Christina Ricci and Judith Light have signed on for a Lifetime movie about Nellie Bly’s famous investigation into patient abuse at a New York asylum.
Variety reports that Ricci will play Bly, a.k.a. Elizabeth Cochran Seaman, the groundbreaking journalist who went undercover in 1887 at the Women’s Lunatic Asylum, on Blackwell’s Island, to document shocking treatment of patients. Light has signed on for the role of “Matron Grady, the head nurse who tortured her patients into submission.” Variety says:
The movie will deliver a fictionalized account of actual events surrounding Nellie’s stay beginning after Nellie has undergone treatment, leaving her with no recollection of how she came to the asylum or her real identity. Production has already begun with the movie eyed for a 2018 debut on Lifetime. This marks Ricci’s return to the network following her performance in the limited series “The Lizzie Borden Chronicles” and the prequel movie, “Lizzie Borden Took An Axe.”
This means that Ricci will have played Bly, Wednesday Addams, and Lizzie Borden, which feels like a real trifecta of girlhood icons.
