The cast for Six Dance Lessons in Six Weeks has been rounded out, with Variety reporting that Julian Sands has signed up for the movie, joining Cheyenne Jackson, Gena Rowlands, Jacki Weaver, Rita Moreno, Kathleen Rose Perkins, Anthony Zerbe and Simon Miller.
Rowlands is set to star as Lily Harrison, a Florida retiree who hires high-spirited dance instructor Michael Minetti (Jackson) to give her private dance lessons. The unlikely pair soon develop a friendship apart from dance.’ The relationship starts with lies – she pretending her husband is still alive, him pretending he isn’t gay and saying he’s married to a woman – but soon deepens into something more, with both coming to understand things about the other beyond the stereotypes.
Sands will be the owner of the dance studio Jackson’s character works out of.
The movie is based on Richard Alfieri’s adaptation of his play of the same name, with Arthur Allan Seidelman (he also helmed several stage versions). Shooting began Monday in Budapest.
It not very often that one openly gay actor gets replaced by another one in a movie, but that’s what’s happened with the indie 6 Dance Lessons in 6 Weeks. Will & Grace’s Sean Hayes was due to star opposite Gena Rowlands in the movie, but he’s had to drop out (probably because he’s busy working on a pilot for a possible new TV show), and has been replaced by the hotness that is Cheyenne Jackson.