Oprah Winfrey to exec produce, and potentially star in, HBO adaptation of play 'Ruined'

Image Credit: Janet Mayer/PR PhotosOprah Winfrey may be making a return to acting. HBO confirms to EW that Winfrey and Kate Forte will exec produce an adaptation of Lynn Nottage’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play Ruined for HBO Films. Nottage will write the script, set in a brothel in war-torn Congo. The project is being developed as a potential starring role for Winfrey. It centers on Madam Mama Nadi, the women who work for her, and her struggles to avoid getting caught between the government and rebel armies. The off-Broadway production of Ruined, inspired by Bertolt Brecht’s classic Mother Courage, received an A when reviewed by EW last year. “For all of the ugliness and horror Nottage so vividly describes — wild-eyed 18-year-old Sophie was so badly abused that she walks with a pronounced limp, while young Salima was kidnapped, chained to a tree, and raped for five months — she also finds joy, beauty, and laughter in her characters’ lives,” we wrote. Like Brecht’s original Mother Courage, the show features live music, mostly sung by the character Sophie. “You come here to forget/You say drive away all regret,” she sings. “Will the sound drown out your sorrow/So you’ll remember nothing tomorrow?”