Elizabeth McGovern bought up film rights after audiobook reading

Elizabeth Mcgovern became obsessed with turning Laura Moriarty’s The Chaperone into a movie while reading the novel for an audiobook series.
The actress admits she fell in love with the story of silent screen icon Louise Brooks’ first trip to New York City and turned to Downton Abbey creator and writer Julian Fellowes to help her adapt it for the screen.
“It was the first time in my life I’ve ever had that moment where I read a book and thought to myself, ‘This would be a fantastic film’,” she tells WENN. “I’ve always had, in the back of my mind, that I should be on the lookout in books for great parts, but that never connected for me until I was sitting at a microphone recording an audiobook for The Chaperone. So, very uncharacteristically, I called up and found out about the rights and bought them.”
McGovern plays the titular chaperone in the film, opposite Haley Lu Richardson, who portrays starlet Brooks.
Fellowes jumped at the chance to be part of the adaptation because his mother was often mistaken for Louise Brooks.
“I became very intrigued by this idea of tracing her origins,” he explains. “When my mother was a girl, she used to be mistaken for Louise Brooks, because, in those days, with silent pictures, nobody knew what their voices were like. So, the fact that my mother was English didn’t put fans of the real Louise Brooks off.”
The writer’s mother even signed a few autographs as Brooks, when ‘fans’ refused to believe she wasn’t the actress.
“Presumably, her signature is in some movie museum at this very moment,” the writer chuckles.