Introducing ‘The Interview’: Anne Hathaway Is Done Trying to Please
2024-04-27 00:44:30
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Hey, it's Michael. Just wanted to let you know what we're up to. this weekend in The Daily Feed. Our colleagues have been working on a brand new show, one that they're calling simply The Interview. It'll be hosted some weeks by Lulu Garcia-Navarro.
You may know her from the show First Person or from NPR. Other weeks, it'll be hosted by David Marchese, who's been doing a terrific interview feature for The Times Magazine over the past few years. On the show, David and Lulu will be interviewing all kinds of interesting people. Actors, politicians, writers. We're not going to spill too many details right now, but we can say their opening lineup looks fantastic.
That includes this weekend, when they're launching the show. David is speaking with the actress Anne Hathaway. Lulu is speaking with Yair Lapid, the leader of the opposition party in Israel. So this weekend, we're going to bring you both of those shows. And then in the following weeks, we'll be sharing every episode here on Saturday in The Daily Feed.
Okay, here's one of the first episodes of The Interview. David speaking with Anne Hathaway. Take a listen.
This is The Interview, a new show from The New York Times. I'm David Marchese.
On one level, Anne Hathaway's new movie, The Idea of You, couldn't be more straightforward. It's an adaptation of a novel about a woman who winds up in a relationship with a much younger singer in a boy band. The movie's an update of the kinds of movies that Hathaway was known for earlier in her career. Movies like The Princess Diaries and The Devil Wears Prada. These were movies where young women find themselves in entirely new situations and have to adapt to high-pressure and glamorous worlds.
The twist for the new movie, though, is that Hathaway's playing a 40-year-old divorced mom. So she's coming in a little less starry-eyed about the whole thing. But The Idea of You also works on another, more complicated, I think you could even say meta level. It's a movie about women pushing against societal expectations of them and getting hate for it. And that is something Hathaway knows a bit about.
A decade ago, around the time she won an Oscar for Les Miserables, the internet turned on Anne Hathaway. People decided, inexplicably, that she was an inauthentic striver or something like that. And the unfair backlash earned a nickname of its own, Hathahate. You might remember it. And it makes even less sense to me now than it did then.
But, as Hathaway told me, for her. the past decade has been about letting go of people's opinions and expectations, including those of interviewers like me. But that hasn't made her any less fun to talk to. In some ways, it's made her more interesting than ever. And, I think, a great guest for my first episode.
Here's my interview with Anne Hathaway.
Hi, guys.
Nice to meet you. I'm David.
Nice to meet you, David. I'm Annie.
Okay, so there are a bunch of things that are intriguing to me about the new movie. One of which is, I think, in kind of an interesting way, that there are a few little what I took to be like Anne Hathaway's psychological Easter eggs sprinkled throughout the film. And I'll get to those. But first, you haven't done a romance in really kind of a while. I think it was, you know, since the days of One Day and Love and Other Drugs, more than ten years ago now.
So, just to start, can you talk to me about why you wanted to do this movie?
It's such a softball question, and I can feel my brain complicating it.
No, I want you to go as complicated as you can make it. That's much better.
Sorry, everybody. I'm still, if you can believe it, after all of these years, I always still find it so much more natural to express my thoughts and my feelings through characters and through the story. So a part of me just wants to be like, well, just see the movie. That's why I wanted to make it. But then I realized that I should probably be able to describe it.
So this is a movie about a woman healing her heart after a massive trust trauma.
And it says that a bloom can happen in a person's life at any stage. And I really found myself almost possessed with the need to explore what those two things meant and looked like.
So I'm now curious about kind of the nature of that possession that you just described. Was it about like an abstract level, or did you find it connected to something about you in a more direct way?
Oh, it was completely direct.
So tell me about that.
Absolutely. It was totally direct. Well, I think that my character, Solemn Marchand, she might not seem like, I don't know, the most complicated character I've ever played. There's no accents. There's no particular gate.
I love it. I love a character's gate. But what she had going for her, she felt familiar. She felt like people I know. I recognized aspects of myself in her.
