Steven Soderbergh’s 2009 experimental drama The Girlfriend Experience followed a high-end Manhattan call girl (played by real-life porn star Sasha Grey) who provides her clients with “the girlfriend experience”—relationship-esque intimacies along with sex. In June, Starz announced it would be adapting the film into a 13-episode series, with Soderbergh as executive producer and indie filmmakers Lodge Kerrigan and Amy Seimetz handing the writing and directing. The show would drop both Grey’s character and the film’s New York setting, instead following a new call girl in a new city. And according to Deadline, actress Riley Keough will now be the one to play the show’s central courtesan.
Keough previously worked with Soderbergh in a small role in Magic Mike. She also played Marie Currie, sister to Dakota Fanning’s Cherie Currie, in The Runaways, and appears in the upcoming Mad Max: Fury Road. (And in today’s Wikipedia fun facts: She is the eldest granddaughter of Elvis Presley.) As in the film, The Girlfriend Experience series will likely see Keough’s as-yet-unnamed character trying to balance her job as a sex worker with her real-life relationships. Those who simply can’t wait for its debut can probably go ahead and watch The Secret Diary Of A Call Girl, which handled similar topics through a British lens.