Rose Byrne has been keeping busy as a new mom and with projects for the big screen. But it was announced on Friday that the Bridesmaids and Spy star will be co-starring alongside Oprah Winfrey in HBO’s The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, a network rep has confirmed to Variety Latino.
Based on the best-selling book of the same name by Rebecca Skloot, the film will tell the true story of an African-American named Henrietta Lacks whose cancerous cells were harvested without her consent in 1951. Those cells were used to create the first immortal human cell line, according to a statement from HBO.
The story is told from the perspective of Lacks’ daughter Deborah, played by Emmy Winner Winfrey. Audiences will watch as she gets to know her mother while finding out how the harvesting of her mother’s cells led to unprecedented medical breakthroughs that changed the face of medicine forever.
Byrne, whose last recurring TV role was on the FX drama Damages, will play the role of Rebecca Skloot. She’s “a young journalist who, in her efforts to tell the story of Henrietta Lacks and her “immortal” cells, forms a close bond with Deborah, Henrietta’s charismatic, complicated daughter, played by Oprah Winfrey.”
The film is being directed by George C. Wolfe (Angels in America), executive produced by Winfrey and True Blood‘s Alan Ball. Henrietta Lacks’ sons David Lacks, Jr. and Zakariyya Rahman; her granddaughter Jeri Lacks; and her grandchildren Alfred Carter, Jr. and LaTonya Carter are consultants.
Shooting begins in the summer of 2016.
