“Who Am I Rooting For?” – Anne Hathaway, Dakota Johnson and Josh Hartnett on Verity
Stars Anne Hathaway, Dakota Johnson, and Josh Hartnett break down the main romances, working on a thriller, and more.
Colleen Hoover is primarily known for her romance novels, but if you’re expecting that same swooning love story walking into Verity, the upcoming adaptation of her 2018 thriller, think again.
“The romance in the movie is the kind of romance that’s not really good for anybody. It’s not really healthy,” star Dakota Johnson explains. Johnson, along with costars Anne Hathaway and Josh Hartnett, sat down with Fandango correspondent Emily Orozco to discuss their new feature. Verity follows struggling writer Lowen Ashleigh (Johnson), who is commissioned to continue the book series of popular author Verity Crawford (Hathaway) after she falls into a coma from a car accident. While staying with Verity’s husband Jeremy (Hartnett) at their family home, she uncovers dark secrets about Verity’s past while working on her manuscripts.
Verity appropriately touches on topics of the truth and who to trust. The perspective of the film is shaped around Lowen, who proves to be a slightly unreliable narrator, especially when it comes to Verity. As Lowen stays in the Crawfords’ house and learns more about Verity, the new information changes Lowen’s perspective on how she “becomes” Verity through ghostwriting her novels. Hathaway acknowledged the dynamic between who Lowen thinks Verity is and who Verity actually is influenced her portrayal of the character.
“I had to imagine the character from Lowen’s point of view, because everything that you’re seeing is as Lowen’s putting the story together. So it meant that there were some things about her that you could turn up, make a little bit more heightened, and play into the villainy, because Lowen thinks that she’s a villain. The fun part for me was then the contrast, because you don’t get to spend a lot of time with actual Verity. I was trying to inject that with as much reality as possible, so that the two selves don’t really match up in a way that I was hoping would make the audience feel really unsettled, uncomfortable, and [that] every conclusion that they had come to needed to be re-examined.”
The three also credit director Michael Showalter with encouraging experimentation with takes. “[Showalter] was always kind of throwing things in the middle of a scene, like ‘Why don’t we try this now?,'” Hartnett says, “He’s so enthusiastic about what he’s watching that you feel like he’s right in there. He’s fully feeling this film and what he wants to receive from it.”
“Michael was the most amazing partner to make sure we were all dialed in to where we needed to be,” agrees Hathaway.
Check out the full Big Ticket interview above to see Anne Hathaway, Josh Hartnett, and Dakota Johnson break down the complicated relationship between Verity, Lowen, and Jeremy, the behind-the-scenes challenges in bringing a thriller movie to life, and their dream manuscript ideas.
Verity opens October 2. Get your tickets here.
