including being branded the school slut and bearing the burden of the daily taunts from her classmates. Her home life is even more troublesome as her father’s anger and disappointment over the [situation] has left him unable to look her in the eye. Ready to move on, Deanna longs to escape a life defined by the mistakes of her past.”

Sedgwick won an Emmy and a Golden Globe for her role as an interrogator on TNT’s “The Closer.” She’ll star in “Story of a Girl” alongside Kevin Bacon, her real-life husband. No word on who will play the film’s protagonist.

Laurie Collyer (“The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe”) and Emily Bickford Lansbury (“Work of Art: The Next Great Artist”) penned the script.

So this is a female-centric film that’s helmed and written by women. It’s unsurprising that “Story of a Girl” and Sedgwick found a home at Lifetime. The female-targeted cable channel, which has long specialized in telling women’s stories, has also shown great commitment to hiring women behind-the-scenes. Women have written or directed 73 percent of Lifetime’s original films from 1994 to 2016, and the network offered a job to every graduate of the AFI Conservatory’s prestigious Directing Workshop for Women last year. Lifetime is the network behind “UnREAL,” widely considered to be one of the most addictive and entertaining dramas on television. The series stars Shiri Appleby and Constance Zimmer, was created by Marti Noxon and Sarah Gertrude Shapiro, and employs women directors and writers well above the average rate.

Production is slated to kick off this September for “Story of a Girl.”

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