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.