Endeavor chairman Patrick Whitesell’s ex-sister-in-law is taking meetings around town pitching a TV series based on her life — but the Whitesell brothers can relax. None of them make an appearance in the project.
Instead, Iranian-born Ladan Rafii, 64, who was briefly married to TV writer Chris Whitesell in the 1980s, is focusing the plot of her series on her time as a political, legal and civil affairs officer at the UN in the late 1970s and early 80s, after the fall of the Shah. It was, she says, a dangerous gig that took her on a harrowing adventure around the globe, with stops in Hong Kong (where she was shot at during a taxi cab car chase), outside Washington DC (where one of her uncles was murdered by Iranian agents) and Teheran (where another relative was killed), as well as Paris, Geneva, New York and a slew of other exotic locales.
“It’s about a woman who overcomes personal challenges while dealing with the aftermath of a revolution in her own country,” Rafii says. “It’s about being uprooted and coming to a new country, starting over with no privileges, then joining the UN and being sent to hardship duty stations, post-conflict, post-genocide zones, going through life-threatening encounters and losing members of her family. There were so many murders, it’s mind-boggling.”
Of course, like any great international thriller, Rafii’s story includes at least a couple of romantic plot twists. However, she makes it clear none of them will involve anybody from a certain super-powerful entertainment industry family that she had once been married into. “It will have nothing to do with any of the Whitesells,” she promises. “They won’t be mentioned at all.”
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