I recognize aspects of my friends or women I admire. My friends are women I admire. That sounded awful.
But the thing about her was she had a richness to her, which combined with this idea that early in her life, she'd been a people pleaser. I was so excited by that idea of somebody arriving at a place in their life where they've grown out of that phase.
I'm so glad you brought up that people pleaser line, because that was one of the Easter eggs. Okay. A people pleaser from New Jersey.
Yes.
But before I get into that, you know my vote for best Anne Hathaway character gate? Dark Knight.
Thank you very, very much.
So much swagger.
Thank you very much. I worked with a choreographer for three weeks to find that swagger. Really? Yes, I did, because I just felt like I didn't have an... Oh, this is going to sound like a really rude sentence, but I wasn't connected enough to my hips.
I just kept imagining a cat's movements and the way. it's very fluid and swishy, but also very strong and very purposeful. They helped me find my hips.
I think you need to introduce me to that choreographer, because not being connected enough to my hips, I think, describes most of my life problems for the last 42 years, but maybe she can help.
We are going to follow up, because I have so many thoughts. Because I didn't feel connected to my body early on in my life, and it was kind of this weird thing, like you don't know how to do it. And that's something that it's. this amazing gift that acting has given me, is that you always have to think about how you move, how your character moves, and eventually you just kind of get to understand movement.
Why weren't you connected to your body?
That's a great question, and we don't have.
. I mean, it would take me 41 years to answer that. It's genuinely so many things, but I think I probably just needed... I think it's just assumed that we have a relationship with a body like you. Something you know about yourself is that you do not have a relationship with your hips.
Not a good one.
But if somebody said, here's a path for you to have one, what would you do?
That is.
. Oh boy, I don't know how to answer that question. Let's move on.
Okay.
But I want to go back to the people pleaser line. Okay. I interpreted the inclusion of the line, a people pleaser from New Jersey, as pretty intentional. Can you talk to me about why that line is in there?
Well, she had to be from somewhere.
And yeah, so I think it might have been me who suggested that line, maybe, possibly.
Am I wrong in interpreting that line self-referentially? Like, you, are a people pleaser from New Jersey, right?
I think I'm a former people pleaser from New Jersey.
I, yeah, I think.
. I absolutely was. I absolutely was. It was, again, to me, so much of the reason why I was drawn to acting was because it was an outlet for expression that I could not find on my own. And sort of in the space between feeling so connected when I was acting and so lost when I wasn't, you sort of try to make your way.
And one of the ways that you make your way is like, oh, if I do this, that'll make someone else happy. And maybe that's what I'm supposed to be doing. And it takes a really long time to go, well, it doesn't really matter if you don't know who you are. Unless you just want an identity. that's all about pleasing people, which I suppose is perfectly valid as well.
But I'm not that nice.
I'm curious about when that shift from people pleaser to former people pleaser started to happen, because it was interesting for me to revisit a lot of your work and see in a bunch of roles what I took to be kind of, and I don't mean this in a condescending way at all, but sort of like an eager beaver quality. I'm thinking of things like The Devil Wears, Prada or, in some ways, Princess Diaries, or I think your character in Valentine's Day had that sort of, or, in a slightly spikier way, maybe The Intern had that. So I'm interested in knowing about how that quality might have affected the work you did at a certain part of your career. And if that was something you consciously then tried to change.
I was not aware of it until this conversation. But yeah, I do think that there's a thread that runs through those characters about someone who is trying to do something that they might not be altogether comfortable with, but they think is the right thing to do. And the thing that I was so interested about Solène was this idea that turning 40 and knowing who she was, definitely in a professional sense, definitely knowing who she is as a mother, but not necessarily having given herself full freight to explore aspects of herself, just as a person.
You just referenced another key emotional through line of the film, which is the entering middle age aspect. And obviously, 40 years old is a real milestone for a lot of people, a lot of women. But there's also something weird about our cultural fixation on the arbitrary age of 40 years old. Yeah. And I'm just curious how you think about entering middle age, given that it is a, or can be a fraught thing, particularly for people in your line of work, but also understanding that it is kind of a somewhat arbitrary fixation for people.
