Typhoid Mary

by Rachel Ward
Feature Film Screenplay

A brilliant but headstrong Irish immigrant cook unintentionally spreads typhoid to some of the wealthiest homes in Gilded Age New York, until relentless investigators hunt her down, feed her to the tabloids and make her name infamous even to this day.

A California native, Rachel earned a BA from USC’s School of Cinematic Arts before defecting to Columbia for her MFA. She’s been a producer on six feature films, such as Space Station 76, Super Dark Times, and the Grammy-nominated Beats, Rhymes and Life: The Travels of a Tribe Called Quest. Her first feature screenplay, Typhoid Mary, won Columbia’s Sloan Screenwriting Grant and the SFFilm Science in Cinema Filmmaker Fellowship in 2021.