Woody Allen, now 80, will hit the small screen for his upcoming Amazon original comedy series with an intriguing co-star: the provocative 23-year-old pop star Miley Cyrus. The celebrated filmmaker and actor wrote the script and will direct the untitled show which takes place in the 1960s, according to Deadline. Elaine May, who Allen previously worked with on Small Time Crooks, will also star in the six-episode series.
While Cyrus got her acting start on Disney’s Hannah Montana as a teen, her transition to become a pop star sensation quickly left her acting career in the dust. And she’s since strayed far, far away from being Disney appropriate: often scantily clad, she’s rocked around naked on a wrecking ball, twerked on national TV with Robin Thicke, and released a weed-laced pop record with The Flaming Lips’ frontman Wayne Coyne. The pairing between the new Miley and the aging Allen makes for a seriously interesting combo in the legendary director’s first TV series.
While she’s been away from acting for some time, Miley Cyrus does have several on-screen credits since Hannah Montana, including a cameo in Bill Murray’s 2015 Netflix Christmas special, A Very Murray Christmas, and a starring role in the 2010 Nicholas Sparks romdram The Last Song. And who could forget her wild and crazy hosting role on last year’s MTV Video Music Awards? Regardless of his reasoning for bringing Cyrus back to a starring TV role, the four-time Oscar winner apparently think she fits the bill.
Allen’s other co-star on the untitled project is the longtime screenwriter and actress Elaine May. After punctuating her early career as half of the Grammy-winning improv duo with Mike Nichols called Nichols and May, she’s made a name for herself as a screenwriter. In addition to two Oscar nominations for screenwriting (Heaven Can Wait and Primary Colors), she’s known for writing the gender-bending ’90s comedy The Birdcage, and starring in the 1971 comedy A New Leaf.
Little else has been revealed about the upcoming series which begins shooting in March. Notably, this is the same project that he called a “catastrophic mistake” back in May because he was having trouble with his first project in the TV format.
Woody Allen’s last project, the Joaquin Phoenix-starring 2015 film Irrational Man, received middling reviews. He’s also working on a new untitled film project starring Steve Carell, Blake Lively, Parker Posey, and Kristen Stewart.
