Baby Reindeer's Jessica Gunning to play Mamas and Papas legend in new biopic
16 February 2026, 11:52
The iconic singer is getting a biopic with a very big name.
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Cass Elliot was one of the most iconic figures in music in the 1960s and early 1970s.
First as a member of The Mamas & the Papas, then as a solo star, she released a string of singles and albums that perfectly captured the counterculture vibes of the era.
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While she has been depicted on stage in productions like The Songs of Mama Cass and films like Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, she hasn't yet had the full big screen biopic treatment, but that is about to change.
And rather than focusing on The Mamas & the Papas as a whole, the film is very much centred around Cass Elliot – born Ellen Naomi Cohen – and is based on the memoir My Mama, Cass by her daughter Owen Vanessa Elliot-Kugell.
"I've wanted to tell her story for a really, really long time, and I didn't know how to do it," Elliot-Kugell told Rolling Stone about the book.
Cass Elliot - Make Your Own Kind Of Music (Lyric Video)
"It's kind of weird to say, but I feel like, in some ways, I know her better now."
And in the frame to play Elliot is a British actress, Baby Reindeer's Jessica Gunning.
The film is currently in development from producers Veritas Entertainment, the company behind the hit Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown.
Elliot-Kugell's memoir is being adapted for the screen by Emma Forrest, a journalist turned novelist turned screenwriter.
Producers have said the film is "not a traditional Mamas And The Papas biopic. It is a definitive Cass Elliot film, centred on her life, legacy, and the mother-daughter bond that shaped them both".
Elliot died in London in her sleep of a heart attack aged just 32 on July 29. 1974.
