The Sound of Musicscion says there will be no singing nuns inBaroness.
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The hills are alive with the sound of schmoozing.
And he is not one of the von Trapps you would occasionally see performing Edelweiss onOprahorThe Viewin years past.
But, as a longtime New Yorker, he is probably the most media-friendly von Trapp.
This occasionally causes issues.
Take the wordwe,which, when Myles uses it, typically refers to just him and his mother.
That distinction is often lost in headlines.
The emails I get: You cant speak on behalf of everyone in the family.
Of course I cant, he says.
The process of developingBaronesshas the potential to spark more familial tension, so Myles is treading carefully.
Most people who are born into public families prefer to maintain private lives, he says.
There will be no singing nuns inBaroness,which Myles is developing with filmmaker Rebecca Eskreis.
(Im not in denial about that, Myles says.)
The legendary Maria, Henriettes mother-in-law, will be a supporting character.
Her depiction, Myles asserts, will be a departure from Julie Andrewss.
Its very well known that she was a tough cookie.
It will be funny, Myles says: The women in my family are extremely dry.
There will also be a sense of scale.
Can you imagine youre living in this small town and then your family becomes wildly, insanely famous?
He sees it as a meaty role for a major actress.
You have to love her, and you have to be able to hate her.
But at the end of the day, you cry when she dies.
Even in its gestational phase, the show is testing Myless skills in diplomacy.
For any von Trapps who may be reading this, rest assured: The lawsuit will not be included.
Its irrelevant history, Myles says.
Still, it remains a touchy subject.
For similar reasons, he adds, you did not go around flaunting anything.
You werent allowed to think that you were a von Trapp.
One of his mothers best friends was a great-granddaughter of Andrew Carnegie.
One Sunday afternoon, we were on my parents small motorboat, cruising around with her and her kids.
Both mothers ripped me a new one for a solid 15 minutes.
For years, he never said anything like that again.
Not until Myles attended NYU in the mid-aughts did he realize just how famous his last name was.
(He has a day job in corporate finance in the fashion industry.)
Of this, he says, Once was enough.
How many times has he seenThe Sound of Music?
Ive seen the beginning twice as many times as Ive seen the entire movie, he says.
New friends will want to watch it with him, but they usually lose interest midway.
They dont realize that its three and a half hours long.
Once, during a fit of depression in 2016, he caught the movie on TV.
I disassociated myself from being a member of the family, he says.
The family would just …
Drift off into anonymity, Eskreis says.
AndThe Sound of Musicwould either play itself out or not, Myles says.
I dont know how many people are going to be watching a three-and-a-half-hour musical down the road.
But this is a way of taking the same story of hope and making it relevant in todays society.
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