There are now officially two projects in development about former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir. The first, announced a month ago, is a TV series produced by Barbra Streisand called Lioness starring Shira Haas. The second, reported earlier today, is a film from Israeli director Guy Nattiv that will feature Helen Mirren. Golda Meir has been performed for cameras and on stage several times and the role is often an awards magnet. Both Ingrid Bergman and Judy Davis (A Woman Called Golda, 1982) were Emmy nominated playing her, and Tovah Feldshuh received a Tony nomination (Golda's Balcony, 2003). For the new projects let’s consider these two very different casting choices and the famous woman they’ll portray…
Golda Meir photographed with Margaret Thatcher
Meir, the only woman ever elected as Israel’s prime minister, is a fascinating figure in the history of her young country, which right now is in the midst of an unbelievable fourth national election in two years due to its complex government system. The documentary Golda, which played at film festivals last year, offers great insight into who she was and how she operated, most comparable to Margaret Thatcher in terms of her strong will and reputation.
What many won’t know – and which will surely be explored in Lioness – is that Meir spent a good deal of her childhood living in Milwaukee, Wisconsin after moving there from Kiev. A resident of Mandatory Palestine for decades before it officially became the country of Israel, Meir was already retired by the time she was elected prime minister in the wake of Levi Eshkol’s death in office. Her term, which ended in resignation following the 1973 Yom Kippur War, coincided almost exactly with the span of Richard Nixon’s presidency.
My first reaction to the news of Mirren getting this role is that, of course, she isn’t Israeli. But Mirren has played an Israeli woman before, as a Mossad agent in the 2011 thriller The Debt, and she’s certainly no stranger to commanding ruling personalities, winning Oscars and Emmys for portraying different Queen Elizabeths and most recently stepping into the shoes of Catherine the Great. Someone like Judi Dench might seem like a more logical fit for the role (the late Lynn Cohen played Meir most recently in Steven Spielberg’s Munich), but Mirren will absolutely deliver. Director Guy Nattiv has already taken home an Oscar for his short film Skin (I liked his follow-up feature of the same name better), and he should be very much up to the challenge of this biopic.
Haas also isn’t the obvious choice to play Meir, but it’s fair to assume that her next performance will be just as superb as all that she’s done recently. We’ve discussed her Emmy-nominated work in Unorthodox many times on this site, and she’s been very busy with other projects too. Season three of Shtisel just dropped on Netflix, she was in Israel’s Oscar entry Asia and the VOD release Esau, and she’s a star of The Wordmaker, an Israeli series from several years ago that’s set to premiere on Topic next week. She’s already defied expectations numerous times, and she’ll surely do so again bringing to life a young Meir.
How do you feel about this doubled casting news?