Aubrey Plaza says she hopes to meet Heidi Fleiss before filming The Heidi Fleiss Story, the biopic in which she will star and produce, describing the onetime “Hollywood madam” as “the ultimate badass icon” who “deserves the royal treatment.” Plaza added that she has never portrayed a real person on screen and is preparing for the role by studying Fleiss’s public persona and history.
The feature is being directed by Leah Rachel and centers on the turbulent period before Fleiss’s mid-1990s legal troubles, with a script Rachel developed alongside Rachel Sennott and Travis Jackson. Plaza is producing through her Evil Hag banner, with filming planned in Los Angeles.
Fleiss achieved notoriety in Los Angeles for an exclusive escort operation that drew intense media attention and speculation about a sealed client list. She was ultimately convicted on federal tax charges and served roughly 20 months in prison, facts that have made her a recurring subject of documentaries and profiles and provide a dramatic spine for the new film.
Recent coverage indicates that Plaza views the project as both creative stretch and character study, emphasizing that the portrayal will avoid caricature while acknowledging Fleiss’s contradictions. At the same time, Fleiss has indicated she does not plan to watch the movie, saying she is not involved and prefers to leave the past behind.
The announcement arrives during a busy period for Plaza, who has moved between studio and independent work in recent years and is returning to screens this month in Ethan Coen’s Honey Don’t!. The Fleiss project also marks a significant step for first-time feature director Rachel, whose concept focuses on the pressure-cooker days before trial and the network of relationships Fleiss attempted to leverage.
