Though Carey Mulligan is an actress who’s shown quite a big of range in her young career, she’s generally always been cast as the nice girl, the one who’s going to end up being a victim. She was the naive girl who got her feelings trampled in An Education, the bright student who would never get to achieve her dreams in Never Let Me Go, and the struggling single mother in Drive – all roles that made her easily relatable to the audience, but which didn’t allow her to explore her dark side.
Well, according to a report from THR, that’s about to change. Apparently Mulligan has been pursuing the lead role in a darkly comedic thriller called Nancy and Danny, and her pursuits have been effective enough that she’s now in negotiations to take the part. The movie is about a scheming woman who comes back to her hometown after her plans to make it in the big city fail. Once back, she wastes no time scheming to land a high school crush, using people as pawns, and involving herself in get rich quick schemes that go terribly wrong. The film sounds like a less cynical and more sinister version of Young Adult, and has been described as being similar in tone as Gus Van Sant’s To Die For.
Should Mulligan’s casting become official, this one definitely sounds like it’s going to give us the chance to see a whole other side to her we haven’t glimpsed before. Nancy and Danny was written by Brad Ingelsby, who most recently co-wrote Out of the Furnace with Scott Cooper, and will be directed by James Marsh, who’s best known for his phenomenal documentaries Man on a Wire and Project Nim. That’s a lot of talent coming together in one place, so it would behoove us to keep this one on our radar.