Jeremy Pope and Janet Mock Team Up For Film About Sammy Davis Jr. & Kim Novak

Jeremy Pope and Janet Mock have teamed up for the upcoming film Scandalous! According to Deadline, Pope will play Sammy Davis Jr. in the film, which is about the interracial love affair between the entertainer and actress Kim Novak, with and Janet Mock directing.

The film is Romeo and Juliet set in the backdrop of the Hollywood studio system, when star images were carefully controlled. Davis was the color barrier-breaking star who was making $25,000 a week at the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas and became one of the first black stars to appear in a dramatic role on television on General Electric Theater. Novak was a discovery of notorious Columbia Pictures head Harry Cohn, who relied on her to replace previous discovery Rita Hayworth, whose string of marriages dimmed her starpower. Novak was the next rising star of Vertigo, and when she and Davis fell in love after being matched up by Tony Curtis, the pressures brought to bear on both were unimaginable as word of their romance hit the Hollywood gossips.

The film will be produced by Jonathan Glickman and Jon Levin. Scandalous! is set to shoot this fall in Los Angeles and casting is underway for an actress to play Novak. Mock will edit the script by Matthew Fantaci.

Jeremy Pope recently received his first Emmy nomination for his role on Netflix's Hollywood, the series that Mock wrote, directed, and executive produced. Pope received two Tony nominations in 2019 for his debut in Choir Boy and for his role as Eddie Kendricks in Ain't Too Proud: The Life and Times of The Temptations. In addition to working on Hollywood, Mock is also a writer, director, and executive producer on the FX drama series Pose.

Read the original article on Deadline.