Deadline‘s tube reporter Nellie Andreva has posted an official “yup, it’s really happening” story about Diane Keaton and Ellen Page being set to star in HBO’s Tilda, a forthcoming half-hour series about a female Hollywood blogger modelled on Nikki Finke. I reported the Keaton-Page castings as a straight fact on 4.29.
Last month an HBO spokesperson told Hollywood Reporter columnist Matthew Belloni that ‘”the Tilda script is a fictional composite and not based on any one person,” I mentioned in the same piece. “Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit,” came the response. “The Tilda Watski character is Finke, Finke, Finke all the way.”
Page’s Carolyn character, who wasn’t all that filled out in the first-episode script I read last month, is described by Andreva as “a morally conflicted creative assistant caught between following the corporate culture of the studio she works for and following Tilda, who has taken a keen interest in her.” She could, in other words, turn to the dark side and wind up slightly scheming against Tilda in a kind of Anne Baxter-in- All About Eve sort of way. Maybe.