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Yet another biopic about legendary musicians is in the works, thanks to Scottish director Charlotte Wells, who is developing a film about Blondie and singer Debbie Harry. The 80-year-old Harry recently told an interviewer for The Times that she hopes British actor Florence Pugh will be playing her in the upcoming movie.
Harry was quoted as saying, “If it were somebody like Florence Pugh, I would be in heaven. I just think she’s a great actor, and she could do anything.” Several years ago, Pugh herself had said that playing Harry would be a “dream role.”
Blondie, which was founded in 1974 by Debbie Harry and guitarist Chris Stein, was one of the pioneers of New York’s new wave and punk scene. Its third album, Parallel Lines, helped cement its reputation in the pop-music world. The group also released a series of hit single, including four chart-topping songs: “Heart of Glass,” “Call Me,” “The Tide Is High,” and “Rapture.” Blondie’s 1979 hit song “Rapture” was an early example of the new rap-music genre. The group disbanded in 1982 after the release of its sixth studio album, The Hunter, but reformed in 1997 and released another hit single, “Maria.”
In addition to her talent as a singer, Harry also appeared in a number of films, including John Waters’s original Hairspray and David Cronenberg’s Videodrome. She also had a cameo role in Spun, Jason Schwartzman’s dramedy about drug addictions.
Writer/director Charlotte Wells helmed the critically acclaimed film Aftersun, which was lauded by critic Jordan Raup in The Film Stage: “With an emotional power that broaches the inscrutable, Charlotte Wells’ Aftersun takes a well-observed father-daughter tale and reaches levels of transcendent pain in its final moments. … [It is a] film that profoundly understands how not being able to find the right words in the moment can, upon years of reflection, necessitate screaming them into the void.”
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