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Award-winning actress Laura Dern will play award-winning Miami Herald reporter Julie K. Brown in a TV series about the investigation that exposed the Jeffrey Epstein case.
As first reported by The Hollywood Reporter, Dern (best known for her roles in Jurassic Park and Big Little Lies) is set to star as Brown in a limited series about Brown’s book, Perversion of Justice: The Jeffrey Epstein Story. The Sony Pictures TV series will be executive produced by Sharon Hoffman, Eileen Myers, Adam McKay, Kevin Messick for Hyperobject Industries, Dern, and Brown.
According to the Reporter, Sony describes the limited series as “an explosive account of an investigative reporter exposing the secret plea deal between Epstein and federal prosecutors. Drawing from Brown’s experience as a groundbreaking reporter for the Miami Herald, the book and the limited series follow her relentless years-long investigation that identified 80 victims, persuaded key survivors to go on the record, and led to Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell’s arrests.”
It’s unclear when the limited series will be released or what its official title is.
Brown, who began investigating Epstein in early 2017, has been credited with reopening the case against the convicted sex offender with the three-part Perversion of Justice series she published with the Herald in 2018.
Her reporting uncovered the highly controversial plea deal granted to Epstein by then-U.S. Attorney Alex Acosta, which made the federal sex trafficking charges disappear and shut down an FBI probe that could’ve uncovered dozens of victims. In July 2019, following Brown’s reporting, Acosta resigned from his role as the U.S. Secretary of Labor.
After Epstein was re-arrested and charged in July 2019, Brown was praised for her dogged reporting. “This is what happens when a reporter refuses to give up on a story,” The Columbia Journalism Review wrote in a post on X (formerly Twitter) following Epstein’s arrest.
In July 2021, her book Perversion of Justice, which chronicles Brown’s investigation into Epstein’s sex trafficking operation, was published by William Morrow and Company.
Brown has received several awards for her work, including two George Polk Awards for Justice Reporting. She was also included in Time magazine‘s 100 Most Influential People of 2020.
