Make it a Movie: The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid

In our Make it a Movie section we play the role of movie producers and map out the movie production. The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo follows the life of a fictional movie star Evelyn Hugo, as she navigates: Hollywood, her love life, and the many struggles of being a bisexual woman in the 1950s-80s. Evelyn sits down with a seemingly random magazine reporter, Monique Grant, to regale her full life story, the good, the bad and everything in-between. The book was great and one we covered on our podcast if you’re interested. It should make for a pretty compelling moving and has the potential to be one of those great journey through life type movies (Shawshank Redemption, Goodfellas, Forrest Gump). 

Production Notes: Originally planned to be developed as a tv show for Freeform, things fell through but Netflix quickly jumped at the opportunity and posted an announcement on March 24th that they would be creating a film. Many fans clamored for a tv series, but better a movie, than nothing. Netflix been tight lipped about casting, so in typical fashion the Buddy Book Club will help fill out the roles.

Based on: The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Genre: Romance/Historical Fiction

Logline: A Star is Born + Definitely, Maybe + Carol

Proposed Casting for The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

Evelyn Hugo – World famous actress, Oscar winner, and icon.  Just a few words to describe the complicated character that is Evelyn Hugo. But most of all she is seen as a flat out bombshell or ‘sexpot’ by the public. Unfortunately, Hollywood is filled with hideous trolls so it’ll be hard to find someone to match those descriptions… We kid, but to be fair someone that has Cuban heritage, can pull off blond hair and the confidence and gumption of Evelyn does narrow the list. Luckily, this casting really has fallen right in our lap, with the recent photos coming out for the upcoming movie Blonde (based on Marilyn Monroe). The Cuban born Ana De Armas fits the role to a T. You want to talk about gumption, she didn’t even speak English and she was landing parts in Hollywood! We decided not to cast a young and old Evelyn as the movie would follow her career spanning 30+ years, so it’d be a bit odd to sub in an actor to play the same character only slightly older by the end of the film.

Celia St. James – If you listened to the podcast then you’ll know that Celia wasn’t our favorite character, the red-headed, ‘girl-next-door’ was never ‘officially’ married to Evelyn but was the true love of her life. Celia could be a bit manipulative, self-righteous and flat out mean at times, but don’t get me started. We went with Kate Mara, who I believe is a natural red-head, clearly has the girl next door look, and she may not be a southern bell like Celia, but did likely grow up comfortably considering she is the great-granddaughter of both New York Giants founder Tim Mara and Pittsburgh Steelers founder Art Rooney, Sr.

Monique Grant – Monique is tapped to interview the older Evelyn and get her life story. If you read the book you know why, but we’ll keep the spoilers out of this as much as possible. Monique is a somewhat timid journalist working at a prestigious magazine but at the bottom of the totem pole. Through her interactions with Evelyn, many of her traits start to rub off and she starts to gain more and more confidence. For this character we need an actress that can go through that change. Also, doesn’t hurt to make a little casting splash. We went with Meghan Markle, or should I say Meghan, Duchess of Sussex. She hasn’t acted since Suits (entertaining show), but this would be a great role to step back in with.

Harry Cameron – Husband #5 of 7 for Evelyn, but really the most important husband as it was Evelyn’s best friend and ‘soul mate’, in a platonic way. Harry of course was gay, but did conceive a child, Conner, with Evelyn. His character is one of the most well liked until his partner, John, dies and Harry goes into deep depression. Another actor that needs to be likeable but one that can turn dark and struggle. We went with Andrew Garfield, who has shown he has a ton of range. He can pull off the artsy producer side (tick, tick… BOOM!) and turn on a dark side (Social Network, Under the Banner of Heaven).

There are a ton of other characters we could cast here but for now we’ll stick with these. Let us know what we got wrong and who we’re missing!

Check out our Episode on The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo or our Book Club Questions.