A new series chronicling the life and times of Academy Award-winning actress Audrey Hepburn (Roman Holiday, Breakfast at Tiffany’s) is in the works from Italian production company Wildside, as reported by Variety. The project, simply titled Audrey, will be written by Jacqueline Hoyt (The Leftovers, The Good Wife), who is one of the executive producers on Barry Jenkins’s (Moonlight, Medicine for Melancholy) upcoming Amazon Prime Video series The Underground Railroad, Variety reports.
Wildside has been notably successful in the biography genre in the past. In early April, their miniseries inspired by the true story of Italian soccer player Francesco Totti, Speravo De Morì Prima, aired the last of its six episodes to high praise. Prior to their 2019 absorption by Fremantle, Wildside produced biopic about Italian pop star Dalida directed by Lisa Azuelos (Quantum Love, LOL).
Audrey is being developed for television by graphic designer Luca Dotti, Hepburn’s son from her second marriage, and journalist Luigi Spinola (Eurozine), who created the Italian news program Radio3 Mondo, according to Variety. The duo previously collaborated on the best-selling biography-cookbook hybrid Audrey at Home. Dotti additionally worked with author Ludovica Damiani (Set in Venice) on the predecessor to Audrey at Home, photo book titled Audrey in Rome. Damiani too is a member of Audrey‘s team of executive producers, as reported by Variety.
The proposed series would reportedly devote a significant amount of time to Hepburn’s formative years, Variety reports. Hepburn spent part of her childhood in the Netherlands and lived through the Nazi occupation of the country, according to The Telegraph. As young woman nurturing dreams of becoming a professional dancer, Hepburn would participate in secret recital events that were held to raise money for the Dutch resistance, via The List. The starlet’s experiences growing up in Europe during wartime were covered in depth in the 2019 book Dutch Girl: Audrey Hepburn and World War II.
EGOT winner Hepburn passed away in 1994 after a struggle with a rare form of abdominal cancer, but her remarkable life story has been recounted on many occasions. Jennifer Love Hewitt (Heartbreakers, The Client List) portrayed the actress in the 2000 made-for-TV biopic The Audrey Hepburn Story. Audrey, documentary directed by Helena Coan (Chasing Perfect), was released in the winter of 2020. The documentary boasts the participation of the surviving members of Hepburn’s family from her first marriage, son Sean Hepburn Ferrer (Eye of the Widow) and granddaughter Emma Kathleen Ferrer (The Man in the Attic), via The Hollywood Reporter. You can watch the official trailer below: