After making her directorial debut with the thoughtful and striking drama “Passing,” actor/filmmaker Rebecca Hall may have found her next project, a drama based on the life of novelist, poet, and essayist Erica Jong, best known for her controversial novel “Fear of Flying,” a groundbreaking cultural touchstone and feminist take on sexual pleasure, that caused a sensation in 1973.
Described in passing in a New York Times article this week as a biopic of Jong, Amanda Seyfried, who will star in the lead role, told The Playlist in an exclusive interview about her new upcoming crime drama Peacock series, “Long Bright River,” the narrative goes beyond just that label or genre.
“It’s not a biopic, really. It’s just, I don’t even know how to describe it, but it’s not, it’s not a biopic,” Seyfried stressed. “I’m excited about it, so I just read the script. But it’s, it’s more unique than that. It’s beautiful.”
READ MORE: ‘Four Days Like Sunday’: Rebecca Hall To Write, Direct & Star In Upcoming Family Drama
Seyfried said that while she was enthusiastic about the project, she cautioned that it might not get made immediately. “That’s another [one], like, there’s no schedule yet, but, but I have known her for a long time, and we have mutual very close friends, and she’s an incredible director,” she explained.
An uninhibited story of a young woman’s desire to fly free sexually or otherwise, “Fear Of Flying” turned 50 in 2023. It became famously provocative at the time, coining the (no-really-longer-in-use) term the “zipless fuck,” to describe a sexual encounter between two strangers for its own sake, without emotional involvement or commitment.
The book also ushered in the development of second-wave feminism, as members of the original American wave often decried it.
Now 82, Jong was married four times and is the mother of journalist, author and political commentator Molly Jong-Fast.
Hall’s next directorial effort appeared as if it might be the mother/daughter drama “Four Days Like Sunday,” a project she wrote and will star in. In it, Hall plays a divorced Broadway actress struggling to maintain her career while her 12-daughter begins to rebel against her caregiver’s responsibilities to her mom.
However, in a fall 2024 interview with Collider, Hall suggested some other film could come first; perhaps it could be this drama based on Erica Jong’s life.
“I don’t even know when I’m going to make that movie,” she said about “Four Days Like Sunday.” “There might be something else before that.”
It’s unclear if that might mean the Jong biopic goes into the pole position, but fingers crossed because a collaboration between Hall and Seyfried feels like a perfect union.
