“Mama” Cass Elliot died more than 50 years ago, but her legacy lives on through the songs she sang as a founding member of the Mamas and the Papas and her one-of-a-kind solo work. She’s been consistently present in pop culture through the years, with her late-Sixties hit “Make Your Own Kind of Music” appearing in television shows, viral TikTok memes, and SNL skits. Now, Elliot’s life will be portrayed on the big screen, with the upcoming film My Mama, Cass.
The film, starring Baby Reindeer‘s Jessica Gunning as Elliot, is based on a 2024 memoir by Elliot’s daughter, Owen Elliot-Kugell, who was just seven when her mother died in 1974. “I’ve wanted to tell her story for a really, really long time, and I didn’t know how to do it,” Elliot-Kugell told us in an exclusive interview ahead of the memoir’s publication. “It’s kind of weird to say, but I feel like, in some ways, I know her better now.”
The film, currently in development, will be adapted by novelist and screenwriter Emma Forrest, with Veritas Entertainment attached to produce. “This is not a traditional Mamas & the Papas biopic,” the film’s press release reads. “It is a definitive Cass Elliot film, centered on her life, legacy, and the mother-daughter bond that shaped them both.”
The film aims to focus on Elliot’s life and career, and it will finally banish the ridiculous and false myth about her death — that she choked on a ham sandwich — once and for all. “I can’t believe we’re still talking about the sandwich after all these years,” Elliot-Kugell told us. “I started running my mom’s estate when I was 18. One of the first things I remember thinking is, ‘We’ve got to stop that ham sandwich rumor thing,’ because it was so painful. It wasn’t enough that we had lost her, to then be [made into] a joke. I’d say probably 50 percent of the people don’t believe it now. The other 50 percent probably still do.”
Finishing the memoir helped her heal, she added: “There is such a sense of completion and real satisfaction as a result of all of this.”
My Mama, Cass is one of the many female rock biopics in the works, including films about Ronnie Spector (starring Zendaya), Janis Joplin (starring Shailene Woodley), Linda Ronstadt (Selena Gomez), and Sister Rosetta Tharpe (Lizzo). Elliot’s bandmate Michelle Phillips has also been trying to make a Mamas and Papas biopic for decades. “Once you’ve taken the knife out of your heart, it makes for a wonderful story,” Phillips told Rolling Stone in 2022. “We’re going to get this movie made, come hell or high water.”
