Phoebe Dynevor playing Daphne du Maurier in an erotically charged queer thriller with Uma Thurman and Anthony Hopkins? Goodbye Bridgerton, hello The Housekeeper. That’s right: the Princess of the period drama is swapping petticoats and ballrooms for, well, much scarier petticoats and ballrooms as she stars in Richard Eyre’s forbidden romance – a fictional imagining of the events that inspired du Maurier to write Rebecca back in 1938.
Based on a short story (and upcoming novel) by Rose Tremain, The Housekeeper is set among the gothic wilds of Cornwall, much like the latest steamy adaptation of Agatha Christie’s Towards Zero, set for release next year. The film takes place in Manderville Hall (no, that’s not Manderely), the country manor owned by Lord DeWithers (who, we have a sneaking suspicion, might end up as Lord DeWinters). Screen legend Anthony Hopkins is set to star as the wealthy widower, bringing the kind of gravitas that only a two-time Oscar winner can muster.
Who’s he having for dinner? Uma Thurman plays Manderville’s titular Polish housekeeper, Danni, who unwittingly finds herself as the inspiration for Mrs Danvers after a forbidden sexual encounter with Dynevor’s du Maurier. The affair seems rather asymmetrical: for one, writes Variety, it is ‘an all-consuming love, for the other an intoxicating realisation of her secret longings.’
With roles in Dangerous Liasons and The Golden Bowl, Thurman is no stranger to an erotically charged period drama. Hopkins, outside of his suitably gothic turns in The Silence of the Lambs and Dracula, has even played Alfred Hitchcock, who directed the 1940 film adaptation of DuMaurier’s thriller – the less said about various other adaptations, the better. Director Richard Eyre knows his way around discomforting sexual politics, having worked with Judi Dench and Cate Blanchet on Notes on a Scandal. And with Dynevor making her name as Bridgerton’s dazzling ingenue (coincidentally, also a Daphne), the team behind The Housekeeper couldn’t sound more qualified for a steamy tale of Machievellian desires in Cornish country piles.
Richard Eyre sounds suitably excited about the project. ‘Rose Tremain’s story grapples with love, fear, fiction, desire, ambition, death and legacy – perhaps epic, whilst providing us with the delicacy of most complex, nuanced characters and unexpected shifts in audience sympathy,’ the director said in a statement. ‘The cast and I hold in our palm a story as rich and turbulent as the landscape that it inhabits, with Manderville Hall holding secrets and emotional intrigue within its historic walls.’
Hugo Grumbar, from backers Embankment Films, added: ‘Richard is a master storyteller, whose films elicit award-winning performances. Beyond the magnetism of its romance, The Housekeeper brims with inventive twists and turns of desire and deceit, and mirrors today’s challenge to find purpose and identity.’