So serious.
I'm not. I don't take it that seriously. I got to be honest. I, there are so many other things that I identify as milestones. I don't normally talk about it, but I am over five years sober.
That feels like a milestone. to me. 40 feels like a gift. The fact of the matter is like, I hesitate at calling things middle age, simply because I'm really, I can be a little bit of a semantic stickler. And technically I could get hit by a car later today.
I really hope it doesn't happen. And so we don't know if this is middle age. We don't know anything. So I like to connect to it in that way. I'm, I don't think this is breaking news.
I'm a nerd. So I love learning. I am so into learning. And I just kind of like, I don't know. That's what I focus on.
I just focus on, oh my God, I get to learn something today, hopefully.
You know, what you said about semantics, of using the term middle-aged when we don't really know, or we can't know actually, where in our lifespan we are. You know, this make me sound totally like a new agey ding dong, but...
Get there, go there. Come on, let's go. Let's bring it out. Where are your crystals? I've got incense burning on my side.
Let's do this.
The, you know, the, what you said is exactly right. That, you know, we can't take for granted how much life we have left, but actually internalizing that so that we can treat each day and moment like it could be the last, which would be the most powerful change we could make in our lives, is also like maybe the hardest thing to actually do.
Yeah. Well, one of the things that I think about a lot is because I lived in a stressful place for many years, and when you, when you talk about like those performances, a key element to all of them, I think, is that they're really stressed out. young women. And I was a really stressed out young woman. And as a formerly chronically stressed young woman, which leads to, you, know, all manner of things, I just remember thinking like one day, you are taking this for granted.
You are taking your life for granted. Like you have no idea, something could fall through the sky, and that will be lights out for you. So when I find myself, like the old instincts rising, I just tell myself, I'm like, you are not going to die stressed.
It's a small question, but maybe invites a big answer. What were you so stressed about?
Um, I didn't know how to breathe yet.
And that was really complicated. That was really, really complicated, not knowing how to breathe. I mean, it's too, you're right, you're right. It's actually too big an answer. And the simple answer is just like literally everything.
Because I was stressed.
I was just very, very, very in my head about a lot of things. I guess maybe that's the easiest way to put it.
Yeah. It's interesting that your first answer to that question was about breathing. And earlier you alluded to not feeling comfortable in your body.
Yeah.
Those are two somatic things. You must have felt very alienated from your body.
I love that you just identified it as somatic. I think it feels a little too exposed to discuss the alienation I felt from my body, you know, all of that thing. But, um, but, but I think that there was, I think there was a lot of somatic stress there.
Was drinking a way of dealing with that?
Probably.
Yeah.
Fair enough.
Let me ask you a goofier question now, okay?
Okay.
And then I'm going to circle back to heavier stuff again. But the plot of the film turns on a trip to Coachella. Have you ever been to the festival?
I have been to Coachella.
Tell me about your experiences there.
Paul McCartney was the headliner, so it was magical. You just, you go and you see these acts, and you're just kind of like drifting in and out of waves of people. And it's a fun thing to do. I feel like everybody should go and kind of have their own experience. I don't know.
It's probably very different now.
Yeah. That was probably, I think I went the same year that Paul McCartney was, so that was probably 2000,, I would guess 10 or 12..
Yeah, something like.
Yeah, yeah. Can I tell you a very quick Coachella story?
It can even be long.
Well, I don't want to take up our short time with a long Coachella story, but I used to work for music magazines. You know, we used to have to go and cover this stuff. So one year, it was too hot. I didn't have enough water. I was like drinking beer all day, taking other stuff.
And really, by the end of the day, I was like so fried and physically uncomfortable.
You were so tweaked out. Oh, no, that's a bad combination.
I was like, I got to get out of here. And we had a plan that, you know, at like 1130, we'd all meet, you know, in like the press area, and then someone would drive us back to our hotel. But I thought, I can't wait till then. I just got to get out of here. So I thought, I'll walk back to our hotel.
