A planned biopic focusing on James Dean‘s personal life has found its co-lead.
Mitchell Robertson, the Scottish actor known for a breakout performance on Netflix’s Half Man, has been cast in writer-director Guy Guido’s indie film One Hand Tied, The Hollywood Reporter has learned. Robertson will play the star’s close friend and UCLA roommate Bill Bast and joins Brandon Flynn, who was previously announced as playing Dean.
Formerly known as Willie and Jimmy Dean, One Hand Tied adapts Bast’s 2006 memoir, Surviving James Dean. In his book, Bast described meeting Dean at the UCLA theater program at the age of 19 and wrote that the two men became roommates, close friends and eventually lovers. Bast claimed they kept their fling private to avoid hurting Dean’s career while the rising star had relationships with female stars, with Bast remaining hopeful that he and Dean would soon live together again.
Five years after meeting Bast, Dean died in a car accident in 1955 at the age of 24, with two of his signature films, Rebel Without a Cause and Giant, released posthumously. His only movie released before his death was 1955’s East of Eden, which is back in the zeitgeist following the recent release of Netflix’s limited series that also adapts John Steinbeck’s novel.
Guido’s script is set from the first meeting between Bill Bast and Dean to the actor’s death on Sept. 30, 1955. Guido spoke to Bast in 2011, four years before his death at age 84. The film will focus on Bast and Dean navigating their evolving relationship and Bast coming to terms with being gay during the 1950s.
James Dean
Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Producers include Steven J. Wolfe, known for such projects as (500) Days of Summer, and Flavia Amon, who spent 21 years at Fox Searchlight. Wolfe and Guido are continuing to cast the remaining roles, including the prominent part of Bast’s mother, Beatrice. Guido previously directed the Hulu feature Madonna and the Breakfast Club.
Guido has heard a mixture of reactions from the public in the time since THR first broke the news about the feature. “James Dean has been romanticized and mythologized for more than 70 years, and I think people have become very attached to a particular image of him: the rebellious, brooding, heterosexual heartthrob with a cigarette dangling from his mouth,” he tells THR. “For some, the suggestion that his sexuality may have been more complex than that challenges a fantasy they’ve held onto for decades. But others are genuinely excited by the possibility of seeing a more layered, vulnerable and more dimensional James Dean — someone who wasn’t necessarily confined to the identity Hollywood created for him. And that’s what really interests me. I’m not looking to completely redefine him, but I am looking to explore the human being who existed beyond the mythology.”
Robertson played the younger version of Jamie Bell’s character in Half Man and can soon be seen in the BBC drama Counsels. “The moment I saw him in Half Man, I knew he was the one,” says Guido. “I was looking for vulnerability and an innate likability, but also strength. Bill lived in a time that was hostile to anyone even perceived as gay, yet he sustained a five-year roller-coaster relationship with James Dean. That takes resilience.”
For his part, Robertson notes, “Guy has crafted a beautifully tender script that steps past the image of the icon and brings to life the human behind it. Through Bill’s eyes, we see James Dean before his name was in lights, before the famous red jacket with the upturned collar. We see him flawed, ambitious and, ultimately, as a young man bursting with love for his friend.”
Wolfe says of Robertson’s audition, “His performance was so beautiful and authentic, it felt as if I were watching dailies from the actual production. I can’t imagine anyone more fitting and worthy of this role.”
Flynn’s previous credits include True Detective, 13 Reasons Why and The Parenting. He makes his Broadway debut this fall with Here There Are Blueberries.
Robertson is represented by Taylor Jefferson at The Artists Partnership and Maryam Hunwick at Hunwick Associates.
