India Eisley to star in Pine/Jenkins mini-series One Day She’ll Darken

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

India Eisley

Back in July, we heard that WONDER WOMAN director Patty Jenkins and that film's co-star Chris Pine would be teaming up again for a six episode TNT mini-series called One Day She'll Darken. Written by Sam Sheridan and inspired by the autobiography of Fauna Hodel, the drama caught our attention because the story has a connection to the Black Dahlia murder.

The mini-series will tell 

the incredible story of Fauna Hodel, who was given away by her teenage birth mother to a black restroom attendant in a Nevada casino in 1949. As Fauna begins to investigate the secrets to her past, she follows a sinister trail that swirls ever closer to an infamous Hollywood gynecologist, Dr. George Hodel, a man involved in the darkest Hollywood debauchery, the spider in the web around the legendary "Black Dahlia" murder of Elizabeth Short in Los Angeles in 1947.

The show has now found its star in UNDERWORLD: AWAKENING's India Eisley, who will be playing Fauna Hodel, a.k.a. Pat. The character is "a naïve young girl growing up outside of Reno, Nevada, who embarks on a desperate quest to discover who she is, a quest that throws her identity into crisis."

Eisley is joined in the cast by Jefferson Mays as Dr. George Hodel, "a former child prodigy, now a brilliant doctor who entertained and inspired a Hollywood salon of the avant-garde in the ’40s until a scandal broke and sent his famous friends scurrying"; Yul Vasquez as Billis, "a freelancing LAPD sergeant and problem-solver for the brass whose fear has turned to hate"; Justin Cornwell as Terrence Shye, "a gifted young man stuck between an engineering apprenticeship and the streets of Watts"; Dylan Smith as struggling artist Sepp, "who’s twisted beyond recognition by guilt and tragedy"; Golden Brooks as Fauna's mother Jimmy Lee, a former lounge singer "consumed by bitterness from the injustice of Jim Crow Mississippi and a life of missed opportunities and squandered chances"; Leland Orser as Los Angeles Times editor Peter Sullivan; and Jay Paulson as LAPD detective Ohls, "a Korean War vet who owes his life to Jay Singletary".

The character of Jay Singletary is a former Marine now working as a paparazzo. Played by Pine, Jay "was disgraced over his story about Hodel years ago, but now he sees a glimmer of redemption. This may be the opportunity he has  been hopelessly waiting for, but inside this riddle lies a moral quandary he never expected: a labyrinth into the evil in men's hearts that will shake the unsteady Jay to his foundations."

TNT's Sarah Aubrey promised that One Day She'll Darken will be delivering "unpredictable twists and turns and edge-of-your-seat chills."

Jenkins, Pine, Sheridan, and Anonymous Content's Michael Sugar serve as executive producers on the mini-series, which is being produced by Turner's Studio T. Filming is set to begin in Los Angeles next month, with Jenkins directing the first two of the six episodes.

I'm very interested to see how this will turn out, and how deeply it will dig into the Black Dahlia story.

Source: Deadline

About the Author

Cody is a news editor and film critic, focused on the horror arm of JoBlo.com, and writes scripts for videos that are released through the JoBlo Originals and JoBlo Horror Originals YouTube channels. In his spare time, he's a globe-trotting digital nomad, runs a personal blog called Life Between Frames, and writes novels and screenplays.