This is the state of mind I was in. Probably. the hotel was like.
Oh, my God, you thought you were going to walk back?
No. 15 miles or whatever in the desert at night. So I just left the festival. And within about 10 minutes, I realized, like, I'm lost in the desert.
I'm so stressed and worried for you right now.
No cars are coming by. I don't know where I am. My mind is totally foggy, but like somehow I'm going to die on the highway trying to walk back to my hotel. And then, you know, after some period of time, a car pulls up and it's my coworkers come to save me, you know, and I.
They rescued you.
I get in the car and I was like, oh, thank God. Like, I've been here forever. I didn't know what I was going to do. And and then he like, looks at the clock and then looks behind him. Literally, like 22 minutes had passed.
I was like an eighth of a mile away from that. I was not at risk of dying.
But, but, but but it felt to those 22 minutes, longest 22 minutes of my life. Oh, my gosh. Well, I'm so happy, everything went OK.
Thank you.
But yeah, no, it's Coachella is very dehydrating.
Very dehydrating. Yeah. You know, I feel like I have sort of danced around this question a couple of times. But to me, the most interesting thing about people is when they change, you know, when they were one thing and they become another thing. And I'm wondering if.
If you can tell me a little more about the change that I think I'm hearing in you, sort of implicitly, from kind of like a stressed out, knotted up person who's in you, in your words, in her own head, to the person you are now.
Change is certainly a word that applies. Another word is I don't like this word because I think it's often misunderstood. So maybe I shouldn't even say it, but I'd love to explore it with you if you want to explore it. settles. I think settling often has a negative connotation, but actually, like.
To me, when settle becomes beautiful, it's like that concept of surrender. And I think gratitude is really crucial to it. And I don't want to go into specifics too much just because I like to keep my personal things personal. But there was a moment in my life where.
I don't know. Do you ever have this feeling where you feel like you have like yourself in the future, like your best possible choice, turn around and guide you? Now I'm sounding very new age.
Explain to me more what you mean.
Well, I was just stuck in this feeling, and I've been stuck in a feeling for a while. And it's that thing about. I want to achieve things. I want to grow. I want to do these things.
And I think you think, mistakenly that the way that you do that is, you're really hard on yourself.
And you drive yourself by self-criticism, by telling yourself you're not enough. And I just I won't go into the specifics of it, but there was a moment in which I just realized that, in order to keep that narrative alive, I was going to have to deny so much. And there was just something about that. There's something about me being aware that, in order to keep up this narrative, which, by the way, I didn't feel like I was improving anymore. I feel like I strongly, strongly plateaued.
And I just said, you're going to have to accept. You're just going to have to accept that if nothing else happens to you, you've had a really great life.
And it felt like, I don't know, it just felt like a light went on.
You know, what else is something that I find?
Interesting is not the right word, but a realization I had about sort of motivating yourself through negativity is that you never get to the bottom of it. You know, it's like you can just keep getting more and more negative, and it's not like you ever hit some rock bottom or like, OK, now I can be. it's just, it's an endless. Yeah, yeah.
That resonates.
You described yourself as a person who wants to achieve things. Yeah. What are the things that you want to achieve? What are the ambitions now?
I don't. I don't feel comfortable getting too specific. I think it just comes from being raised in a superstitious household. I think that, again, I feel.
I don't know, honestly, I don't really want to say, because I just feel like. They feel great to me, and I worry if I shared them and they got shredded. I don't want to feel bad about them. I actually feel really great about them. So but I just think that just acknowledging that you are someone who is ambitious, acknowledging that you are someone who, yeah, I do want to achieve things.
But I'd say that, like, my ambition right now is to do all of that and really, really be a nurturing presence in people's lives as well.
This is another one of the. Potential. Easter eggs are sort of self-referential lines that I thought I picked up in the film. OK. And the reason I'm thinking about it now is because when I asked you about ambitions, you said you don't necessarily want to put it out there because if it got shredded, it would make you feel bad about it.
