Mike Fleming

EXCLUSIVE: Olivia Williams has emerged as the front runner to play Eleanor Roosevelt the Roger Michell-directed Hyde Park on the Hudson for Focus Features. She is in talks to join her Rushmore co-star Bill Murray, who plays Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and Laura Linney, who’ll play FDR’s distant cousin and mistress. The Richard Nelson-scripted film is about a visit by King George VI to Hyde Park, the upstate New York home of the Roosevelt family in 1939. While the stakes are high—momentum was building toward WWII—the trip also happened as FDR’s wife discovered his affair with his cousin. Williams, most recently seen onscreen in Hanna, is repped by ICM.