Jennifer Lawrence was so impressed by Amanda Seyfried’s performance in Hulu’s The Dropout that she will no longer play Elizabeth Holmes herself. Lawrence was set to star in Adam McKay’s Bad Blood, another dramatization of the Theranos founder’s downfall. Seyfried’s performance as Holmes was so good that she won an Emmy.
Lawrence told The New York Times‘ Kyle Buchanan she has dropped out of Bad Blood. She decided it was not possible to outdo Seyfriend. “I thought she was terrific. I was like, ‘Yeah, we don’t need to redo that.’ She did it,” Lawrence told Buchanan.
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The furthest Lawrence got on the project was trying on different black turtlenecks. “I tried on a hundred outfits for this and ended up just looking like Steve Jobs. Or Amanda Seyfried,” she said.
It is unclear if McKay will give up on his attempt to tell Holmes’ story. The Don’t Look Up director’s project was set to be produced by Apple Studios and Legendary. The script would have been an adaptation of Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Start-Up by Wall Street Journal reporter John Carreyrou. The journalist was played by Ebon Moss-Bachrach in The Dropout and is credited with exposing the fraud at Theranos.
The last anyone had heard about the project was earlier this year, when McKay told Insider Lawrence was still interested in doing the film. “I’m not going to bug her right now but she’s born to play that role. With the voice, she said she’s feeling it. She’s excited,” McKay said in January.
Another project Lawrence was attached to is not happening. Back in 2019, she was cast in Mob Girl, which would have seen her work with Italian director Paolo Sorrentino (The Young Pope). In August 2021, she was also attached to a film about agent Sue Mengers with Sorrentino. It sounds like neither project is happening. “She wanted to work with Paolo Sorrentino on her upcoming Sue Mengers movie but it looks like he may have scheduling conflicts,” Buchanan tweeted.
While these projects will be lost to history, Lawrence told Buchanan about one surprising movie that is happening. She told Buchanan that Lynne Ramsay (You Were Never Really Here) will direct her in an adaptation of Ariana Harwicz’s book Die, My Love. Martin Scorsese will be a producer of the film.
“I always wanted to work with Lynne Ramsay,” Lawrence told Buchanan. “I feel like I’m in my fangirl phase, and that’s why I’m so grateful for the franchises and all that hard stuff I don’t have to do anymore. The endurance of not having any sort of control over your schedule. Not having a personal life.”
