Elizabeth McGovern, a.k.a. Lady Cora Crawley in the award-winning Masterpiece production Downton Abbey, is set to reunite with series creator Julian Fellowes and director Michael Engler for a feature film based on Laura Moriarty’s bestseller, The Chaperone, that will air later on PBS.

Announced earlier this week at the PBS Annual Meeting in San Diego, The Chaperone is set in the 1920s and tells the story of a woman from Kansas, also called Cora, who chaperones Louisa Brooks, a talented 15-year-old dancer to New York for the summer. McGovern will play the lead role, while The Affair‘s Julia Goldani Telles is set to play the young dancer in the beautifully told period drama.

Brooks, an icon of the 1920s for popularizing the bob haircut, would go on to star in 25 films, including “Pandora’s Box,”  “Diary of a Lost Girl,” and “Miss Europe” before retiring in 1938. The Chaperone is a co-production of PBS’ Masterpiece and Rose Pictures, in association with Anonymous Content. PBS Distribution will distribute the film theatrically and to home entertainment markets in the U.S. leading up to a 2018 PBS Masterpiece broadcast.

In: Drama

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