Aisling Bea to star in Take That film
- Aisling Bea is to star in Greatest Days, a jukebox movie featuring the band's biggest hits
- The comic plays Rachel, one of five Take That fans reunited after 25 years
- Bea won Best Actor for This Way Up at the NME Awards on Wednesday night
Aisling Bea is to star in the Take That jukebox movie Greatest Days she has revealed.
"I'm working on a movie of the music of Take That" she told the NME at the music magazine's annual awards ceremony on Wednesday.
Collecting the Best Actor award for her Channel 4 sitcom This Way Up, which she also writes and created, she added: "I think there's a long correlation between music and comedy, the sound of the two of them and how much they rely on rhythm."
Based on Take That's musical The Band, Greatest Days follows five schoolgirls who had their lives changed at a concert of their favourite boyband, and then reunite 25 years later to reminisce.
Bea plays Rachel, one of the girls as an adult. Last month she shared a casting call on social media for an 18-20-year-old actor identifying as female to play a 16-year-old version of herself, who could sing, dance and has "emotional playing range".
Rehearsals are currently underway on the film, which will shoot in the UK and Greece and is directed by Coky Giedroyc (How To Build A Girl), with other cast rumoured to include Rosamund Pike, Cush Jumbo and Ruth Wilson.
Executive produced by Take That's Gary Barlow, Robbie Williams, Mark Owen and Howard Donald, alongside David Pugh and Dafydd Rogers, the film will feature several of the band's greatest hits, including A Million Love Songs, Relight My Fire, Could It Be Magic, Back For Good and Patience.
Bea, who has already starred in films such as last year's Home Alone reboot Home Sweet Home Alone and Love Wedding Repeat, as well as the forthcoming vegetable growing comedy Swede Caroline, with Jo Hartley, Alice Lowe, Fay Ripley and idiosyncratic stand-up Mark Silcox, is also writing an unannounced film "with a lovely American guy which is in production now", she told the NME last year.
She previously wrote an as-yet-unmade film about beach volleyball, Beach Slap, with Deep Heat writer Andrew Ellard.
Pipping fellow nominees Mae Martin, Ncuti Gatwa, Olly Alexander and Zendaya to the Best Actor award, Bea used her win to pay homage to the late Cranberries singer Dolores O'Riordan.
"Myself and Sharon Horgan had a moment where we sang 'Zombie' by The Cranberries, and it took off," she said, of an infamous scene in the first series of This Way Up. "I would like to dedicate this award to the late, great Dolores O'Riordan, who I am in awe of."
You can watch a clip of that scene, showcasing her singing voice, here: