HBO “True Blood” star Deborah Ann Woll has joined Ellen Burstyn, Marcia Gay Harden, Lucy Liu and Stephen Lang in a drama titled, “Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You.”
And yes, the only reason we put Lang and Liu in the headline is because you probably know who they are before Burstyn and Harden, but it sounds like they have smaller billing (what happened to Liu’s career, btw?)
The dysfunctional family drama centers on an isolated young adult who must contend with his kooky clan the summer before he heads to college. Toby Regbo plays that young man and he’s appearing in “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” parts one and two, but we’d be lying if we said we knew who he was (though he appeared in “Mr. Nobody” and one of our scribes saw that earlier this summer). Italian director Roberto Faenza (“The Case of Unfaithful Klara”) is helming.
Update: During “Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World” press Aubrey Plaza told us that she’d be part of the cast as well in a “small part. I play this crazy woman who’s trying to sell a house to [the protagonist]. It’s a coming of age story for this young boy who lives in Manhattan. I am actually the comic relief part of the movie. It’s a serious movie, but I act funny with crazy eyes.”
This mostly makes us ask: is Deborah Ann Woll, now out of contention for a role in Paul Thomas Anderson’s untitled Scientology drama that is supposedly shooting this month? She, Amanda Seyfried and Emma Stone were all apparently being considered for the daughter role in the picture that centers around an L. Ron Hubbard type (played by Philip Seymour Hoffman) and a young alcoholic who becomes his steward (Jeremy Renner), and Reese Witherspoon is allegedly being offered the role of the wife. We have no clue where that one stands and mid-August is here and obviously, “The Master” — as it’s been affectionately dubbed by fans — is still not shooting. We really have no clue what’s going on with that picture at the moment, but we assume the start date has been pushed.
Btw, at one point we suggested and thought Paul Dano would make a great fit for the young alcoholic ward role in the PTA film which somehow led some to say we were reporting he was in the film. Dano recently told Collider what we already know, but fyi: he’s not in the film. – additional reporting by Drew Morton