Claire Foy to Play Sheryl Sandberg in TV Series About Facebook

The Crown Emmy winner Claire Foy will take on another real-life character for her next TV project: Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg.

Foy is set to play Sandberg in a drama from Anonymous Content and Wiip titled Doomsday Machine. The project, which doesn’t have an outlet attached yet, is based on New York Times reporters Sheera Frenkel and Cecilia Kang’s book An Ugly Truth: Inside Facebook’s Battle for Domination (published by Harper in July), as well as their reporting for the Times and that of The New Yorker‘s Andrew Marantz.

Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and author Ayad Akhtar (Disgraced, Homeland Elegies) is writing and will executive produce with Frenkel and Kang. Marantz is a consultant on the project.

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Doomsday Machine is “the riveting human drama chronicling the political and social minefields Facebook has navigated on its relentless quest for growth,” per the show’s logline. It will track the past five years at the social media giant, beginning with disinformation surrounding the 2016 election and leading up to recent revelations in The Wall Street Journal and the Times about some users being allowed to skirt the platform’s rules and that the company was aware of mental health risks among younger users of Instagram.

The potential series will place viewers in the shoes of Sandberg (Foy) and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg as they shape the way billions of people communicate and consume information.

Anonymous Content’s AC Studios and Wiip will produce the project.

Foy has won two Emmys for playing the young Queen Elizabeth on Netflix’s The Crown. She’s set to star opposite Paul Bettany in the second installment of Amazon’s A Very English Scandal and also stars in Sarah Polley’s feature Women Talking, due for release in 2022. Foy is repped by UTA and Oliver Singer at Independent Talent Group.