And there are a couple points in the film where, you know, there are references to your character being picked apart on the Internet. And. Did your experience going through that, you know, a decade plus ago inform the character?
Yes.
Can you tell me in what ways?
Not really. It's in the film.
How phooey.
Sorry. Just just just look. what I can tell you is that, from personal experience, I knew that everything we were saying was true. You know, it happens. Yeah.
I can't believe. I just on the record said phooey. Phooey. Oh. Phooey.
Oh, bluggerns done. I just read this great, great, great list of.
like common Victorian expressions that are so literal and filthy. And I can only think of one right now that I couldn't possibly say.
Wait, tell me, off the record, off the record. Off the record.
It's filthy.
So we're back on the record now.
And for the record, we laughed heartily.
Yes. Yeah. And Heather was at a very inappropriate thing.
It was the Victorians. I was. simply I was just repeating Victorian slang.
Yes, it was a conversation furthering the idea of semantics.
Ah.
That's such a funny way of putting it. Excuse me.
So clearly. at a couple different times in this conversation, I've tried to create a through line or an arc to your career, you know, where I was saying. it seemed like you did this here, or like this happened at this point. And how does that sort of affect things now? Do you see a through line or a particular arc to your career?
I'm not terribly reflective.
I like to look towards the horizon that's coming at me rather than look back at what I've done. Like, I don't watch my films. I'm not sitting around having marathons. It's so sweet. I get texts from friends and from people.
And like, like, I was just on a plane the other day and they were like, oh, my God, I watched Devil Wears, Prada last night. And so, like people, I know, I love that I'm so many of my movies are the films that you cuddle up with. You know, and I do know that I do. I'm aware of that aspect of it. But in terms of like, the concept of having, first of all, the concept of having a name is so weird.
A name that people recognize. It's like I always think about the least likely things that could happen to you as an actor. And one of them is that you have a name that people actually know. So the idea of having a name that signifies something that could qualify as having an Easter egg, it's just, it's. no, that's not a concept that I think about a lot.
I guess my question was whether a different kind of role than the ones we talked about earlier in the conversation started to appeal to you more or speak to you more at this stage of your career?
No, I've always loved spiky, difficult women. Always. That's kind of, you know, you have to understand that when I was 23 years old, I made a film with Jonathan Demme called Rachel Getting Married. And when I was, oh, before that, when I was 21 years old, I got to make a film with Ang Lee called Brokeback Mountain. And so I do think that my, I'm lucky enough to say that within my filmography, there has always been both.
And I think that the last 10 to 12 years has been a less romantic era. So I just kind of assumed that that was done and that kind of phase of my career was over. And so then to find something that actually said, nah, it's not over. And why would you think that it needed to be? That was really cool to me.
Is anything cooking with a Princess Diaries 3?
Yep.
Ah, I know the answer, but could you tell me more about that?
I don't think it would be nice.
There you go. So, you know, I don't want you to think you're a trapper. I think we're about done with the time that I've been.
I'm not trapped.
If you're okay to go a little longer, I have.
I can leave this dinner party at any time. No, which is a great line. Have you read the book? Acts of Service?
No, what is it?
It's a spicy book. But anyway, that's a great line in it, where a character finds herself exploring a situation that is uncomfortable, but really tantalizing to her. And she keeps thinking of this line that she's learned either through a short story or I'm not quite sure where, that I can leave this dinner party at any time I want. And so I always think that. So I often don't feel trapped.
Wait, does that mean you find this conversation uncomfortable, but tantalizing?
I'm just finding this conversation really lovely.
Oh, good.
I'm uncomfortable sometimes just because I think you want me to reveal personal things, and I'm just allergic to that. But I think that we're having a wonderful time anyway.
Yeah, you know, it's such an interesting thing, where, in an ideal world, I always want people to be as personal as possible. But I also fully understand that that's something that someone might not want to do, and that's okay.
I just also find it really hard to imagine that people are interested.
I cannot believe that people are so interested in the sound of my voice and what my brain has. I just have a hard time making that leap.
