Claire Foy to Play Sheryl Sandberg in Facebook Drama ‘Doomsday Machine’
Emmy-winner Claire Foy is set to play Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg in Doomsday Machine, an upcoming series based on Sheera Frenkel and Cecilia Kang’s bestselling book An Ugly Truth: Inside Facebook’s Battle for Domination.
The drama, created by Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and playwright Ayad Akhtar, will chronicle the political and social minefields Facebook has navigated on its relentless quest for growth. It focuses on Sandberg and Mark Zuckerberg, the pair responsible for shaping the way that billions of people worldwide communicate and consume information.
Anonymous Content (Mr. Robot) and Wiip (Mare of Easttown) are behind the series, which is inspired by the work of New York Times reporters Frenkel and Kang, both their book and their reporting for the Times. The reporting of The New Yorker‘s Andrew Marantz also helped shape the show.
The series focuses on the social media platform’s spread of disinformation, particularly around the 2016 election. It also covers the recent revelations in the Wall Street Journal and the Times, including how VIP users such as Donald Trump were shielded from Facebook’s normal rules and regulations. It also looks at how the company was aware of the mental health risks posed by Instagram and how Zuckerberg used the News Feed to share positive stories about Facebook.
Foy recently picked up her second Emmy Award for her role as the young Queen Elizabeth in Netflix’s The Crown. She is set to star alongside Paul Bettany in Amazon’s A Very English Scandal and will play the lead in the new BritBox crime thriller Marlow. The British actress can next be seen in the biographical drama film The Electrical Life of Louis Wain, which will be released on Amazon Prime Video on November 5.
There is no word yet on who will play Zuckerberg in the upcoming series. The Facebook founder was previously portrayed by Jesse Eisenberg in David Fincher’s 2010 movie The Social Network, which traced the origins of the social media platform.
Doomsday Machine, TBA
