Anne Hathaway spent the past few years unaware of the rise and fall of WeWork. “Between just being focused on my work and becoming a mother—it was a period of my life
I don’t think I was following all of the various news stories that WeWork was a part of,” says the 39-year-old actor. “I somehow missed the entire thing.”
The first time she was made fully aware of the backstory of the multibillion-dollar co-working startup—anchored by the intense relationship between its founder, Adam Neumann, and his wife, Rebekah Paltrow Neumann—was when she was offered the part of Rebekah in WeCrashed, Apple TV+’s adaptation of the Wondery podcast that details the fraught inner workings of the company and the romantic partnership at its center.
Hathaway—who prefers to be called Annie—has been a household name since she first appeared in the Princess Diaries movies. She then transitioned into adult roles (Brokeback Mountain, Rachel Getting Married) and iconic characters (Andy in The Devil Wears Prada; Selina Kyle, aka Catwoman, in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises) and became an Oscar winner (Les Misérables) and host. She is currently on Zoom in a hotel in Rome with parakeets flying outside of her window, recounting the story of her most recent role as actor and executive producer.
It seems as though every actor’s latest turn is a ripped-from-the-headlines story that seeks to explain the strange times we live in. (See also: The Dropout, about Elizabeth Holmes; Inventing Anna, about Anna Sorokin, better known as Anna Delvey; Super Pumped, about Uber’s ex–chief executive Travis Kalanick.) When co-creators and executive producers Lee Eisenberg and Drew Crevello offered Hathaway the part, she was intrigued once she got up to speed on coverage.
WeCrashed is also a chaotic love story, almost a folie à deux, between Jared Leto’s borderline messianic Adam and Hathaway’s Rebekah, who comes across as a kind of Lady Macbeth for the Goop crowd. (Gwyneth Paltrow is Rebekah’s cousin and a specter of success and admiration in the show.) Hathaway was excited to take on the role opposite Jared Leto, who transforms into Neumann, an Israeli serial entrepreneur. Anne Hathaway
Rebekah Neumann, whom Hathaway has yet to meet, has a distinctive low voice and distinct cadence. Hathaway worked with a dialect coach, but it wasn’t until Leto arrived on set as Neumann that she nailed it. “I’d been playing around with it, but it was something I was doing rather than feeling. And then, when he showed up and started speaking as Adam, it was like a tuning fork for me,” she says.
The feeling was mutual. Leto says he had long admired Hathaway’s work and her bravery and emotional commitment in each performance. “She really brings everything with her to the role,” says Leto of his co-star. (Adam and Rebekah Neumann didn’t respond for comment about the project.)
Here are some things Anne Hathaway revealed to WSJ. Magazine…
Hathaway on deciding to get involved in WeCrashed:
“The story intersected, I thought, at a lot of really interesting points: late-stage capitalism, the commodification of spirituality, and toxic positivity,” Hathaway says. Anne Hathaway
“Something has to be exceptional,” she says, “and Jared is certainly exceptional.”
Hathaway on when she knew she wanted to act:
When she was about 3 years old, her actor mother played Eva Perón at the Playhouse at Allenberry production in central Pennsylvania of Evita. (Her father is a lawyer.) “I remember seeing that there were kids onstage, and it seemed like the most natural thing in the world,” Hathaway says. “I just wanted to know why I couldn’t be up there. And it was never a conscious thought, ‘Oh, I want to do that.’ For me it was, ‘When do I get to do that?’”
Hathaway on what she’d do if her sons (Jonathan, who is almost 6, and Jack, 2) with her husband, Adam Shulman, wanted to act:
“I would probably take the same tack that my parents did with me, which is: You have all the time in the world to be a professional actor; you can only be a child once. So I would encourage them to study, to go to classes, to read,” she says, “but I would strongly discourage them from starting too young. I think that they’ll be in a position where they’ll be able to go to college and figure out where they want to go from there.”
Hathaway on having more children and fertility:
She would potentially love to have more kids (“I could see us going for another one,” she says), but she personally knows that fertility and pregnancy can be a struggle. “There’s this tendency to portray getting pregnant, having kids, in one light, as if it’s all positive. But I know from my own experience…it’s so much more complicated than that,” she says. “And when you find out that your pain is shared by others…you just think, I just feel that’s helpful information to have, so I’m not isolated in my pain.”
She wants that private pain that previous generations of women have had to bear alone to end. “I mean, what is there to be ashamed of? This is grief, and that’s a part of life,” she says.
Hathaway on how being a mother has changed her for the better:
“I didn’t feel fully landed and fully here until I was a mom,” she says. “It’s not like I was lacking integrity, but it made me want to be completely, on every level, true to my word. And that meant stopping any nonsense that I had going on inside myself. And it’s little breaks that you give yourself sometimes when you know that you’re not being your best self.”
Hathaway on the role that some of her fellow female actors are taking – the role of entrepreneur or CEO (Reese Witherspoon with Hello Sunshine, Gwyneth Paltrow with Goop), and remaining committed to acting:
“I’m curious to know how those women think about themselves,” she says, “because I do have to say, I feel like once an actor, always an actor.” She thinks being a polymath is laudable, and she certainly has a lot of interests (one of which might include directing), but the most she will say about what to expect next is, “I’m venturing into producing and other aspects of the film industry.”Anne Hathaway
Hathaway on waiting until her children are older before doing Broadway:
“Your kids are only whatever age they are, once,” she says. She is the kind of mom who’s there for bedtime. “And there’s a lot of really awesome musicals [for] women in their 50s, so…. There’s Woman of the Year, there’s Mame.” I mention Sunset Boulevard, and she nods with great enthusiasm and does her best diva voice to say, “I am going to eat every last bit of scenery and then pick my teeth with the splinters.”
Hathaway on wishing she could be more comfortable in interviews:
“I have people that I can absolutely speak freely with, but I have to say, I wish I was more comfortable doing it,” she says. “I see [actors] who are so great at—they never seem like they’re watching their words at all, but they’re also never giving anything away. I think with me, it’s still a little uncomfortable.” She found what she calls her “chosen family” at Vassar College and makes friends gradually. “I do take my time getting to know, to establish trust. And then, once trust is established, I’m a Scorpio, I’m all in.” Anne Hathaway
Hathaway on turning 40 this year:
“I have a really tight-knit group of friends from college, and we all realized that we were just going to be celebrating each other’s birthday every other week,” she says. “So we decided that we’re all going to go someplace together and have a joint 40th birthday party.”
Read the full article here.
Photo: Dan Martensen for WSJ. Magazine
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