Tom Hanks as Fred Rogers Is Everything We Need

Celebrities

As much of the nation was captivated by an emotionally harrowing Senate hearing in Washington D.C. Thursday afternoon, Sony Pictures released some balm in photographic form. Americas dad, Tom Hanks, appears smiling gently in costume as Fred Rogers in trademark cardigan, slacks and sneakers in a first look at 2019s You Are My Friend.

Director Marielle Heller (The Diary of a Teenage Girl) clarified earlier this year that her take on the beloved childrens entertainer wont be a straightforward biopic. For a broader look at Rogers life, audiences can watch the tearjerking 2018 documentary Wont You Be My Neighbor?. Instead, Heller told Entertainment Weekly, this film will focus specifically on Rogers real-life relationship with Esquire reporter Tom Junod, who grudgingly took an assignment to cover the TV host in the late 90s. Heller says the film will explore how Junods “whole world changes when coming in contact with Fred Rogers.”

The title, You Are My Friend, comes from a song Rogers wrote and performed on his long-running, award-winning childrens show, Mister Rogers Neighborhood.

Junod, who appeared in Wont You Be My Neighbor?, will be played by recent Emmy winner Matthew Rhys as a cynic whose outlook on life is softened and brightened by his interaction with Rogers. Junod enters into his lengthy profile with a good deal of cynical resistance; he ends it a demonstrably changed man. As Junod wrote in 1998:

My heart felt like a spike, and then, in that room, it opened and felt like an umbrella. . .it hit me, right then, with my eyes closed, that this was the moment Fred Rogers—Mister Rogers—had been leading me to from the moment he answered the door. . .Once upon a time, you see, I lost something, and prayed to get it back, but when I lost it the second time, I didnt, and now this was it, the missing word, the unuttered promise, the prayer Id been waiting to say a very long time.

A heart-opening performance from Tom Hanks? That sounds like exactly the thing we all need right now. But well have to wait until October 2019 for Rhys and Hanks to warm hearts and jerk tears nationwide.

Get Vanity Fairs HWD NewsletterSign up for essential industry and award news from Hollywood.Joanna RobinsonJoanna Robinson is a Hollywood writer covering TV and film for VanityFair.com.

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