Josh Groban to play Billy Joel in audio drama about enigmatic 1980s woman

Singer-actor Josh Groban will portray Billy Joel in an Audible Original audio series about Miranda Grosvenor, the alter ego of a woman in the 1980s whose enchanting phone calls made celebrities fall for her.

"The Miranda Obsession," a drama inspired by the story of Whitney Walton, aka Miranda Grosvenor, and the men she enticed without ever meeting them, is in production and scheduled to premiere on Audible on April 28. In addition to Groban, the cast includes Rachel Brosnahan as Walton, John Benjamin Hickey as writer-comedian Buck Henry, Harry Lloyd as New York restaurateur-hotelier Brian McNally, Morgan Spector as filmmaker Paul Schrader and Milo Ventimiglia as music producer Richard Perry.

In a 1999 Vanity Fair article about the woman on which this drama is based, Joel told the magazine, "I knew her as Whitney Walton," adding that she "seemed to know a lot of people in my business. Stevie Winwood. Sting. Eric Clapton. I thought she was on the level. This was just before I started dating Christie Brinkley. I was dating Elle Macpherson at the time."

He went on to explain, "Musicians get calls from all kinds of wacko people.... But this girl was different.... She was awfully good company." Even though Joel wanted to meet her in person, she stood him up three times. "I just said that's it, this is some kind of phony," he said. Nevertheless, "I was even thinking about making a musical about this, because every time I tell people this story, they never believe it."

Walton died in 2016 at age 74.

Brosnahan ("The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel") also is an executive producer of the series through her company Scrap Paper Pictures.