How do i turn an imported list from txt that is a string into an actual list?

Question

I have this code

f= open('data\\party.txt', 'r')
my_party = f.read()
f.close
my_party = json.loads(my_party)

party.txt contains the following

[None, None, None, None, None]

I want this to be imported as the list it is. But it get turned into a string.