Keesha Sharp to take on Eartha Kitt biopic

Actress Keesha Sharp has scored the rights to John Williams’ 2013 biography America’s Mistress: The Life and Times of Eartha Kitt and plans to portray the singer and actress in a new film.
The star of TV’s Lethal Weapon will also produce the drama about the beloved Santa, Baby singer, who lost her battle with colon cancer in 2008, at the age of 81.
The film will chronicle Kitt’s rise to fame, her anti-Vietnam War activism which prompted Hollywood bosses to blacklist her in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and her comeback in the 1978 production of Broadway musical Timbuktu!
“Eartha Kitt was a force in the entertainment industry and an icon who opened doors for so many women, especially women of colour during a time when it was not popular in America,” Sharp says. “Although I may have been compared to her in the past, I am passionate about bringing her story to life because everyone needs to know how incredible she was.
“People don’t mention her in the same conversation with the icons of Hollywood, but she belongs there. The biggest star at the time, Orson Welles, called her ‘the most exciting woman in the world’ for good reason. Her life was full of complexity, pain, and triumph, and I am thrilled to take on the challenge.”