MSN Entertainment
Jennifer Aniston Set to Star in Friendship Drama ‘Miss You Already’
Described as a tearjerker in the vein of ‘Beaches’
Posted by Kate Erbland Sunday, February 12, 2012
Jennifer Aniston has just signed on to star in a film that Deadline is already deeming her take on the classic friendship drama “Beaches” (remember that one? the Bette Midler– and Barbara Hershey-starring sobfest?). The film is called “Miss You Already” and it centers on “a pair of lifelong best friends whose relationship gets torn to bits when one becomes pregnant and the other sick.” It’s not known yet which friend Aniston will play (the new mom or the sick one), and casting is still underway for the other role. The film is set in London, and producer Samantha Horley has said that the other character will be British, though “it’s not yet sure if the actress will be.”
Horley also said that “the idea is that it’s Beaches set in a glossy London, it’s a real old-fashioned tearjerker.” Get your tissues ready now. Paul Andrew Williams (a British director known for horror films like “The Cottage” and “Cherry Tree Lane,” who is now directing “Song for Marion,” another drama that finds its conflicts in illness) is directing. He co-wrote the script with Morwenna Banks (an actress who has written for TV in the past). The film is set to start filming this summer in London.
Aniston is desperately in need of such a role to define her as as a true actress and not just a marquee name and tabloid fodder. Moreover, her last few roles show an apparent indecision when it comes to the type of work she wants to do. Does she want to be raunchy like in “Horrible Bosses”? Or does she want to make certifiably terrible Adam Sandler comedies like “Just Go With It”? Or perhaps she’s into more dark comedies, like “The Switch” or “Friends With Money“? Or stuff nobody sees like “Management” or “Love Happens”? Aniston has never blown me away as an actress, but her earlier work, in stuff like “She’s the One” and “The Good Girl” showed, at the very least, a likeable vulnerability. And despite attempts to make her a rom-com queen, she has never met the promise of films like “Picture Perfect” or “The Object of My Affection.”
