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Meryl Streep has just been announced for the role of Joni Mitchell in a new biopic that has been under works for many years.
According to Rolling Stone, her casting in the film, which will be directed by Cameron Crowe, was confirmed by record executive Clive Davis at his annual pre-Grammy party in Los Angeles.
Davis made the announcement as he introduced Mitchell at the Beverly Hilton event on Saturday, bringing an end to months of speculation.
Although the project has been discussed for years, with several actors being speculated of landing the lead role, this is the first official confirmation of the lead casting.
Crowe first announced in 2023 that he was working with Mitchell on a film based on her life and career, and that it would be told from Mitchell’s own point of view rather than through an external biographical lens.
“It’s Joni’s life, not through anybody else’s prism. It’s through her prism. It’s the characters who impacted her life that you know and a lot that you don’t know,” the Say Anything director told Ultimate Classic Rock.
In 2024, rumours began circulating that Streep would be playing the singer with Anya Taylor-Joy’s name also popping up as people assumed she would be playing the role of Mitchell in her younger years. However, only Streep’s role is the one to be officially confirmed.
Last year, during an appearance on the Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, The Housemaid star Amanda Seyfried played the dulcimer along with a rendition of Mitchell’s 1971 classic California, which immediately led to speculation that she was indirectly putting her name forward to play the 81-year-old music icon.
Seyfried later addressed the rumors and insisted that “it was not an audition” adding that she was certain she had “very, very much aged out of young Joni.”
Additionally, Taylor Swift was also one of the names which were brought up, who was first considered for a film adaptation of the book Girls Like Us by Sheila Weller in 2012.
The book studies Mitchell’s impact on the music scene, along with that of her 1970s contemporaries Carly Simon and Carole King.
In 2014, Joni Mitchell told New York Magazine, “I’ve seen her (Taylor Swift). Physically, she looks similarly small-hipped and high cheekbones. I can see why they cast her. I don’t know what her music sounds like, but I do know this – that if she’s going to sing and play me, good luck.”
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