Miley Cyrus to Star in Woody Allen Amazon Series
Miley Cyrus is returning to a TV series, and this time it’s starring alongside Woody Allen for a show he is creating for Amazon. As Deadline reports, the six half-hour episode series is set in the 1960s.
Allen is slated to star, script and direct the as-yet untitled project, which also stars actress/comedian Elaine May. He and May worked together previously in Small Time Crooks, and it will be his first time working with Cyrus. The show begins shooting in March.
Cyrus is no stranger to acting and comedy. Aside from her breakout role as Hannah Montana for both TV and related film roles, she also starred in 2010’s The Last Song, 2011’s LOL and 2012’s So Undercover and appeared in 2015’s The Night Before. She has also guest starred on Two and a Half Men and has hosted “Saturday Night Live” three times.
This will be Allen’s first TV series. “Woody Allen is a visionary creator who has made some of the greatest films of all-time, and it’s an honor to be working with him on his first television series,” Vice President of Amazon Studios Roy Price told Deadline when the project was announced early last year.
Allen said Amazon had pressed him hard to do the series, despite him having no idea what a streaming service was. “I kept saying I have no ideas for it, that I never watch television. I don’t know the first thing about it,” he told Deadline during an interview at Cannes in 2015 for the premiere of Irrational Man, adding that they pursued him for more than a year and kept sweetening the deal both monetarily and with promises of complete creative freedom. Eventually he said yes.
“And I have regretted it every second since I said OK. It’s been so hard for me. I had the cocky confidence, well, I’ll do it like I do a movie…it’ll be a movie in six parts. Turns out, it’s not. For me it’s been very, very difficult. I’ve been struggling and struggling and struggling,” Allen said. “I only hope when I finally do it – I have until the end of 2016 – they’re not crushed with disappointment because they’re nice people and I don’t want to disappoint them. I am doing my best.”
The show is slated to air via Amazon Prime video streaming in 2016.