Anne Hathaway’s dreams of pop stardom in Mother Mary almost turned into a nightmare.
The Oscar winner plays the titular character in the recent A24 psychological thriller, which follows a pop superstar’s fractured relationship with her former BFF and costume designer (played by Michaela Coel) while on the comeback trail.
Hathaway, 43, sings and dances in the film, but she admitted she nearly walked off the movie after seeing early footage of herself performing original songs written by Jack Antonoff, Charli XCX and FKA Twigs.
“This is really bad… I don’t know that I can ask people to come to see this,” Hathaway recalled thinking at the time, she said in an interview with Elle published on Thursday, May 21.
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Per Elle, Hathaway went home to her husband, Adam Shulman, and declared that she was going to leave the film.
Eventually, however, “I came to the conclusion that there would be no shame if I was fired, but there would be if I quit,” she said.
Hathaway also told the outlet that she continued to work on her singing skills after the film finished shooting and rerecorded her vocals a year after production ended.
The actress recalled Antonoff’s reaction when she returned to the studio: “He whipped his head at me goes, ‘You have been working.’”
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Hathaway recently offered rare insight into her marriage with Shulman, 45, with whom she shares sons Jonathan, 10, and Jack, 6.
“He supports me completely. This year in particular was unusual. He and I both know that it’s probably never going to happen like this again,” she told People in April, referring to her busy year. (Her movies this year include Mother Mary, The Devil Wears Prada 2, Christopher Nolan’s epic The Odyssey and Colleen Hoover adaptation Verity.)
“In every possible way, he’s the most extraordinary person I’ve ever met,” she said, praising “the way he stepped up” amid her busy schedule this year.
“I’m so lucky that he’s my partner that I spend my life with,” she added. “If I didn’t know that before this past year, I think I really know it now because with absolutely everything he’s just, he’s on it. He holds it down.”
“I hope that doesn’t sound like I’m bragging, but he’s a dream partner to me,” Hathaway gushed over her husband, whom she wed in 2012. “It’s one thing to have dreams. It’s another thing to have somebody who helps you achieve them. I absolutely would not be able to have achieved what I’ve done without my husband.”
