EXCLUSIVE: Camila Cabello has found her next major acting gig on the heels of Prime Video’s Cinderella. The Cuban-born pop star has closed a deal to join Jay Will, Mary J. Blige and Chiwetel Ejiofor in Rob Peace — the drama Ejiofor is directing from his own script, as his sophomore feature effort.
The film, currently in production, is based on Jeff Hobbs’ bestselling biography The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace: A Brilliant Young Man Who Left Newark for the Ivy League. It follows Robert Peace (Will), a young man who grew up in a crime-ridden section of Newark, NJ and later graduated from Yale with degrees in molecular biophysics and biochemistry earned on scholarship. Peace led a dual life living in the insular world of academia and as a lab researcher of cancer and infectious diseases, while at the same time making six figures from the sale of marijuana. He was killed in a drug-related shooting in 2011.
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Cabello will play Peace’s fellow Yale student Naya, with Blige and Ejiofor as his mother and father.
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LAMF presents Rob Peace, in association with Hill District Media and Participant, a Sugar Peace production. Producers on the project include Antoine Fuqua, Rebecca Hobbs, Kat Samick, Andrea Calderwood, Jeffrey Soros, Simon Horsman, and Alex Kurtzman and Jenny Lumet for 25 Stories. Exec producers are Blige, Luke Rodgers and Morgan Earnest for LAMF, Jeff Skoll and Robert Kessel for Participant, Jamin O’Brien, and Bruce Evans for 25 Stories.
Cabello is a Latin Grammy, AMA and Billboard Music Award winner who, before going solo, broke out as a member of Fifth Harmony, one of the top-selling girl groups in history. In 2021 she emerged as the first Hispanic woman to achieve RIAA Diamond status with her Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 smash “Havana” [feat. Young Thug], and that same year found her first major film role as the lead of Kay Cannon’s Cinderella — a modern, musical adaptation of the classic fairy tale from Prime Video, which had her starring opposite Billy Porter.
Cabello’s career in music has seen her collaborate with everyone from Ed Sheeran to Shawn Mendes and Machine Gun Kelly, with her work thus far amassing streams in the billions. Her most recent studio album, Familia — following 2018’s Camila and 2019’s Romance — was released last year via Epic Records.
Cabello is repped by Gold Music Management and WME.