Jessica Chastain joining 'The Help'

Jessica Chastain, who is playing Brad Pitt's wife in Terrence Malick's upcoming "Tree of Life," has come aboard "The Help," DreamWorks' adaptation of the best-selling Kathryn Stockett novel.

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Tate Taylor wrote the script and is directing the tale centering on black maids working in white households in the early 1960s in Jackson, Miss. Viola Davis, Emma Stone, Bryce Dallas Howard and Octavia Spencer are among the cast.

Chastain is playing Celia Foote, an insecure Southern lady constantly trying to fit in with the high society women who reject her.

Shooting begins at the end of July in Greenwood, Miss.

Participant Media and Imagenation Abu Dhabi are co-producing the movie with DreamWorks. Disney's Touchstone Pictures will distribute. Brunson Green, Chris Columbus and Michael Barnathan are producing.

Chastain, repped by Paradigm and Mosaic, will appear in October's "The Debt" playing a young Helen Mirren. She just wrapped production on "The Fields," a thriller with Sam Worthington and Jeffrey Dean Morgan.