HBO has been killing it with biopics over the past year. Following the success and critical acclaim of Bessie and Confirmation, the network has just announced yet another project about the story of an influential and important black woman in history.
HBO recently announced that Oprah Winfrey is set to star in an HBO film about the life of Henrietta Lacks. Winfrey has teamed up with Six Feet Under and True Blood creator Alan Ball for what Deadline describes as a longtime passion project for the media mogul. The project will be based on Rebecca Skloot’s bestselling book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.
Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor black tobacco farmer whose cells—taken without her knowledge in 1951—became one of the most important tools in medicine, vital for developing the polio vaccine, cloning, gene mapping, in vitro fertilization, and more. Henrietta’s cells have been bought and sold by the billions, yet she remains virtually unknown, and her family can’t afford health insurance.
Similar to Skloot’s nonfiction work, the planned HBO project will play from the perspective of Lacks’ daughter Deborah, played by Oprah. The movie will focus on the “search to learn about the mother she never knew and to understand how the unauthorized harvesting of Lacks’ cancerous cells in 1951 led to unprecedented medical breakthroughs.”
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