Mangano's youngest child, Jackie Miranne, went to FIT and later modeled and became a fashion designer. Now she runs a style blog under her name. She would have been in her early teens when Mangano sold the business to HSN in 1999, and we've chosen Mad Men actress Kiernan Shipka for the role. Not only does Shipka kind of look like Jackie, but she's also a believable young talent. Mad Men may be ending, but we probably haven't seen the best of Shipka yet.
Jennifer Lawrence would undoubtedly make a great Long Island mom as Joy Mangano, and not just because she pulled off a pretty kick-ass Jersey accent in American Hustle. But in the interest of casting Mangano's teenage kids (which is how old they were in the '90s when she was developing the Miracle Mop) we're going to go with Russell's other favorite leading lady collaborator, Amy Adams. Adams does have a history of acting with a mop (Sunshine Cleaning, anyone?) and could easily pull off the struggling mother with a purpose persona, mainly because Amy Adams can pull off just about any persona. Adams would have to dye her trademark red hair, but crazier things have been done for a role this good.
Then the CEO of USA Networks and HSN, Mark Bozek wanted Mangano's line of home inventions so badly that he bought her company, Ingenious Designs, in a first of its kind, multimillion-dollar deal. Matthew McConaughey's short stint in The Wolf of Wall Street was awesome and weird in all the right ways. The combination of his screen presence with Russell's offbeat aesthetic sounds like such a good idea we're kind of surprised they didn't think of it themselves.
Mangano's ex-husband Tony Miranne is still very much a part of her world, not only because they have children together, but because he works for the company as well. Adams and Bradley Cooper's chemistry proved one thing in American Hustle, and that's that they need to work together more often. We'd like to give that working relationship a little nudge by casting Cooper as Tony.
Joel Courtney wowed just about everybody in Super 8, but we haven't seen much of him since. Luckily he's grown up a little bit since then, which makes him the perfect age to play Joy Mangano's only son, Bobby Miranne. Bobby grew up around the business empire his mother was building, but he went the law school route instead, and now works at a firm in New York.
As the oldest of Mangano's kids, after college, Christie Miranne went on to become an executive at her mother's company. Ariel Winter has the pristine dry humor delivery (Modern Family) that's necessary to work well with the director that solidified quirky filmmaking in I Heart Huckabees. We'd like to see what she could do in a semi-dramatic, feature role.