Rooney Mara, Claire Foy, Jessie Buckley, Ben Whishaw & Others Join Frances McDormand In ‘Women Talking’ For Plan B & Orion

Rooney Mara, Claire Foy, Jessie Buckley, Ben Whishaw & Others Join Frances McDormand In ‘Women Talking’ For Plan B & Orion

EXCLUSIVE: MGM’s Orion Pictures and Plan B Entertainment have set Rooney Mara, Claire Foy, Jessie Buckley, Judith Ivey, Sheila McCarthy, Michelle McLeod and Ben Whishaw to join Frances McDormand in writer/director Sarah Polley’s feature adaptation of Miriam Toews’ bestselling novel Women Talking. Rounding out the cast are August Winter and Liv McNeil and Kate Hallett in their feature film debuts. Plan B will produce Women Talking alongside McDormand via her Hear/Say Productions.


Based on the best-selling novel by Miriam Toews, Women Talking follows a group of women in an isolated religious colony as they struggle to reconcile their faith with a series of sexual assaults committed by the colony’s men. Published in 2018, the novel was named a Best Book of the Year By The New York Times Book Review, NPR.Org, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Slate, Publishers Weekly and Time, among many others.

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The project was one of the first films to be put in development when Plan B signed its second look deal with MGM and has been a priority from the get go to assemble top tier cast.


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Mara will next be seen in Guillermo del Toro’s Nightmare Alley. She is represented by WME, Management 360, and Sloane Offer Weber & Dern. Foy has handful of projects bowing over the next year including Louis Wain, A Very English Scandal and Migrations produced by Benedict Cumberbatch’s SunnyMarch. She is represented by Independent Talent Group and UTA. Buckley was most recently seen in Charlie Kaufman’s I’m Thinking of Ending Things and will  next be seen in A24’s Men directed by Alex Garland, and in Maggie Gyllenhaal’s directorial debut The Lost Daughter. She is represented by CAA, Range Media Partners, United Agents.


Ivey is a two-time Tony Award Winner for the plays Steaming and Hurlyburly, and an Emmy nominee for What the Deaf Man Heard. She is represented by A3 Artist Agency. McCarthy’s credits include The Umbrella Academy (Netflix), The Good Doctor (ABC), The Broken Hearts Gallery (TriStar), and director Helen Shaver’s award winning feature Happy Place. She is represented by GGA.


McLeod starred in the title role of the film Don’t Talk To Irene opposite Geena Davis. Her additional credits include Honey BeeMy SpyTin Star and  Creeped Out. She is represented by GGA. Whishaw’s credits include A Very English Scandal, Skyfall and Surge.  He is represented by CAA, and Hamilton Hodell, & Peikoff Mahan.

Orion Pictures’ upcoming feature film slate includes Billy Porter’s What If?, Emma Seligman’s Bottoms, and a film adaptation of Michelle Zauner’s NY Times best-selling memoir Crying in H Mart, which Zauner will adapt for the screen.