Miranda July’s All Fours, one of the buzziest novels of 2024, is coming to a small screen near you. Starz has acquired the project and now a mysterious pre-production commences.
Of course, we’re chiefly concerned with casting. Who should play the novel’s electric, unnamed narrator? This is a character that launched a thousand threads, brought book clubs to blows, and raised the tiresome ghost of the likability debate.
Given the echoes of July herself, there’s a highly specific brief in the offing. Our narrator should be lowercase w-weird, confused about the difference between a “body-” and “mind-rooted” existence, and plausible as an “L.A. based multimedia artist.” For an enchilada of affective reasons, I suspect our hero is white—but I could be convinced otherwise.
I think we want someone with banked favor. Someone ripe for a comeback, like Demi Moore in The Substance. But turn the dial too far and we could wind up with a star in unconvincingly bedraggled cosplay. Uma Thurman would probably wreck this role, but she could be too glossy. On the flip side, one could go too arty. Winona Ryder or Chloë Sevigny strike this reader as too cool to wind up in such a farcical situation as the All Fours woman engineers. Once in the car, both of them would just keep driving.
Given all this, here’s my first pick to carry the series.
Lake Bell as the narrator.
Bell nailed an art-monster kookiness in her charming directorial debut, In a World. And I could buy her lying about a cross-country trip that turns into a decorating spree. She’s also, crucially, odd enough to sell some of our horny heroine’s more “baroque” fantasies.
But I’d also be happy with: Gaby “Uppercase W-Weird” Hoffman, Rose “Can Do Anything” Byrne, or Merritt “Always a Pleasure” Wever.
(Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Greta Lee, and Cristin Milioti would knock it out of the park, but they each strike me as slightly too young.)
For Davey, the Hertz-based snack, aspiring dancer, and object of our hero’s unrelenting fantasies, I nominate Langston Kerman.
I first encountered this charming up and comer as Molly’s ill-treated bisexual boo on HBO’s Insecure, and have since enjoyed his company on the tragically short-lived South Side. Kerman has a youthful openness and strong comic timing. He can read as sanctimonious or sweet. And—of special interest to us at Lit Hub—he moonlights as a poet.
For a very different take on this character, we might consider breaking goofy. Mark Edelshtyn, the fussy young scion who turned Anora’s head, could be a disruptive force for someone in crisis. On another flip side, consider a man with a deep well of vulnerability and charisma—Elliot Page.
As for Harris, the vaguely affable middle-aged husband? Paul Rudd, this job is yours to lose.
But if we wanted to lean into this character’s artistic side, what about a bit of cheeky cross-pollination? Tunde Adebimpe of TV on the Radio is a great actor, and has previously nailed the aggrieved husband in Rachel Getting Married. And not for nothing, I buy him as a guy who spends most of a book cooped up in his music studio.
Jake Lacy, Lakeith Stanfield, and Will Sharpe are also charming exasperators, but again—a little young.
Jordi, the wise, queer sculptor friend with a happy sex life, could be a number of California cool cats. Pamela Adlon or Janeane Garofalo, if we favor wry company. Carrie Brownstein could be fun.
But imagining this character onscreen, my mind first went to Hong Chau—a hyper-talented actor who previously played a (nutty) sculptor in Kelly Reichardt’s Showing Up. I think she’d bring a lot of life to a role that in its worst interpretation could be a shallow foil.
Arkanda, the deus-ex-machina pop star in the Beyonce idiom, should be Keke Palmer. No further suggestions. And I hope she’s paid well.
All this is assuming that July herself doesn’t want to play the hero, and populate the show with some of her regular favorite collaborators. As a seasoned auteur, that’s her prerogative.
But you know. For your consideration, and all that.
