Why Hari Nef needed to write the Candy Darling biopic herself

Barbie star Hari Nef has revealed an update for the Candy Darling biopic that's been her passion project for six-plus years.

Screenwriter Stephanie Kornick was originally attached to write in 2019. Now, Nef, who is starring as Darling, is set to pen the script for the project that's in the "very early stages of fundraising and casting," Nef told Vogue.

Candy Darling was a transgender actress and Warhol superstar who starred in several films for Warhol, including Women in Revolt. She also appeared in plays written by Tennessee Williams and fellow superstar Jackie Curtis. Darling was also a muse for Lou Reed of The Velvet Underground, who wrote the song "Candy Says" about her.

The iconoclast died of lymphoma in 1974 at 29.

"I had to do so much research before I could even think about page one in the Final Draft script-writing software. It took me probably a year and a half to work my way up to that, but at a certain point I just had to say to myself, You’ve seen everything, you’ve read everything—now just figure out what you want to see. What parts of the story can you speak to? Which ones are most interesting to you?" Nef told Vogue. "I kind of gave up trying to make the definitive primer on her. Candy can be interpreted in so many ways, as we see at New York Life Gallery, and she lent herself to that."

While Nef didn't reveal much about the script, she dubbed it a "showbiz movie," and said her "point of identification and admiration for Candy is as an actress."

"I’m interested in what she did, not only onscreen but onstage. ... It takes the viewer through her major roles and the way she tried to cross over into her celluloid dream, and at certain moments really succeeded in doing that, but only as much as she was allowed to — she was out of her time," Nef said. "It moves me. It’s why I need to tell this story, because it makes me feel less alone, and I know that so many girls feel that way about her."

In the early 2010s, Nef, who is trans, looked to Laverne Cox, who was starring on Orange Is the New Black, and realized that her dream of acting could become a reality. Researching Darling, a trailblazer, inspired Nef even more.

"Things that seemed impossible before were becoming possible, but to have this blonde face calling out and her words calling out through the decades — someone who had briefly succeeded in doing a version of something that I was wondering if I could do, if it was even possible to do — was deeply inspirational and aspirational and life-affirming," she said. "Every actress thinks about who she could play in a movie, but Candy was the only person that I could really see myself as a shoo-in for, so I always kept it in the back of my head."

The film will be produced by Christian D. Bruun, Katrina Wolfe, and Louis Spiegler. In 2024, it was announced that

Hedwig and the Angry Inch creator John Cameron Mitchell was joining as an executive producer, and Enigma director Zackary Drucker would direct.