Cher has signed on to star in “Flint,” an upcoming Lifetime original movie about the headline-making water-contamination crisis in Flint, Michigan, Deadline reports. The singer and Oscar-winning actress is among the project’s executive producers, as is news anchor Katie Couric. While “Flint” hasn’t been formally greenlit, it’s expected to kick off production in the spring.
Written by Barbara Stepansky (“Girls! Girls! Girls!”), “the hard-hitting, fact-based drama examines the events that led to the ‘toxic crime’ committed against the residents of Flint,” Deadline writes. “It is looking to shed light not only on the politics and poor management that led to the poisoning of the water, but also the human element of the residents who not only suffered but whose voices were ignored.” Bruce Beresford (“Driving Miss Daisy”) will direct.
Cher is set to portray a Flint resident whose family is “seriously impacted by the water crisis.” The three-time Golden Globe winner has donated nearly 200,000 bottles of water to the residents of Flint, and has used her Twitter account and interviews to speak out about the crisis and the issues surrounding it. She became involved with “Flint” after she read about the project and reached out to its producers. The role was written specifically for her. “Flint” is Cher’s second-ever TV movie role. Her first, in the 1996 HBO film “If These Walls Could Talk,” earned her a Golden Globe nod.
What happened in Flint was disgraceful, and stories chronicling the lives of those affected by the contamination need to be told. That being said, Flint’s population is 57 percent black. Fortunately, it doesn’t seem like Cher plays a “white savior” in “Flint,” but the the writer and director of the film are also both white, as are all of the film’s executive producers (Cher, Couric, Craig Zadan, and Neil Meron.)
Deadline describes Cher’s role as “key,” so it’s possible that she’s not the protagonist. We’re hopeful that the project includes — or at least portrays — the perspectives of people of color, and particularly poor people of color, as this demographic was most severely impacted by the crisis.
