At the ‘Verity’ premiere outside Lincoln Center in New York City, the question hanging over the red carpet was the same one readers of the novel have argued about for years: what is true, and what is a lie?
Anne Hathaway, who plays the title character, did not dodge it. When we asked her to describe the film in three words, she answered without hesitation: “Twisty. Right. Wrong.”
After speaking with the cast and with author Colleen Hoover herself, we learned that those three words are as much about the audience as they are about the movie.
The story follows Lowen Ashleigh, a struggling writer who moves to the remote home of the renowned author Verity Crawford to ghostwrite for her, and whose assignment takes a very dark and twisted turn. The less a viewer knows going in, the better, because the whole experience depends on deciding whom to believe.
The book behind it has its own origin story. Hoover self-published Verity in 2018, and Grand Central Publishing acquired it in 2021. It grew from an independent release into one of the best-known thrillers of its time, and this adaptation follows the film version of It Ends With Us, another of her No. 1 bestsellers.
Hoover walked the carpet in a couture take on the book’s blood-splatter scene, designed by a longtime friend, Natasha Polis, who also did her hair and makeup and conducted Hoover’s first interview more than a decade ago. On and off the carpet, Hoover called the whole team, especially the production crew, collaborative, and said she is very proud of the film overall.
A fanbase this devoted arrives with its own version of the story already in mind, and Hathaway said she felt that weight while making the film. “It’s a fine line that you have to walk,” she told The Knockturnal. She added, “On one hand, you have to make a film, and you have to make the film as the film wants to be made. On the other hand, the reason that you’re making the film is because of the fans.” She said she kept putting herself in their shoes.
The challenge, outside of Verity not being a blonde, was to take the audience on that journey and make it as delicious as possible. Having worked with so many of the same crew members before, she said, made it possible to build the character together.
Hathaway does not think she is the first actor who comes to mind for a role like this, which made director Michael Showalter’s trust all the more meaningful. He had directed her in The Idea of You, and he believed she could play “the range of her,” she said, bringing “the villain to life as well as the real person.”
Her co-star Josh Hartnett, who plays Jeremy Crawford, told us the challenge of adapting a book this beloved was less about pleasing fans and more about fully understanding the essence of his character. He explained that no two readers cast the story the same way or hear the characters speaking the same way. “It’s all in our heads,” he said. “So, you can’t please millions of people that way.” For him, the only honest option was to serve the spirit of the book and the spirit of the character, and trust the rest.
The film’s own crew seems to have taken that idea of managing what an audience believes to heart. Visual effects supervisor Alex Dreiblatt, who also worked on the film adaptation of Hoover’s It Ends With Us, said the team shot much of the movie in winter and early spring. They then returned to the same locations to capture summer and fall elements, all in camera and without computer-generated imagery.
“Our work is invisible by design,” he said. In a story about not knowing what to trust, the people behind it worked to make sure the viewer never sees what was changed.
Whatever audiences decide about who is telling the truth, Hathaway’s three words may be the most accurate review the film gets: twisty, right, wrong.
