There are few actresses more skilled at fumbling overwhelmed through domestic despair than Julianne Moore, and Universal’s Dear Evan Hansen movie announced the casting of one of them last week. According to Deadline, Moore joins the cinematic adaptation of the Broadway hit as Heidi Hansen, the loving, perpetually swamped single mother of the show’s titular lonely teen. If the movie follows the same general format as the stage show, Moore will open the film with the song “Anybody Have a Map?†across from Amy Adams’s Cynthia Murphy, the mother of similarly isolated senior Connor Murphy, whose death sets the events of the musical into motion.
Moore rounds out the cast alongside Adams and star Ben Platt (who was Tony nominated for originating the role on Broadway), Kaitlyn Dever, and Amandla Stenberg. The film’s screenplay was written by Steven Levenson, who wrote the book for Dear Evan Hansen, with composers Benj Pasek and Justin Paul serving as executive producers, all of which should give you an optimistic outlook, huh?