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Many saw similarities between American Idol's most recent contestant evictee, 17-year-old Paris Bennett, and the show's previous winner, Fantasia, but what really set the two cartoon-voiced, soulful songbirds apart was backstory. For while Paris was merely a nice kid from a good family (read: bo-ring), Fantasia's life unfolded like a charmed, inner-city fable: Unwed, teenage mother comes from dead-end poverty street (and, it later comes out, hides illiteracy) to win America's ultimate popularity contest. Just when you thought Fantasia's life couldn't be any more charmed, however, there's more: THR reports that she will star as herself in a Lifetime biopic.

The movie, tentatively titled "Life Is Not a Fairy Tale: The Fantasia Barrino Story," will premiere in August on the women's cable channel. Debbie Allen will direct from an adaptation of Barrino's autobiography, "Life Is Not a Fairy Tale."

Viola Davis and Kadeem Hardison will portray her parents, Diane and JoJo Barrino, while Loretta Devine has been cast as her grandmother Addie Collins. Newcomer Jamia Simone Nash will play the young Fantasia.

Reenacting a life of hardship will be no simple task for the singer. It can't be easy to reopen old wounds such as the pivotal scene opposite Dwayne Wayne, where Fantasia tearfully tells her father of the love child growing within—especially with Debbie Allen screaming "Cut!" every few seconds, slamming a counting stick against the floor and insisting that this is where Fantasia starts paying—in sweat.