Debbie Harry formed Blondie in 1974; one year later, she landed her first acting gig, marking the beginning of dozens of film roles over the following decades, including parts in David Cronenberg’s Videodrome, John Waters’ Hairspray, and the underrated Heavy by James Mangold. It’s been over a decade since her last acting credit in a feature film, but she’s returning to the big screen for Maitreya, a new movie in which she stars as Pamela Anderson’s mother — or at least the character Anderson is set to play.
Billed as a comedy movie, Maitreya will be directed by Portlandia co-creator Jonathan Krisel and boast a script by Samuel D. Hunter, reports Deadline. The movie follows “Maitreya (Anderson), a rising star in the New Age Healing community who is about to head off to a conference in India when she receives a call from her estranged sister, Monica: their father is dying. Rather than stay home with him, Maitreya decides to bring her entire family—including her mother, Barbara (Harry)—to the conference and put her New Age healing theories to the test (all while surreptitiously gathering material for her next book).”
In 2022, Blondie collected remastered versions of their first six studio albums, alternate takes, and demos for the box set Against the Odds: 1974 – 1982. A few years later, their classic album Parallel Lines was added to the Library of Congress’ National Recording Registry to be preserved among “the defining sounds of history.”
Read about Parallel Lines at No. 76 in The 100 Best Albums of the 1970s.
