The subject of Peacock's limited series Angelyne is now part of its producing team.
Angelyne, the Los Angeles billboard icon whose life serves as the inspiration for the show, has joined the project as an executive producer. She and star-exec producer Emmy Rossum on Wednesday announced Angelyne's involvement in the project with simultaneous Instagram posts.
"So excited to be able to share that the embodiment of LA itself, the original Queen of the Universe, is the executive producer of our show!" Rossum wrote (see the post below). Angelyne, meanwhile, called Rossum her "Hollywood fairy godmother."
View this post on InstagramA little #muffintop for your Wednesday evening. #fitguys #guyswithtattoos
The eight-episode Angelyne stars Rossum (Shameless) in the title role and is based on a 2017 Hollywood Reporter story by Gary Baum that revealed Angelyne's real name and backstory. The series will delve into fame, identity, survival, billboards, Corvettes, lingerie, men, women, women teasing men, men obsessed with women, West Hollywood, crystals, UFOs and, most importantly of all, the self-proclaimed Rorschach test in pink, glow-in-the-dark queen of the universe, Angelyne.
Baum's investigative feature revealed for the first time that Angelyne's given name is Renee Goldberg. The daughter of Holocaust survivors, 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. After Angelyne's mother died in 1965, her father remarried 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 L.A. and driving a pink Corvette around Hollywood.
The limited series is the first scripted television adaptation of a Hollywood Reporter article since the publication's reinvention as a weekly magazine and home for longform journalism.
The Universal Content Productions series also stars Martin Freeman, Alex Karpovsky, Jefferson Hall, Charlie Rowe, Lukas Gage, Michael Angarano and Molly Ephraim.
Allison Miller (CBS All Access' Strange Angel, Peacock's Brave New World), who has an overall deal at UCP, is serving as showrunner. Lucy Tcherniak (The End of the F***ing World, Wanderlust), who has a first-look deal at UCP, is directing all episodes. They are also executive producing along with Rossum (via her Composition 8 company), Rossum's husband Sam Esmail (Mr. Robot) and Chad Hamilton of Esmail Corp., Anonymous Content, THR and Angelyne. Baum is a consultant.
Angelyne's deal with UCP was negotiated by her attorneys, William Remery and Kirk Edward Schenck. Miller is repped by David Fox at Myman Greenspan. Tcherniak is with CAA, Grandview, Independent Talent and Jackoway Austen.
Peacock, Comcast's forthcoming SVOD platform, is set to launch on April 15 for Comcast Xfinity subscribers and on July 15 to the general public. Angelyne is one 15 original scripted series in the works for the service, which will also feature library content including The Office, six shows from Dick Wolf's Law & Order and Chicago franchises, Cheers and Friday Night Lights, among others.