But then you've also had the experience of people not being nice to you. So I fully understand that it's not as straightforward as I'm making it out to be.
No, no, but it also is, and you're right, and 100%.
And again, it's just hard for me to imagine. I find it hard to imagine that people would be interested in me. That's just a part that I just haven't arrived at yet, and that's one of the reasons why I don't know that I'm a very good celebrity in that, because I don't really know where the walls are between when it becomes, when just being personal and just being intimate, like just letting intimate details out. I don't know where the wall between that and narcissism and that and self-regard. And I think I'm a little, because of what I went through, I'm sensitive to the way it can come across.
And so I would rather be cautious. But then the odd thing is, is that as soon as you stop recording this, all the details you want, like literally, I don't hold back. It's just because it feels like, okay, but now it's contained, now it's safe. But under these things, I think I'm probably not the best interview.
To that end, we're going to talk again for a much shorter period, in about a week and a half, something like that. And you could say, you know, you were wrong about all that.
Or I love that.
I love, I forgot to say this.
I love the marination time in between. I think that's funny enough, really essential to any kind of long form conversation. Cool.
Thank you very much for taking all the time to talk with me today. I appreciate it. Take care. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.
After the break, I give Anne a call back, and the interview gets a little more meta.
A part of me just kind of resists the form of this.
Yeah. Well, it's a totally arbitrary and weird.
And also just slightly rude.
I'm Julie Turkowitz. I'm a reporter at The New York Times. I have been trying to understand changes in migration. So I traveled with photographer Federico Rios to the Darien Gap, this hot, mountainous, 70-mile stretch of jungle straddling the border of Colombia and Panama. We're hiking through a river just like covered in mud.
Many used to think that this route was impassable, but thousands have been risking their lives to pass through the Darien, almost all in the hopes of making it to the United States. We spent nine days hiking through the gap and weeks building trust and relationships with migrants, with smugglers, with migration authorities, to even be able to do this reporting. We interviewed hundreds of people who have made this journey to try and grasp what's making them go to these lengths to find a new life. New York Times journalists spend time in these places to help you understand what's really happening there. You can support this kind of journalism by subscribing to The New York Times.
Welcome back to the interview. I'm David Marchese.
Hi, David. Hi. Hi. I'm so sorry to be a couple minutes late. My espresso machine was betraying me.
That's totally okay. How are you?
I mean, I think I'm caffeinated enough now, but I'm all right. I'm all right.
I am curious, because I have a hunch that maybe you're a ruminator. Is there anything about our conversation to this point that you've been thinking about?
Well, I had a slight word choice remorse moment where you asked me what my goals are coming up, and I kind of decided not to share them. And the reason I gave was because I'd rather not have them shredded. And that just seemed a little harsh, and I just regretted that.
And how would you rephrase it?
I think I would rephrase it, just saying, it's too tender.
Yeah. That is very different than shredded. Yeah.
Yeah. It's just kind of like, you know, and it's just kind of a little bit less self-important.
Do you think it's telling that your mind initially went to shredded?
Oh, yeah. I think that's some scar tissue. I understand why I said it, but also it's not actually reflective of how I feel.
Right.
It's reflective of what I fear, but not what I feel.
I think we're going to get back to that. But before then, something that I wanted to return to was, what are the things that used to stress you out so much, or that would make you be in your own head? Because it's something that you've referred to a couple times, and how you're not stressed out about those things anymore, or less in your head about them. I'm just trying to make it a little more tangible. Are you able to articulate what's in those?
My goal is to heal it, not relive it. So I'm not trying to be evasive. It's just I don't really spend a great deal of time thinking about it, because I feel like I found a window, and I climbed through it, and I work very hard to just be really present here. I think I'm, like I said, I'm more grateful. I'm more settled in myself.
I'm less afraid of things not happening. The time in which I was an emerging adult,
it was a different time. We weren't having the types of conversations that we were having now. So I think a lot of me, a lot of my thoughts, felt very under-expressed. So I don't know if it's more curiosity in the world, or maybe we have this shared language now that feels more gentle.
