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Kim Kardashian is set to feature and executive produce a three-part documentary series on Hollywood icon Elizabeth Taylor, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Academy Award-winning production studio Passion Pictures was commissioned by BBC Arts to produce the series with Kim Kardashian. The project's current working title is Elizabeth Taylor: Rebel Superstar.
The BBC announced the project Jan. 29, with Kari Lia, Hamish. Fergusson and Kardashian serving as executive producers. The British network described the series as a “privileged access to those who knew her best, including members of Elizabeth Taylor’s family, friends, and colleagues from throughout her stellar career,” as well as highlight “a superstar who transformed not just Hollywood but fame itself, as she went from child star to highest-paid actress in the world.”
The real Elizabeth Taylor
The two-time Academy Award-winning actress' story has always included those of her eight marriages, the diamonds as well as her addictions. The BBC series promises to give Taylor “the significance she richly deserves, in all her incarnations: as an actor, rebel, business mogul, and activist — to reveal how Taylor created the blueprint for modern celebrity.”
The documentary series will also focus on how the actress “reinvented the nature of fame, even as she smashed the glass ceiling in Hollywood, before going on to become a billion-dollar businesswoman, activist and advocate.”
The BBC said that the series will feature “never-before-heard audio tapes, interviews, and unseen TV footage, alongside rich archive of her movies.” It will also present interviews who had personal knowledge of Taylor, including Kardashian who was able to speak with the actress before she died.
Others who were interviewed were Dame Joan Collins, Taylor's friend and contemporary. She and Dame Elizabeth competed for the role of Cleopatra in the 1963 movie. The series will also feature interviews with the actress' classmate on the MGM backlot fellow actress Margaret O'Brien and close friend songwriter Carole Bayer Sager who wrote A Groovy Kind of Love.
Taylor was also one of the first in Hollywood to champion the fight against AIDS and worked with leading scientist Dr. Anthony Fauci, who's also featured in the series.
Elizabeth Taylor through the years
She won two Academy Awards for Best Actress in a Leading Role for 1961's BUtterfield 8 and 1967's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? In 1993, she was presented with the Academy's Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award.
Her final theatrical appearance was in 1994's The Flintstones. Before that, she made guest appearances on TV as herself in Murphy Brown and The Nanny.
Kardashian said, “Elizabeth Taylor was unapologetically herself, a fighter. She is proof that you can keep evolving and changing and have different chapters in your life — and she paved the way for all of us who came after her with that blueprint.”
BBC commissioning editor Alistair Pegg added, “This exciting series promises a new understanding of Elizabeth Taylor — both her technique and power as an actor, and her capacity for reinventing herself.”
Elizabeth Taylor: Rebel Superstar is still in production and will be aired in the UK on BBC Two and the BBC iPlayer. No announcements yet on where it will be available for other countries.
