Jessica Gunning, the Emmy and BAFTA-winning star of Netflix sensation Baby Reindeer, has been cast to play singer Cass Elliot in a biopic from Peter Jaysen and Alan Gasmer’s Veritas Entertainment.
The movie will be based on the memoir My Mama Cass, written by Elliot’s daughter, Owen Elliot-Kugell. Novelist and screenwriter Emma Forrest will be adapting the book for the screen.
Veritas, which was recently behind Bob Dylan movie A Complete Unknown, has packaged the project, which is being shared with financiers.
Elliot came to prominence as a member of the musical group The Mamas & the Papas, earning a Grammy award and later releasing several solo albums. She is known for songs like “Monday, Monday” and “Make Your Own Kind of Music.”
The project is described as “not a traditional Mamas & the Papas biopic,” but instead, “a definitive Cass Elliot film.” According to today’s announcement, the story will “also highlight Owen’s journey to unravel the truth surrounding Cass Elliot’s untimely death – finally laying to rest the long-standing urban legend of how she tragically died at the age of 32.” (The urban legend was that Cass died at the age of 32 from choking on a sandwich.)
Gunning, who is represented by UTA and the U.K.’s Markham Froggatt & Irwin, has upcoming projects that include Steven Soderbergh movie The Christophers, Marc Forster’s Anxious People and the upcoming fantasy film The Magic Faraway Tree. Her role
