Via The Hollywood Reporter, it sounds like the queen of daytime television might soon take her first big-screen role in more than a decade. Oprah Winfrey, the trade paper reports, is weighing a role in The Butler, which follows the life of Eugene Allen, a White House butler who served eight presidents over a career that spanned 1952 to 1986. Allen’s story was told by The Washington Post after the 2008 presidential election—”a black man unknown to the headlines” who started out as a “pantry man” earning $2,400 a year and eventually worked his way up to the White House residence’s top job of maître d’hôtel. Allen died in 2010 at the age of 90.

The film, which is based upon the Post article, is set to be directed by Lee Daniels and would follow Allen through his years serving every president between Harry S. Truman and Ronald Reagan. Winfrey, who was an executive producer on Daniels’ 2009 film Precious, is said to be considering playing Allen’s wife, Helene, which would be her first acting job since 1998’s Beloved.

It’s a interesting project, and not just because of Winfrey’s potential involvement in front of the camera. It’s a story that tracks more than three decades of Washington’s history, and one that, once it goes into production (nothing is scheduled yet), could be something the District’s Office of Motion Picture and Television Development tries to bring here. Assuming the office can sell The Butler‘s producers on filming in D.C. without the promise of any financial incentives, which is one of the reasons why the District loses to Maryland and Virginia on so many movies and television shows that actually take place in Washington.

But back to Winfrey. She might actually need this more. Her year-old Oprah Winfrey Network is flagging so badly in the ratings, she’s taken to sussing out whom among her 9.2 million Twitter followers possess Neilsen ratings devices in an attempt to boost her measured viewership.