Hollywood legend Kim Novak is concerned over how her relationship with Sammy Davis Jr. might be portrayed in an upcoming biopic starring Sydney Sweeney.
Sweeney is set to star in “Scandalous!” alongside David Jonsson. The biopic will cover Novak’s relationship with Davis Jr., which sparked controversy back in the 1950s. However, Novak has expressed hesitation about the project.
“I don’t think the relationship was scandalous,” the 92-year-old actress told The Guardian.
“He’s somebody I really cared about,” Novak added. “We had so much in common, including that need to be accepted for who we are and what we do, rather than how we look. But I’m concerned they’re going to make it all sexual reasons.”
Novak’s longtime manager, Sue Cameron, previously explained the “Vertigo” star never intended to marry at the time she met Davis Jr.
“Kim and I have been aware of at least four unauthorized and unapproved projects in development about the Kim Novak and Sammy Davis affair,” Cameron told People.
“She never wanted to get married back then — to anyone. It was a romance based on love, respect, the things they shared in common,” Cameron added. “Kim and Sammy met at a party and recognized they were both rebels and outsiders. They both had strong ties to their families and spent time with close relatives in both Hollywood and Chicago. In truth, she hoped their relationship could help break down people’s racial bias.”
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Novak also opened up about her “misunderstood” relationship with Davis Jr. in a 2023 interview with Fox News Digital.
“I loved him,” she recalled at the time. “He was a person that had a youthful innocence about him. Now, I know no one ever saw him that way, but I did. He had a boyish quality, and I loved that about him.”
The “Picnic” actress explained she “never saw somebody with color.”
“When I was a child, my very first boyfriend was Mexican. He was an altar boy at my church. He was my first love. So, I never thought of race,” Novak said. “However, the studio was very much upset by it. I resisted because I didn’t believe that was correct. While people were feeling a certain way, I also felt people needed to change. And I felt that by seeing Sammy and Sammy seeing me, that we could help people understand and accept interracial relationships of any kind.”
She continued, “I was feeling like I was on the edge of being able to help people to be more accepting of all races and relationships of all kinds. I felt I was doing the right thing by doing that. I felt that Sammy and I were at the start of helping people understand that this is not wrong. A man is a man, no matter what skin color he has. A woman is a woman, no matter what skin color she has.”
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“Scandalous!” marks actor Colman Domingo’s directorial debut.
“Hopefully we’ll make a beautiful, sweet film that’s really about the possibility of love, but under many eyes,” he told Deadline.
“Trying to have privacy, trying to have love, trying to have a life,” he added. “And I think it’s something that Sydney [Sweeney] and I both know very well. We’re trying to advocate for your humanity again in your life.”
