Former Today Show co-host Kathie Lee Gifford is heading back to acting and writing with her own movie, Then Came You. She wrote it specifically for funnyman Craig Ferguson, who joked with us about the whole experience. Focusing her work now on writing movies and TV for those dealing with loss, Lee Gifford co-starred in the movie with Ferguson.
Five Things You Need to Know:
- The romantic comedy is about a lonely widow who plans a trip around the world with her husband's ashes, visiting every place they loved. The first stop on the journey is Scotland, where her life is changed forever.
- Lee Gifford has recently said she intends to make movies about the experiences of losing a loved one and being a widow. She told us, "This is a romantic comedy in essence for people who think they’ll never have romance again and they don’t find much funny anymore and that’s just sad to me. I wanted to write a movie that’s not autobiographical about me at all, but people whose dreams were set aside a long time ago because life was hard and even if you have dreams, sometimes you can’t afford them."
- The 67-year-old entertainer was born in Paris, France to American parents and then moved to the States. She says her "dreams have come true beyond what I could have imagined as a little girl growing up in Bowie Maryland. I wanted to be in the movies since I was born."
- Lee Gifford was married to for nearly 30 years to former NFL star and sportscaster Frank Gifford, who died in 2015. The two talked about the process of making the movie and Lee Gifford's loss, "I think you did bring up the process of getting through after Frank in some way and because of the knowledge going through that and who you are. Humans cope with grief and part of how they cope is with humor and that’s in this movie," Ferguson said.
- There's already a sequel in the works for this movie and it's said Lee Gifford is working on a musical adaptation of It's a Wonderful Life with John McDaniel. McDaniel is composing music while Gifford is writing lyrics.