Sylvia Hoeks as Anna Nicole Smith in Hurricanna.
Photo: Courtesy of Magenta Light Studios
by Rebecca M. Alvin
In the mid-1990s, buxom blonde model Anna Nicole Smith was everywhere. The Texas native exploded into public consciousness when she posed for Playboy in 1992 and was the 1993 Playmate of the Year, followed by modeling campaigns with H&M and Guess. And then she married 89-year-old billionaire J. Howard Marshall when she was just 27 causing speculation about her intentions, especially as he passed away a year later.
Of course, she was a beautiful young woman, but she was also a persona that brought together some unusual characteristics for a fashion model. For one thing, Smith was not a skinny girl flaunting an anorexia-evoking shape. With a 38-inch hip measurement and 26-inch waist, balanced against a 41-inch bust, she pushed the limits of what’s customary for a fashion model while appealing to admirers with her real-world, curvy figure. She also refused to play along with the rules of bourgeois society, frequently speaking without censoring herself and embracing her working-class cultural background that included marrying and becoming a mother at 17 years of age and working as a stripper. Sadly, she is perhaps best remembered for her frequent public appearances while clearly under the influence of drugs and alcohol, slurring her speech, and making no attempt to soften her edges. So, when she died in 2007 from an overdose of multiple drugs, tragic as it was, it was not shocking.
Nor was it surprising to see multiple film and television projects about her, including three dramatizations and later a Netflix documentary in 2023, Anna Nicole Smith: You Don’t Know Me. But in 2025, director Francesca Gregorini completed a film focused solely on the final 48 hours of Smith’s life. That film, Hurricanna, which was supposed to premiere at last year’s Provincetown International Film Festival, before it was withdrawn, will now be shown for one screening only here in Provincetown, in advance of its January 2027 theatrical release, as part of Waters Edge Cinema’s Women’s Week screening program.
“It’s my great joy to be bringing it to Provincetown and have it screen at Women’s Week, just because I love Provincetown. I spend a lot of time there…It’s making its debut where it rightly should, where it was intended to,” Gregorini says.
Focusing on Smith’s final two days meant delving into some unrelentingly heavy material in Hurricanna. Smith’s son Daniel, with whom she was extremely close, died of an accidental overdose while visiting her in the hospital after she’d just given birth to his sister, just a few months before the film starts. That loss, coupled with a lifetime of addiction and other mental health issues, and the pressures and challenges of a life in the spotlight combined to put Smith in crisis those last 48 hours.
“The story that I was interested in telling was not the, you know, big tits and the drunken, silly woman, because I think we’ve seen all that, and I think she was very much taken advantage of in that realm. I think I wanted to go deeper and reveal this woman who was really in a very tough situation, doing her best” says Gregorini. “Also, I think it’s a study in the people around her, you know, and how addiction affects the person taking the drugs, but really impacts everyone around them.”
Gregorini says she was drawn to the project primarily because of its script, which she thought showed a very human portrait of someone it’s easy to caricature: a woman, a mother, and an addict, who also happened to become wildly famous rather quickly. She realized there were unexpected personal connections she could make with Smith. For one thing, Gregorini understands some of the challenges of life in the spotlight, as the daughter of actress Barbara Bach (The Spy Who Loved Me, Caveman) and stepdaughter of Ringo Starr of The Beatles. But also, she says, “I just realized that I had many more points of contact with her than I assumed I had. And, you know, because I grew up in an alcoholic household, definitely, the drugs and alcoholic connection was real for me.” She adds that, in fact, the date of the Hurricanna screening in Provincetown is on her 8-year sobriety anniversary, making it extra special.
Clearly the casting for this difficult role would be important, and ultimately Dutch actress Sylvia Hoeks took on the role of Anna Nicole Smith. “I think she did such an incredible job and brought such depth and humanity,” explains Gregorini. The supporting cast includes Holly Hunter as Smith’s psychiatrist and Mark Duplass as her lawyer/partner during the final phase of her life, Howard K. Stern. The film is Gregorini’s third feature film as a director and it was written by Rachel and Matt Sarnoff.
Hurricanna will screen on Friday, October 16, 7:30 p.m. at Waters Edge Cinema, 237 Commercial St., 2nd Fl., Provincetown. For tickets ($15/$13 seniors and students) and information call 508.487.FILM or visit provincetownfilm.org/cinema.
