Pose multi-hyphenate Janet Mock will make her film producing and writing debut with Janet, a Netflix biopic following Washington Post journalist Janet Cooke. She is the first Black trans woman to have a deal with a major studio, according to Deadline.

As Deadline reports, the film will be a partnership between Mock and Ryan Murphy. Mock will co-write the screenplay with Ned Martel, a former Washington Post editor. She will direct and produce with Murphy and Martel.

Cooke’s story is as odd as it is entertaining. In 1981, she won a Pulitzer for her piece “Jimmy’s World,” supposedly telling the story of a young man who preferred doing heroin to going to school. Her career came to a crashing halt when it was revealed she made the entire story up. The fabricated story, with an editor’s note about its falsehoods, is still available to read on The Washington Post.

Mock called working on the film “a full-circle moment for me.”

“I began my career as a journalist, dreaming of telling stories that mattered for a living,” she said, according to Deadline. “I am thrilled to partner with Netflix for my feature debut, centered on a young [B]lack woman at the Washington Post and her ambitious and complicated quest to make the front page–no matter what.”

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Photo: Getty/ ABC screenshot

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