We only have a week left until Anne Hathaway’s new film, The Idea of You, is released.
As well as playing protagonist Solène alongside Nicholas Galitzine, who plays her love interest, Hayes, Anne helped produce the Michael Showalter film, which will be released on Prime Video on May 2.
And in a brand-new interview, Anne, 41, has opened up about how she and the casting team went about finding the perfect actor to portray Hayes.
Speaking with V magazine this week, Anne recalled, “We asked each of the actors coming in to choose a song that they felt their character would love, that they would put on to get my character to dance, and then we’d do a short little improv. I was sitting in a chair like we had come in from dinner or a walk or something, we pressed play, and we just started dancing together.”
Noting that Nicholas picked American rock band Alabama Shakes, Anne said, “It was just easy… I just started smiling. And he saw me smile, so he relaxed, and we just started dancing. Nobody was showing off. Nobody was trying to get the gig. We were just in a space dancing. I looked over, and Michael Showalter, our director, was beaming. Spark!”
Anne went on to compare this method of assessing chemistry with the way things were done in the 2000s, stating that it used to be considered “normal” to have an actor make out with multiple people in order to find a spark.
Anne starred in a bunch of fan-favorite movies throughout the early '00s, including The Princess Diaries and The Devil Wears Prada.
Without referring to any specific film in particular, Anne recalled: “Back in the 2000s — and this did happen to me — it was considered normal to ask an actor to make out with other actors to test for chemistry. Which is actually the worst way to do it.”
“I was told, ‘We have 10 guys coming today and you’re cast. Aren’t you excited to make out with all of them?’ And I thought, ‘Is there something wrong with me?’ because I wasn’t excited. I thought it sounded gross,” she said.
Despite finding the idea of kissing multiple actors “gross,” Anne admitted that she bit her tongue and went along with it out of fear of being labeled “difficult.”
“I was so young and terribly aware how easy it was to lose everything by being labeled ‘difficult,’ so I just pretended I was excited and got on with it. It wasn’t a power play, no one was trying to be awful or hurt me. It was just a very different time, and now we know better,” she said.
