More casting news from director Richard Linklater's upcoming screen version of Stephen Sondheim and George Furth's Merrily We Roll Along! According to Deadline, Suffs and The Connector star Hannah Cruz has joined the project, which will be filming over decades like Linklater's Boyhood, in the role of Gussie Carnegie, the wife of Franklin Shepard who is a Broadway star.
Cruz joins previously announced lead cast Ben Platt as writer Charley Kringas, Paul Mescal as composer Franklin Shepard, Beanie Feldstein as writer Mary Flynn, and, in another as-of-yet unspecified role, Mallory Bechtel.
Much has happened with the cult favorite musical since the film was announced in 2019. The show got its first Broadway revival in 2023, newly making the musical a big hit and winning the 2024 Tony Award for Best Revival of a Musical. That production was filmed on stage for commercial release, with details and a premiere date still to be announced. The revival was a surprising turnaround for the piece, which was amongst Sondheim's most short-lived original productions when it premiered in 1981, becoming the last major project between Sondheim and director-producer Hal Prince.
Linklater's film has had its share of turmoil as well. Though filming began in 2019, scenes had to be re-shot the following year when Glee star Blake Jenner, originally announced to be starring as Frank, was forced to step aside from the project after an admission to abusing a former partner both physically and emotionally. Mescal (soon to be seen Off-Broadway in A Streetcar Named Desire) replaced Jenner.
The ambitious shoot will capture the entire cast in their characters' authentic ages throughout the plot, which spans more than 20 years. The movie will present the scenes as in the stage show, which famously unfolds its plot in reverse chronological order as it tracks the bumpy history of three friends who start their careers in show business together. The scheme will mean that the scenes Linklater has already filmed what will be the film's final moments (though it seems the "Opening Doors" sequence, which features Cruz's character, has not finished filming).
Merrily We Roll Along was celebrated in the documentary Best Worst Thing That Ever Could Have Happened. Lonny Price, who co-starred as lyricist Charley Kringas in the original production, directed and co-produced the film, which features interviews with Sondheim, director Hal Prince, and Price's original co-stars, Ann Morrison, and Jim Walton.
