casting couch

Allison Janney Joins Joan Didion Adaptation

PARK CITY, UT - JANUARY 21: Actress Allison Janney attends Night 4 of Samsung Galaxy Lounge at Village At The Lift 2013 on January 21, 2013 in Park City, Utah. (Photo by Michael Loccisano/Getty Images for Samsung)
PARK CITY, UT - JANUARY 21: Actress Allison Janney attends Night 4 of Samsung Galaxy Lounge at Village At The Lift 2013 on January 21, 2013 in Park City, Utah. (Photo by Michael Loccisano/Getty Images for Samsung) Photo: Michael Loccisano/2013 Getty Images

Campbell Scott’s film adaptation of Joan Didion’s 1977 A Book of Common Prayer now has both its female leads. Back in March, Christina Hendricks was cast as one of the story’s central characters, a woman searching for her daughter in a fictional Central American country on the verge of revolution. Now, Variety reports that Allison Janney has been tapped to portray the book’s other narrator, an anthropologist who married into the country’s ruling family. Scott himself will play Hendricks’s husband, with his The Innocent co-star Hart Bochner portraying the missing daughter’s father. It’s not clear how Didion’s masterful narration will translate on screen, but in the hands of this cast, it sounds like a sweeping — if melancholy — good time. Or at least something to tide us over until Didion’s new political thriller, As It Happens, comes out.

Allison Janney Joins Joan Didion Adaptation