The Crown's Claire Foy Will Play Sheryl Sandberg In New Series About Facebook

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Claire Foy has carved a niche for herself portraying real-life people. She first played a young Queen Elizabeth II in The Crown, a role which earned her two Emmy Awards and a Golden Globe. Now, Foy is taking on a more modern figure—Sheryl Sandberg. Foy is slated to play the Facebook COO in a new television series about the tech company.

The show is titled Doomsday Machine, and will be based off of New York Times reporters Sheera Frenkel and Cecilia Kang’s book An Ugly Truth: Inside Facebook’s Battle for Domination, along with their reporting for the Times and that of The New Yorker's Andrew Marantz. Ayad Akhtar, who won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his play, Disgraced, is writing and executive producing. Akhtar is also well-known for his widely lauded book, Homeland Elegies. Frenkel and Kang have also signed on as executive producers, and Marantz as a consultant.

Per the Hollywood Reporter, the show is "the riveting human drama chronicling the political and social minefields Facebook has navigated on its relentless quest for growth."

The series is set to follow the last five years at the company, beginning with the controversy surrounding disinformation having to do with the 2016 presidential election. THR also reports that the show will include "revelations in The Wall Street Journal and the Times about some users being allowed to skirt the platform’s rules and that the company was aware of mental health risks among younger users of Instagram."

Doomsday Machine will not be the first time the inner workings of Facebook have been portrayed on screen. Famously, Aaron Sorkin and David Fincher's 2010 movie, The Social Network, charts the inauguration of the company, founded in Zuckerberg's Harvard dorm room. Of course, much has changed about Facebook's influence and internal politics since the film's release, making the story ripe for revisiting.

The lead role, Mark Zuckerberg, has yet to be cast, and no premiere date has been announced yet for the show—it is "in development" with HBO. We will update as soon as we learn more.

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