A Morty Pick HBO Original documentary film BEING MARY TYLER MOORE, directed by Emmy®-winning filmmaker James Adolphus (“Soul of a Nation“) and produced by Lena Waithe (“A Thousand and One“), Debra Martin Chase (“Harriet“), and Ben Selkow (HBO’s “Q: Into The Storm“), debuts Friday, May 26 (8:00-10:00PM ET/PT) on HBO and will be available to stream on Max. The film made its world premiere at the 2023 SXSW Festival.
With unprecedented access to Mary Tyler Moore’s vast archive, BEING MARY TYLER MOORE chronicles the screen icon whose storied career spanned sixty years. Weaving Moore’s personal narrative with the beats of her professional accomplishments, the film highlights her groundbreaking roles and the indelible impact she had on generations of women who came after her.
Moore’s career broke boundaries in different eras, most notably in her comedic roles as Laura Petrie in the ’60s sitcom, “The Dick Van Dyke Show” and as single career woman Mary Richards on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” in the ’70s, both of which put her at the forefront of female representation on television and cemented her as a role model for independent working women. Acknowledging that much of herself was woven into her sunny characters, she nevertheless struggled behind the scenes, dealing privately with immeasurable tragedy in her personal life, some of which was echoed in her portrayal of a grieving mother in the 1980 film “Ordinary People,” for which she was nominated for an Academy Award. In the last thirty-five years of her life, Moore went through a transformative period of self-discovery, moving to New York City, finding true love, and going on to become an impactful global advocate for diabetes research. BEING MARY TYLER MOORE documents the life of a complex artist who shifted the dynamics of how women were portrayed on television, had far-reaching influence on the business through her own production company, and helped affect great change through her work as International Chairman of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF).
Featured Participants: Lending their voices to the film are family members, colleagues, and those whose lives Mary Tyler Moore impacted including directors Rob Reiner, Michael Lindsay-Hogg, and Jim Burrows, actors Ed Asner, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Lena Waithe, Phylicia Rashad, Bernadette Peters, and Joel Grey, writers and producers Allan Burns, James L. Brooks, Norman Lear, Debra Martin Chase, Treva Silverman, Susan Silver, and Moore’s husband, Dr. S. Robert Levine.
Credits: HBO Documentary Films presents BEING MARY TYLER MOORE in association with FIFTH SEASON, a Hillman Grad production, a Debra Martin Chase production, a The Mission Entertainment Production, a Good Trouble Studios production. Directed by James Adolphus; produced by Ben Selkow, James Adolphus, Lena Waithe, Rishi Rajani, Debra Martin Chase, Andrew C. Coles, Laura Gardner; executive produced by S. Robert Levine, MD, and Michael Bernstein. For HBO: executive producers, Nancy Abraham, Lisa Heller; coordinating producer Anna Klein.
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