Meryl & Hugh In “Florence Foster Jenkins”
Pathe has released the first image of Meryl Streep and Hugh Grant in Stephen Frears’ “Florence Foster Jenkins,†which is shooting in the U.K. The still depicts Streep as Florence Foster Jenkins with Grant as her partner St. Clair Bayfield. The film is the true story of the New York heiress and socialite who obsessively pursued her dream of becoming a great opera singer. The voice she heard in her head was beautiful, but to everyone else it was hilariously awful. Her “husband†and manager, St. Clair Bayfield, an aristocratic English actor, was determined to protect his beloved Florence from the truth. But when Florence decided to give a public concert at Carnegie Hall in 1944, St. Clair knew he faced his greatest challenge. The script is by Nicholas Martin; I wish they’d used the Florence portrayed in “Souvenir,” a play on Broadway in 2005, which was written by Stephen Temperley and produced by Ted Snowden.
