Dakota Fanning and Damian Lewis Just Joined Tarantino’s Upcoming Manson Film
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Tarantino’s upcoming movie about late-60s Los Angeles and the shockwaves caused by the gruesome Manson murders, is really gearing up to be an all-star ensemble. The cast list already includes everyone from Leonardo DiCaprio to Brad Pitt to Margot Robbie as Sharon Tate, and according to a new report from Deadline, it just gained a few more major names.
Dakota Fanning has officially signed on to play Manson follower Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme. Fromme, though not involved in the Tate-LaBianca murders, later went on to stage a failed assassination attempt against President Gerald Ford in 1975 and was sentenced to life in prison.
Fanning is just one of the new cast additions set to play a real-life icon from the late 60s. Billions star Damian Lewis has also come aboard to play legendary actor Steve McQueen, which seems like a near-impossible task since McQueen is one of the most charismatic and universally beloved action star of all time, but if Lewis can play late Toronto mayor Rob Ford, he might be able to pull anything off.
One-time Sound of Music star Nicholas Hammond is set to play actor and director Sam Wanamaker, and Emile Hirsch will join the cast as Jay Sebring, the hair stylist and friend of Sharon Tate’s who was also murdered by Manson’s followers. McQueen gave the eulogy at Sebring’s funeral, so it’s possible that’s how Lewis’s character winds up in the movie.
It’s been rumored that Tarantino is currently looking to cast an actor to play kung-fu legend Bruce Lee—who Sebring also knew and helped cast in The Green Hornet—so it seems like Sebring might wind up being a central figure who helps tie together all the disparate characters in Tarantino’s sprawling ensemble.
The rest of the cast will include many familiar Tarantino actors, including Tim Roth, Michael Madsen, and Kurt Russell, along with some newcomers like Timothy Olyphant and Burt Reynolds, who will play George Spahn, blind owner of Manson Family compound, Spahn Ranch.
Though Once Upon a Time in Hollywood has been referred to as the director’s “Manson movie,” it doesn’t seem like the film is expressly focused on the hippy cult leader. Tarantino described the upcoming film as an interconnected series of stories set around the time of the Manson murders, calling it “probably the closest to Pulp Fiction that I have done.”
So far, the ever-growing cast list has yet to include anyone playing Manson himself, so we’ll likely have to wait until the film’s August 19, 2019 release date to see if the Helter Skelter mastermind ever actually shows his face.
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This article originally appeared on VICE US.