If someone made a TV movie about your most impressive professional accomplishment, who would they get to play you? (I’d hope for Thomas Middleditch, but would probably end up with Chris Marquette.) Luckily for acclaimed science writer Rebecca Skloot, she doesn’t have to wonder anymore, as THR reports that Rose Byrne has signed on to play Skloot in the HBO adaptation of her best-selling book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. That’s pretty much the best you can hope for! The book tells the story of Lacks, a black woman whose cancer cells were harvested without her consent in 1951 and used as the basis for decades of medical research. Oprah Winfrey will play Lacks’s daughter Deborah, who teamed up with Skloot to explore her mother’s legacy. Two of Lacks’s sons and one of her granddaughters are acting as consultants on the film; with any luck, they’ll be played by Denzel Washington, Idris Elba, and Tessa Thompson.