I feel that there's greater curiosity now,
and less harshness, at least in my personal experience. My God, that was such a long answer. Excuse me.
I'm groping in the dark.
No, no, that's all we're ever doing, is groping in the dark, I think.
Can I tell you, maybe like a, what's a blindingly obvious realization, about my own hypocrisy?
Oh, my God, that's so deep. Tell me everything.
It's not that deep. But you know what, I realize when I'm asking you to make things more tangible, or kind of like asking follow-ups that are sort of entreaties to give me more detail or go deeper, I'm just thinking about that in the light of the little exchange that we had about hips. Remember that? And you asked me a question, and I really got like the, you know, it was almost like the visceral heebie-jeebies. I thought, I'm not talking about that.
No.
And then I thought, gosh, that must be what it feels like for you. every time I ask a question, asking you to go deeper. Is the feeling that I had the feeling that you have all the time doing these kinds of things?
Um, heebie-jeebies. Does it give me the heebie-jeebies? It makes me, you know what it does? It just puts me in a defensive position. And not in defensive in the sense that I feel attacked, but defensive in the sense that it's really hard to say something revealing with a tape recorder there.
And so I just feel like I become a more self-conscious, a more neutral version of myself. Like I watch other actresses, and they're so free, and they're so off the cuff, and they just, not. that they're more revealing, they're just, I don't know, maybe I don't even have a word for it. But, um, anyway, so I don't get the heebie-jeebies, but I don't know that this is,
uh, like I won't take pauses like this to consider my words that much. if we were just having coffee and there wasn't a tape recorder, you know?
Yeah.
But do you, you know, it's, um,
I just don't think people are, we don't usually ask people such direct questions. Like that's just not the way conversations are usually built. Normally, trust is established each by sharing something about ourselves, and you build up a mutual understanding of each other. And so a part of me just kind of resists the form of this.
Yeah. Well, it's a totally arbitrary and weird. Yeah.
But also just slightly rude.
But that's just me. And I just need to, I just kind of need to work on accepting, like I said, that this is just the way this is built.
Well, you know, I, I definitely heard you when you said, you know, you're more comfortable sort of talking about and through your characters than talking about yourself. But, you know, as someone who has my job and as someone who's interested in the person and the life that animates the work, I'm, of course, curious about you and what it's like to be you. And that interest is, you know, it's obviously rooted in an assumption that who you are is meaningful to audiences or fans. You know, the idea that they have some understanding of you outside your work matters in some way. Do you think that matters?
I think I understand the question. That my life is somehow as interesting as my work.
Or just that people having an understanding of who you are outside of the work is in some way meaningful.
Just trying to think if it's meaningful to me with other people.
Yeah.
I don't know. Do you ever have the experience that sometimes you just want to watch a film in another language because you're less familiar with the personal life of the actor and it just lets you get lost in the story?
I know what you mean. Yeah.
So a part of me, I would rather with people, I don't know, it's so, it's kind of strange, but like I, just, I don't want to distract from print at all. Also, going back to the thing before about direct questions and, and, you know, getting where I get the heebie-jeebies and all that. I'm just very protective and I don't ever want to be, I worry about, like other people and the way the press can be opportunistic, because I can have a perfectly lovely, respectful conversation with you. And then to have something that is real and meaningful and personal and to like watch it get filtered through all the different levels of media until it, like arrives at the tabloid version. It just kind of makes you never want to say anything.
that could be, I'm going to use a big word, and it's probably an unwise word to use, but that can be weaponized against the actor. Like. I have like this awesome story about Nick that I want to tell and it's like on the tip of my tongue right now, but I don't want to tell it because I haven't asked him if it's cool.
You're a co-star in the film. Yeah.
Yes. And I'm just aware that he'd have to answer questions about it for the next three months to 30 years.
Like the way that, I'm sure, somewhat annoyingly, you're still being asked questions, including by me, about bad experiences you had on the internet a lifetime ago.
