Woody Allen, Elaine May and Miley Cyrus to Appear in Amazon’s Untitled Woody Allen Project
Woody Allen has cast Miley Cyrus, and comedy legend Elaine May in his upcoming Amazon series, according to THR.com, and THR also reports that Allen himself is planning to appear on screen in the series. The filmmaker appeared in 2012’s To Rome With Love, but his roles in his own projects have been few and far between over the last two decades. No word yet on how large of a role he’s planning to play in the six episode project for Amazon.
Elaine May is of course best known as one half of the infamous improv duo Nichols and May, and she’s also a respected screenwriter and film director. She’s wrote the screenplay for The Birdcage (directed by Nichols), and was nominated for Academy Awards for writing Primary Colors, and Heaven Can Wait. This will be her first acting role since appearing in Allen’s Small Time Crooks in 2000. Cyrus who has been acting since she was a kid, most recently appeared in Seth Rogen’s holiday comedy The Night Before. This will be her first serialized television role since starring in Hannah Montana.
Cyrus confirmed her role in the series on instagram last night captioning a portrait of Allen that she keeps next to her bed with “Fuck yeah ! Stoked to be in Woody Allens first series!!!!! I had claimed 2016 to be my year of “chillin the fuck out” but next to my bed for a few years now has been this portrait of W.A. & I was looking into his eyes when I got the call to be apart of the cast and work alongside the bad a$$ Elaine May & da dude himself! 1960zzzz here I cummmmm.”
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It was about a year ago that it was announced that Amazon had signed the famed director to create his first television series ever for the platform. The half hour series “Untitled Woody Allen Project” received a full season order straight to series without having to go through Amazon’s pilot program where viewers vote for the pilots they’d like to see go to series.
When he initially signed, Allen said in a statement, “I don’t know how I got into this. I have no ideas and I’m not sure where to begin. My guess is that [Amazon’s] Roy Price will regret this,” but in May 2015 Allen said that he was the one sorry he made the deal. In an interview with Deadline about another project, Allen said he regretted every second since he okay’ed the Amazon deal. “I had the cocky confidence, well, I’ll do it like I do a movie. It’ll be a movie in six parts. Turns out, it’s not. For me, it has been very, very difficult. I’ve been struggling and struggling and struggling,” he said, adding that he never even knew what Amazon was, and didn’t watch any serialized television. “I’m out every night and when I come home, I watch the end of the baseball or basketball game, and there’s Charlie Rose and I go to sleep.”
Amazon reportedly had offered Allen complete creative freedom (and a lot of money) to do the project, which he has until the end of 2016 to complete.
