It’s been confirmed that Meryl Streep will play Joni Mitchell in Cameron Crowe’s upcoming biopic of the singer-songwriter.
That fact was let slip by veteran record company exec Clive Davis at a post-Grammys party, apparently. When Rolling Stone sought clarification from Crowe about this, the director referred to Davis’s announcement. However, there has been no official word yet from either Streep or Mitchell.
Crowe’s project has been a long time in development. In an interview last October on The Late Show, he said: “We’ve been working on it for about four years. We have regular meetings where I can ask her anything and she speaks with her heart about all kinds of stuff. It’s a movie that will be not from a distance… This is from her perspective, her life, looking out.”
“She’s kept all of her costumes, all of her clothes, all of her instruments. She’s even still the landlady of her famous house in Laurel Canyon. So this is a really personal, wonderful look at her life and music.”
Streep, of course, will play Mitchell during her later years. It’s not known yet which actress has been cast to portray the icon during the 1960s and 70s. It had been rumoured that Anna Taylor-Joy was in line to bag the role, though that has not been confirmed yet.
It’s not the first proposed Joni Mitchell biopic. You may recall that there was one in the works over a decade ago that Taylor Swift was due to star in. Joni herself later confirmed that she “squelched that” project, and later in an interview with New York Magazine aimed a well-timed sideswipe at Swift: “I’ve never heard Taylor’s music. I’ve seen her. Physically, she looks similarly small-hipped and high cheekbones.
"I can see why they cast her. I don’t know what her music sounds like, but I do know this – that if she’s going to sing and play me, good luck.”
