EXCLUSIVE: It’s one of those stories you read and somehow remember, and now it’s going to be a Lifetime movie. Marcia Gay Harden is set to star as the mother in Love You to Death, based on the weird-but-true story of a controlling woman and her seemingly sick daughter that ends in a murder no one could have predicted.
Here’s the logline: Camile (Harden) and her child are well known in their community: Esme as the sickly, childlike, wheelchair-bound daughter and Camile as the perfect caretaker and mother. They seem a perfect pair until Camile is found stabbed to death in her home, and Esme has vanished, believed to be kidnapped by the killer. But when Esme is found, a terrible secret emerges: She was not kidnapped but ran away with her boyfriend after working with him to kill her mother. More than that, Esme is perfectly healthy, mentally and physically, and has been a victim of Munchausen syndrome by proxy, forced to believe she was ill by her controlling, abusive mother.
Harden is coming off a three-season run as star of the CBS medical drama Code Black, which wrapped in July. Other recent credits include the Fifty Shades films and How to Get Away with Murder. An Oscar winner for Pollock and a nominee for Mystic River, she also has a pair of Emmy noms on her résumé. Harden is repped by ICM Partners, Framework Entertainment and Schreck Rose.
Love You to Death is produced by Sony Pictures Television and Davis Entertainment Television. Alex Kalymnios directs from a script written by Anthony Jaswinski, and the executive producers are Jordan Davis and John Davis. It’s a reunion for Kalymnios, SPT and the network for which she helmed Cleveland Abduction in 2015.
