When Today show senior VP Noah Oppenheim left the TV news world 8 years ago with the goal of becoming a screenwriter, he borrowed from his news roots and a childhood experience, for his first script.
Oppenheim wrote Jackie, the new film staring Natalie Portman in a Golden Globe-nominated role as Jackie Kennedy. In a Periscope interview with entertainment reporter Dave Karger, Oppenheim credits Chris Matthews, who’s written two books on John F. Kennedy, for helping him along the way. Oppenheim’s first job out of college was on MSNBC’s Hardball. During his travels around the country with Matthews, Oppenheim’s “fascination” as he calls it, with Jackie Kennedy intensified.
After three years as a senior producer at the Today show, Oppenheim left TV news behind in 2008, moving to Los Angeles to join Reveille Entertainment.
“Jackie was the first spec script I wrote,” Oppenheim said. But his fascination began much earlier, as a child during a visit to his grandmother’s house when he found a box of newspaper clippings from the week following the Kennedy assassination.
Watching his words come to life so many years after putting them to paper “is pretty mind-blowing,” he says.
“Seeing the set of the White House in the studio outside of Paris. It’s stunning. The whole thing blew my mind.”
Oppenheim returned to the Today show as senior VP two years ago. His screenplay for Jackie won the top prize at the Venice Film Festival in September.