Zoë to play pioneering director Joan Littlewood in BBC One's Babs, Barbara Windsor's life story

4 November 2016 15:59

Zoë's latest TV project has been announced today by the BBC. She'll portray the radical theatre director Joan Littlewood in Babs, a special 90-minute drama about the life of national treasure Barbara Windsor, known to many as the star of EastEnders and Carry On films.

Scripted by EastEnders' former lead writer, Tony Jordan, Babs is set in the 1990s. The show finds Windsor reflecting on her life and work as she prepares to make one of her many stage appearances. According to the BBC Media Centre, the insightful biopic 'takes us on a journey of all the people and events that have shaped her career: her lonely childhood and complicated relationship with her father, her doomed marriage to Ronnie Knight, capturing the attention of Joan Littlewood and becoming the blonde bombshell in the Carry On films.'

As a young actress, Windsor joined Littlewood's Theatre Workshop, a London group that trained many performers during the 1950s and 60s at the Theatre Royal, Stratford East. Littlewood was a talented but challenging figure in the theatre industry, known for breaking rules and subverting expectations, with the result that she and the future star didn't always see eye to eye. However, Windsor made a big impression on her and has called her 'a great, great, great director'.

Jaime Winstone and Samantha Spiro will play Windsor at different stages of her life. Other cast members include Leanne Best and Nick Moran as the actress' parents. Today's casting news has been reported by the Radio Times, Digital Spy, AOL and other news sources.

Filming for Babs is currently taking place in South London, which means that Zoë is working on the show alongside the previously announced historical drama Britannia.

Babs is being produced by BBC Studios in association with Red Planet Pictures and will be shown next year on BBC One, in anticipation of Windsor's 80th birthday.

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