Moviegoers looking forward to seeing "Lovelace" next week may recall that Kate Hudson was reportedly attached to the film in its early stages. According to directors Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, however, that was never the case.
"We love Kate Hudson, but she just wasn't right for 'Lovelace,'" Friedman told HuffPost Entertainment on Tuesday night at the New York City premiere of the film. The director said the duo's talks with Hudson, who was pregnant with her second child at the time, never expanded past an initial meeting. Amanda Seyfried was "the one," they said, despite some outlets reporting last year that Hudson had signed on to the project.
Epstein said Seyfried was looking for something "riskier for her and that would push her own boundaries." Of the few "Lovelace" reviews that emerged after its Sundance premiere in January, critics have issued mixed reactions to the 27-year-old actress's turn. Variety called it "gutsy," while The Hollywood Reporter classified it as "strong, credible" even if Seyfried "might not seem to completely inhabit the role at all times."
No matter how the remainder of the reviews shake out, "Deep Throat" star Linda Lovelace remains an important source for a biopic, according to Epstein and Friedman. Like Allen Ginsberg, the subject of the duo's 2010 movie "Howl," Lovelace was as much a "figure in the zeitgeist" of the sexual revolution as the poet was to the Beat generation.
In the vein of 1995's "The Celluloid Closet," the Oscar-winning directors will return to their signature documentaries in the coming months with "The Battle of amfAR," premiering on HBO in December, as well as a project about the history of the Oscars. Epstein and Friedman will also reteam with Seyfried for "The Girl Who Conned the Ivy League," a true story about a college student who scammed her way into Columbia University with a fake ID.
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