Emmy Rossum and Mr. Robot creator (her husband) Sam Esmail are teaming with The Hollywood Reporter to create a limited series based on THR senior writer Gary Baum‘s investigative feature about Angelyne, L.A.’s mysterious billboard icon.
Rossum will star as Angelyne, the self-created pop culture icon — whose real name, uncovered in Baum’s August exposé, is Renee Goldberg.
The limited series project will be shopped to cable and streaming outlets. Baum, who spent months researching Angelyne’s past, will serve as a consultant.
Rossum said in a statement.
“I have always been fascinated by the enigma that is Angelyne. At a young age, I can vividly remember staring up at her on a billboard above me and wondering, ‘Who is that woman?’ Gary Baum’s investigative journalism has finally unearthed the true, complex identity of the infamous woman who has fascinated Los Angeles for over 30 years. From the moment I read Gary’s recent piece, I knew I had to tell this story. It’s a poignant and bizarre tale about the hunger for fame, the sexualization of women and the erasing of past traumas.”
Angelyne, 67, is daughter of Holocaust survivors, a Jew who found refuge in what Baum described as “shiksa drag.” She was born in Poland in 1950 to parents who were among the 500 to survive out of a town of 13,000. Her parents were sent to concentration camps before escaping to America and settling in L.A.’s Fairfax District.
According to Baum’s story, after Angelyne’s mother died in 1965, her father married another Holocaust survivor and the family moved to Panorama City, where she attended high school. While her paper trail ends there, Angelyne soon reinvented herself as a blonde bombshell, famous simply for being famous, by appearing on billboards in Los Angeles and driving a pink Cadillac around Hollywood.
John Amato, president of The Hollywood Reporter-Billboard Media Group,
“We are very excited to bring THR to the next level with this new push into television.”
This will be the second time that Esmail has worked with Rossum. The duo met while making his directorial debut Comet, in which she starred. The couple married in May.
Angelyne is about to get the widespread fame she always wanted, although the details of her life being exposed is probably not how she wanted to achieve it. Some people are just born to be stars.
(Photos, YouTube; via THR)
