Sandy Hook film headed for TV
Elisabeth Rohm to star as Scarlett Lewis
SANDY HOOK — Actress Elisabeth Rohm will star in a television movie about Scarlett Lewis — the Sandy Hook mom who lost a son in the 2012 school shooting and founded a nonprofit to promote the healing power of love.
“Elisabeth Rohm is an inspiring person in her own right, and one of the reasons I am so excited to work with her is because she loves the story,” Lewis said this week. “She understands the importance of the work.”
Lewis, whose free social and emotional learning curriculum through the Jesse Lewis Choose Love Movement is being taught in 10,000 schools and 110 countries, shared the stage with Rohm and other speakers in November, when Rohm hosted a discussion forum about humility.
Production details about the TV movie deal, which was first reported by Deadline, were not immediately available Tuesday, except that 04 Entertainment had bought the rights to Lewis’ 2013 memoir, “Nurturing Healing Love: A Mother’s Journey of Hope and Forgiveness.”
“There is a commitment on their part to follow closely along the lines of the story, but also to
include … the our focus on preventing violence, suicide, depression, substance abuse and mental illness,” Lewis said.
Rohm, best known for her work on television’s “Law & Order,” is the co-founder and host of RESPECT Talks, a discussion series.
Lewis, whose son was among the 20 first-graders and six educators killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School, has become one of the most visible faces of the tragedy.
Lewis made national headlines in 2018 when she and her college-age son JT Lewis attend
ed a roundtable discussion about school safety with President Donald Trump in the White House. Before the meeting, Lewis’ social and emotional learning program had been singled out as a best practice by the White House in its 180-page school safety report as a way to reduce classroom bullying and violence.
Lewis said the nonprofit’s
focus on the four core principles of courage, gratitude, forgiveness, and compassion-in-action is especially important during the coronavirus crisis, when lives are being upended and lost.
“I forgave the young man who murdered Jesse, yet I continue to struggle with forgiveness within my own family,” Lewis wrote in a Hearst Connecticut Media opinion piece on the 8th anniversary of the Sandy Hook shooting in December. “I know how difficult it can be. Yet as we courageously contemplate the totality of our existence, we also consider the nature of eternal regret, i.e., missed opportunities lost to us forever, especially when someone dies.”