Oprah Winfrey to Act and Co-produce HBO's ‘The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks’

The American talk show host Oprah Winfrey is all set to star in the HBO film's adaptation of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. The 62-year-old media proprietor has long been associated with the project, which is an adaptation of the Rebecca Skloot's novel by the same name, released back in 2010.

According to reports, the book's film-making rights were first acquired in 2010. Around that time, Oprah Winfrey signed up as an executive producer for the project. The project team has announced that the media mogul herself will star in the biopic and will co-produce the film in collaboration with Skloot and Alan Ball.

The biopic will depict the story of Henrietta Lacks. She is an African-American woman whose cervical cancer cells were used in 1951 to create the first immortal human cell line, dubbed HeLa.

In the movie, Winfrey will play the character of Deborah Lacks, who narrates the entire story. It is a protagonist character who will narrate how the unlicensed harvesting of her mother's cancerous cells led to unprecedented medical breakthroughs.

The production of the movie will also involve some valuable advice from Henrietta Lacks' granddaughter Jeri Lacksare and her sons Zakariyya Rahman and David Lacks, Jr. The premiere date for the project has not been officially announced yet.

Winfrey, on the other hand, is busy preparing for the project. She made her big-screen debut in 1986 in Steven Speilberg's movie, The Color Purple. The actress later earned an Oscar nomination for the movie.

Winfrey has also acted as a supporting actress in Lee Daniels' The Butler and Selma. She will also be seen in an upcoming drama called Greenleaf.

Meanwhile, an auction has been organized beginning Thursday at 3 p.m. where the fans would get an opportunity to fetch a piece of the iconic and everyone's all-time favorite, Oprah Winfrey Show. The auction, conducted via ScreenBid, will involve a limited number of studio audience chairs.