Kim Novak is sharing her concerns about the upcoming biopic Scandalous!, based on her life.
“I don’t think the relationship was scandalous,” Novak, 92, told The Guardian of her relationship with singer Sammy Davis Jr. in an interview published on Saturday, August 30.
“He’s somebody I really cared about,” she added. “We had so much in common, including that need to be accepted for who we are and what we do, rather than how we look. But I’m concerned they’re going to make it all sexual reasons.”
The upcoming biopic, currently in preproduction, stars Sydney Sweeney and David Jonsson and follows the real-life story of Novak and Davis Jr. who were involved in an infamous 1950s love affair. When news broke of their romance in 1957, Harry Cohn, head of Columbia Pictures at the time, reportedly threatened to take a mob hit out on the famed singer.
The pair eventually called it quits due to the pressure put on them by outside influencers. (Davis Jr. died in 1990 of laryngeal cancer at 64 years of age.)
“[Novak] never wanted to get married back then — to anyone,” Novak’s manager, Sue Cameron, told People in a November 2024 interview. “It was a romance based on love, respect, the things they shared in common.
Cameron continued, “Kim and Sammy met at a party and recognized they were both rebels and outsiders. They both had strong ties to their families and spent time with close relatives in both Hollywood and Chicago. In truth, she hoped their relationship could help break down people’s racial bias.”
Kim Novak and Sydney Sweeney Getty Images
According to Cameron, Novak is “aware of at least four unauthorized and unapproved projects in development about the Kim Novak and Sammy Davis affair.” Scandalous! also serves as actor Colman Domingo’s directorial debut.
“Hopefully we’ll make a beautiful, sweet film that’s really about the possibility of love, but under many eyes,” Domingo, 55, told Deadline in November 2024.
Steven Simione/WireImage Hollywood producer Carol Baum doesn’t get the hype around Sydney Sweeney. “There’s an actress that everybody loves now — Sydney Sweeney,” Baum said during a screening of her 1988 film Dead Ringers, per the Daily Mail. “I don’t get Sydney Sweeney. I was watching on the plane Sydney Sweeney’s movie because I wanted […]
Novak is arguably one of the last iconic, great Hollywood icons of a bygone era. She famously starred in the legendary director Alfred Hitchcock‘s masterpiece Vertigo, solidifying the actress as a bonafide star. While she now lives a life of seclusion, according to The Guardian, she now finds herself the subject of multiple films, including Kim Novak’s Vertigo, a documentary about her life premiering at this year’s Venice Film Festival.
The actress is also being honored at the festival with a lifetime achievement award — an award she considers a “gift.”
“It’s incredible to feel appreciated and to receive this gift before the end of my life,” she told The Guardian in the same interview. “I think I’m being honored as much for being authentic as for my acting. It has sort of come full circle.”
