Anne Hathaway covers the latest issue of Vogue to promote her latest film, Mother Mary. Anne has been taking some more offbeat roles in recent years, and Mother Mary sounds pretty art-house. She plays a rock star (think Lady Gaga-esque) named Mother Mary who abandons her tour and seeks out Michaela Coel, because Coel’s character helped form the image of “Mother Mary.” So, basically, much of the film is just Coel and Hathaway talking in a barn, with flashback scenes of Anne on stage as Mother Mary. It was directed by David Lowery and Anne fought hard for the role. The Vogue profile is very, very heavy on Anne talking about this film, with lots of other people talking about how much they love Anne. Some highlights:
‘Mother Mary’ was her most challenging role: “What struck me right away, reading the script, is that you can’t ‘perform’ Mother Mary. If I got the part, I would have to become material David could craft with.” In essence, she had to make herself into a credible global pop star, one capable of executing complex choreography in a headdress and high heels and channeling the songs that Antonoff and Charli XCX were writing on her behalf. But preparing for all of this wasn’t simply a matter of dance practice or learning to sing by seething and sneering and, yes, sometimes screaming. “I had to submit to being a beginner. The humility of that—showing up every day knowing you’re going to suck. And it has to be okay. You’re not ‘bad.’ You’re just a beginner. Getting to that mindset—I had to shed some things that were hard to shed. It was welcome. But it was hard, the way transformational experiences can be hard.”
Learning how to sing like a pop star: “I finally learned how to breathe. My body was so locked up—I literally couldn’t take a deep breath. I’d been trying to open that space for years and I thought it was physically impossible. All my breath, it was stuck….” She makes a strangling gesture. “My whole life, I’ve been up here,” Hathaway continues, tapping a high note on the keyboard. “Soprano. My mom’s a soprano—a beautiful singer. And I can touch those notes, but….” Hathaway plays the low note again, letting it sustain. “It turns out, I’m down here. That’s where I like to live.”
Gucci Westman, Hathaway’s frequent makeup artist and friend, on Anne: “Like, she doesn’t gossip. It just doesn’t occur to her to be catty—and then you don’t want to be catty around her. I don’t want to give the impression she’s not fun to hang out with,” Westman quickly adds, going on to say that she and Hathaway “have the best time” vintage shopping (in Japan, recently) and are often mulling home decor, which makes sense, inasmuch as Westman was the previous tenant of Hathaway’s Manhattan home. “She’s funny, she’s curious—that’s the main word I’d use to describe her. I just mean she looks for the good in people.”
I don’t trust people who don’t gossip. The thing is, I don’t even believe that Anne is this extremely nice person who never gossips and is never catty about anyone. I think she’s a nice person… most of the time. But she’s perfectly capable of being mean, catty, snide, bitchy and everything else JUST LIKE EVERYONE ELSE. I think Anne’s big secret isn’t that she’s secretly a mean girl who gossips, it’s that she’s a humongous dork. But obviously, Vogue didn’t want to describe her that way. They’re trying to sell magazines, after all. At least the photos were good?
Cover & IG courtesy of Vogue.
She’s not on the cover of the September Issue??? 😆
The photos are not good. Anne is beautiful but Annie Leibovitz’s commitment to this grey, drab aesthetic is tired awful and she needs to be stopped.
I would love that cover photo if it wasn’t so……gray. The dress looks gorgeous, Anne looks gorgeous – but it just looks drab like you said.
Drab indeed! These pictures are dull and lifeless and do their beautiful garments and the subject no favors!
Agree with this take. Anne looks lovely and so did Zendaya when Liebowitz photograph her. But the aesthetic for me is just a no. Grey, almost bluish or greenish, and drab.
I don’t understand how Annie is still getting work. Everything I see from her is awful. Her photos of black women are especially a crime against art.
Hathaway gives off huge theatre kid energy. I’ve liked her ever since I watched The Princess Diaries with my daughter. She was so good at doing the whole floppy teenage thing and at being dorky and gawky.
I feel like i”d love to see Anne and Ariana Grande do something together. They both have that kind of excitable theatre kid energy, it would be such good chemistry!
Is it just me or did she overdo with the facelifts?
Actually I like the photos and the fashion but it lacks a spark. It’s trying to be too perfect?
I love Annie and she looks gorgeous in these photos. I also love Gucci Westman and I would absolutely believe her if she says AH isn’t gossipy — she’s friends with literally everyone in Hollywood.
I can believe that being gossipy can come back and bite you in Hollywood and the theater world. So being smart about how and when to gossip is probably a good thing. And there’s ways to gossip without it meaning you talk sh-t about people, which I think is probably what he is saying here.
What’s all this overwrought verbiage about having to make herself into a global pop star with complex choreography and how she had to be a beginner and be humble and “shed some things that were hard to shed”. She talks about it as if this was an incredibly amazing and novel concept that dropped on her out of nowhere. Didn’t she just help develop, produce, and star in a movie (The Idea of You) where Nicholas Galitzine did exactly that – and where he also sang songs written on his behalf? Plus talked in interviews about how worried he was as a non-dancer to be part of a group of professional dancers? Granted, he wasn’t in heels and wearing a headdress. She should have just said, now I really know what Nick went through and gone from there instead of all this other mumbo jumbo. That would have been a more interesting angle.
Wow.
That seems to have triggered you.
Didn’t she have the right to feel what she felt, or is it that she didn’t have the right to share what she felt?
“ I don’t trust people who don’t gossip. “
I don’t trust people who do gossip.
I imagine it depends on how you define “gossip”. If gossiping is about discussing people you care about with other people who care about them, then I hope we all do that.
If gossiping is about making negative speculations about people’s lives, betraying confidence, or bad mouthing ‘friends’ behind their backs I don’t think everyone does that. I don’t think my friends do, because they never behave that way around me. I think people who speak badly of others in their absence will speak badly of you in your absence, and should be avoided whenever possible.
AGREED!
I’ve been the subject of gossip and it hurt me deeply when I found out.
I’ll never be a gossiper. I’d like to believe my trustworthiness is based on my ethics, morals and actions, not whether I’m a gossiper or not.
She looks beautiful. The movie sounds interesting, and I love Michaela Coel so I will check it out sometime.
Take note Lauren.. this is how you photograph for Vogue. Divine styling, lovely makeup and clothing that is true couture . Glorious.