Film star Keira Knightley is to make her Broadway debut a year from now in the title role of a stage adaptation of émile Zola's 1867 novel Thérèse Raquin, the Roundabout Theatre announced today.
Knightley, a Golden Globe, BAFTA and Academy Award nominee known for many films including Atonement, Love Actually, Pride and Prejudice and three Pirates of the Caribbean movies, has appeared on the West End in Lillian Hellman's The Children's Hour and Molière's The Misanthrope, but never before on a Broadway stage.
Helen Edmundson's adaptation of Zola's dark tale of an unhappily married woman, her lover, and a murder played in Britain this summer with Pippa Nixon in the title role and received mixed reviews. Edmundson's stage work also includes the John Whiting Award-winning The Clearing and adaptations of Coram Boy, The Mill on the Floss, War and Peace and Anna Karenina. Coincidentally, Knightley starred in a 2012 film adaptation (by Tom Stoppard) of Anna Karenina.
The play is to begin previews October 1, 2015 and open October 29, 2015. Further casting and other details will be announced at a later date.
