“Veep” star Timothy Simons has joined Rebecca Hall and Michael C. Hall in director Antonio Campos’ indie drama “Christine,” which chronicles the final months of a depressed news broadcaster who infamously committed suicide on live television in the 1970s, TheWrap has learned.
Tracy Letts (“Homeland”), J. Smith-Cameron (“Rectify”), Maria Dizzia (“Orange Is the New Black”) and Jayson Warner Smith (“Rectify”) co-star in “Christine,” which Campos will direct off a script by Craig Shilowich.
Based on a tragic true story, “Christine” stars Rebecca Hall as news reporter Christine Chubbuck, who shot herself live on the air in Florida in 1974. Chubbuck carefully planned her suicide and even wrote a script for her program that included a third-person account of the shooting to be read by whichever staff member took over the broadcast after the incident. Fourteen hours after she was taken to the same hospital that she had predicted, she was pronounced dead.
Simons will play Steve Turner, the news station’s foppish weatherman, who is friendly with Christine.
Shilowich is producing the film with Melody C. Roscher, while Campos’ Borderline Films partners Josh Mond (“James White”) and Sean Durkin (“Martha Marcy May Marlene”) will executive produce.
Best known for playing Jonah Ryan on HBO’s “Veep,” Simons recently co-starred in Sony’s “The Interview” and Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Inherent Vice.” His feature career is on the rise, as he’ll soon be seen in Sony’s “Goosebumps” and Melissa McCarthy‘s Universal comedy “Michelle Darnell.”
Simons is represented by UTA, Brillstein Entertainment Partners and Myman Greenspan.