Joni Mitchell says she blocked Taylor Swift from playing her in a biopic because she didn’t know her music.
I’ve never heard Taylor’s music,” Mitchell told nymag.com. “I’ve seen her. Physically, she looks similarly small-hipped and high cheekbones. I can see why they cast her. I don’t know what her music sounds like, but I do know this — that if she’s going to sing and play me, good luck.”
Swift confirmed she was approached to play Joni Mitchell but the go-ahead for the movie did not reach approval stage after Mitchell stopped it moving forward.
“I said to the producer, ‘All you’ve got is a girl with high cheekbones.’ It’s just a lot of gossip, you don’t have the great scenes.” Mitchell told The Sunday Times.
The planned Joni Mitchell biopic was to be based on the book ‘Girls Like Us’ by Sheila Weller. Joni said the script was inaccurate. “There’s a lot of nonsense about me in books. . .assumptions, assumptions, assumptions,” she said.
‘Girls Like Us’ was about the lives of Joni Mitchell, Carole King and Carly Simon. “They went through challenges like Joni’s great poverty, a pregnancy and giving a baby up for adoption. She never stopped working,” Weller said about her book.
‘I’d see all these PBS documentaries about the 60s about The Stones and The Beatles and Neil Young by A-List directors like Martin Scorsese and the women were just a footnote. Even if it was about politics and not music it was amazing how male those stories were. I knew there was another side of the story and I knew women a: had a much bigger leap to make. There journey was much more revolutionary”.
Weller’s book ‘Girls Like Us’ was first published in 2009 by Simon & Schuster. Coincidentally, Richard L. Simon, the father of Carly Simon, is the co-founder of Simon & Schuster.
——————————————————————————————————————————————
Never miss a story! Get your free Noise11.com daily music news email alert. Subscribe to the Noise11 Music Newsletter here
Listen to the Noise11 Music News channel now at iHeartRadio
Follow Noise11.com on Facebook and Twitter
