Don’t Do It, Julia Garner
The Madonna biopic will be harrowing work, if it even happens at all
After a grueling boot camp that included singing, acting, and 11-hour choreography sessions, Madonna has chosen Julia Garner to play her in an upcoming biopic directed by Madge herself. The Inventing Anna star “won,” beating out actresses like Florence Pugh, Alexa Demie, and Odessa Young.
On Thursday, it was announced that Madonna had “offered” Garner the role. It’s an interesting choice of words, because usually this kind of news only comes when the contracts have been signed. “Offered” implies that Garner hasn’t yet accepted the role, and still has time to save herself.
If you are not Julia Garner you can stop reading this now, this is just between me and her.
Girl, don’t do it. Do not take this job. It will be pure hell for you, and with Madonna at the helm you can’t even be sure that it’s going to be good. Remember W.E.? Of course you don’t, that’s because Madonna is not exactly an esteemed director. Roger Ebert called W.E. “relentlessly monotonous.” I don’t want that for you.
Worse, Madonna is also co-writing the script. At first she was writing with Diablo Cody, who has since left the project and been replaced by Erin Cressida Wilson. According to Entertainment Weekly, Cody’s departure wasn’t suspect and she simply “completed her work and moved on to her next project.” And yet, she — a noted Madonna superfan — was still replaced with Wilson. This followed reports that Cody found Madonna “difficult to work with” and that she needed “more freedom” in order to write the screenplay. You can decide which story you believe.
There is only one movie I can think of whose subject was also a co-writer that turned out to be good, and that’s All That Jazz. Something tells me that Bob Fosse was a little more willing to show the worst parts of himself than Madonna will be. In fact, after All That Jazz, we shouldn’t have let the subjects of biopics have any input at all, it wasn’t going to get better than that.
Julia, you do not have to do this. There are other ways to get an Oscar — something that is not even guaranteed with Madonna sitting in the director’s chair. And even if you do make it that far, will it have been worth it? Have you seen what Madonna’s been up to recently? Do you really want to spend months of your life being overworked by the woman who recently did NFT art of herself giving birth to a tree? I’m not even certain that this movie is going to happen. Jump ship, sweetie, you’ll thank me later.
