We swear, this is the first photo of Academy Award nominee Melissa McCarthy playing a world famous celebrity forger.
Fox Searchlight released a new still from the upcoming “Can You Ever Forgive Me?” on Wednesday night, that sees McCarthy play biographer and notorious faker Lee Israel.
Israel was a successful biographer during her heyday in the ’70s and ’80s, writing tomes on cosmetics empress Estée Lauder and actress Tallulah Bankhead. Her career stagnated in the years following, with a resurgence in the ’90s after unearthing never-seen letters from icons like Dorothy Parker and Noël Coward.
Except they weren’t from Parker or Coward. Israel forged them all.
The lies led her to federal court in 1993, according to the New York Times, where she pled guilty to fraud. Israel outlined her criminal adventures in her final book, the 2008 memoir “Can You Ever Forgive Me?” on which the film is based.
McCarthy steps into a role that previously had Julianne Moore attached. Marielle Heller (“The Diary of a Teenage Girl”) directed from a script by Nicole Holofcener and Jeff Whitty.
Anna Deavere Smith, Richard E. Grant, Jane Curtin and Dolly Wells costar. The film is set open October 2018.