Chace Crawford is in the Manson family for Mary Harron’s Charlie Says

Last Updated on August 2, 2021

The AMERICAN PSYCHO creative team of director Mary Harron and screenwriter Guinevere Turner are working together to bring a story about the Manson family to the screen, and they have just cast the actor who will be playing one of the most notorious members of that group.

Chace Crawford, best known for his role on the TV show Gossip Girl (which I have never seen a minute of, so I can't comment on what Crawford did there), has signed on to play Tex Watson, who was convicted of seven counts of first degree murder after taking part in the Tate-LaBianca killings.

Crawford joins a cast that includes Merritt Wever, Hannah Murray, Odessa Young, Marianne Rendon, Carla Gugino, Suki Waterhouse, and Kaylie Carter, with former Doctor Who Matt Smith on board to play Charles Manson.

Based on the books The Family by Ed Sanders and The Long Prison Journey of Leslie van Houten: Life Beyond the Cult by Karlene Faith, the film is titled CHARLIE SAYS and will center on 

the three young women (Murray, Young, Rendon) who were sentenced to death following the infamous murder case of Manson (Smith). When the death penalty was lifted, their sentence became life imprisonment. One young graduate student, Faith (Wever), was sent in to teach them, and through her the film follows the girls' transformations as they face the reality of their horrific crimes.

So at least Harron and Turner are taking a bit of a different approach to the Manson case. It doesn't look like this is just going to be HELTER SKELTER all over again… again.

CHARLIE SAYS is set to begin filming this spring, beating Quentin Tarantino's Manson-related film ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD into production by a few months.

Waterhouse starred in THE BAD BATCH