I mean, I, no, no, I don't find you annoying. I value what you do. And just because I'm not the most innately forthcoming person doesn't mean I don't think that this isn't a wonderful forum in a lot of ways. And yeah, I'm just amazed by people who can just express themselves. I'm amazed by them.
Well, you just express yourself in different ways.
I really love expressing myself through my characters. I really, really do. I kind of, also, I think, no, nevermind.
The most telling, Anne Hathaway. You know, I think, nevermind. Bingo.
Give me another 25 years. Maybe I'll relax a little bit more.
All right, I'll get back. I'll get back in touch then.
I do want to end on something fun, though.
Tell me a funny story.
You know what? This didn't happen on set, but I can tell you something. When I was making The Idea of You, I was very lucky, so spoiled, staying in a beautiful house in Atlanta, Georgia. That was much larger than my needs. So I would get home from work, and I'd be in this house by myself, and I was just like, and it was just, that was giving me the heebie-jeebies.
And I was trying to figure out like what was like, why were they feeling this so intensely? And I realized there was no laughter in the house. And when you have a big house like that, you need laughter. And so I started to listen to stand-up specials, and I got really into Adam Sandler's, 100% Fresh. And I think that Adam Sandler is as extraordinary, beloved, and iconic as Adam Sandler is.
I think he's underappreciated. I think he's such a stealth genius. You know, like I have that kind of level of just appreciation for him. I can quote you every single line from Billy Madison and Taffy Gilmore. And the Wedding Singer.
I'm a big fan.
I'm going to put your feet to the fire. Let's trade Sandler lines. I'll go first from his movies.
I eat a piece of shit like you for breakfast.
You eat pieces of shit for breakfast? You got it! Hold on, hold on. No, no, the best follow-up ever.
No.
If peeing my pants is cool,
then I'm Miles Davis.
Or call me Miles Davis.
Okay, okay, okay.
Shampoo is better. I go on first and leave the hair clean. No, conditioner is better. I leave the hair silky and smooth. Oh, really, fool?
Hold on, wait for it. Stop looking at me, Schwan.
Very good. Very good. You know, I feel bad. I'm just taking up your time now, just jabbering about Adam Sandler. No.
So this is what I'm talking about. But this is the part that I'm talking about. Like, I feel much more comfortable talking about Adam Sandler. Who I've never met. Than I do, like, talking about what makes me tick.
I feel like, you know, you get to know somebody just by talking about stuff rather than describing yourself.
You know? I do. I do, yeah.
But that's also, again, I just need to figure out how to practice.
Well, I hope this has been part of that practice. And I, again, just want to say thank you. And maybe sometime I'll see you down the line and we'll talk about Adam Sandler.
Thank you very, very much. And be well. Be well. Stretch your hips out.
All right. Take care.
All right. Bye.
That was Anne Hathaway. Her new movie is The Idea of You. And it's on Prime Video, starting May 2nd.
Thanks so much for listening. If you want to hear another great conversation, well, we've got one for you. Since this is the first week of our new show, we're launching with two episodes. My co-host is Lulu Garcia-Navarro. And this week, she's talking to Yair Lapid, the opposition leader in Israel, about what's next for his country.
For those of us who are history buffs, we know that sometimes it takes only one really bad government in order to, I don't want to say destroy,
but weaken a country from within significantly. If you like what you're hearing, subscribe to The Interview wherever you get your podcasts. And to read or listen to any of our conversations, you can always go to nytimes.com slash theinterview. This conversation was produced by Wyatt Orme. It was edited by Annabelle Bacon.
Mixing by Efim Shapiro. Fact-checking by Liu Fang. Original music by Marion Lozano, Diane Wong, and Dan Powell. Photography by Devin Yalkin. The rest of the team is Seth Kelly and Priya Matthew.
Our executive producer is Alison Benedict. Special thanks to Rory Walsh, Renan Borelli, Jake Silverstein, Hollis Schuman, and Sam Dolnik. Email the show anytime at theinterview at nytimes.com. I'm David Marchese, and this is The Interview from The New York Times.
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