LOS ANGELES, CA — The number one movie in the country, “Verity,” starring Academy Award-winning actress Anne Hathaway, Dakota Johnson, and Josh Hartnett, is a true-to-form psychological thriller based on the 2018 Best-Selling novel by Colleen Hoover that is definitely keeping audiences intrigued.
Director Michael Showalter and Hoover discussed the film, the talented casting, and the ending that has fans debating after its opening weekend.
Hathaway plays the title character, Verity Crawford, a celebrated author who can’t finish the remaining books in her hit series after a serious accident. Her husband, Jeremy (Hartnett), hires Lowen Ashleigh (Johnson), a struggling writer, to finish the job.
When he knew his leads had locked into their characters, Showalter said the work started in the earliest conversations and showed up on the first day of shooting.
“They’re both, from the very first conversations I had with both of them, it was always about the characters, what motivates the characters, trying to understand them,” Showalter told Nitecast Media. “And then I would say in making, when we started shooting, from the very first take, they were both those characters. I never questioned it. And same with Josh.”
He said the cast and Hoover worked together to understand what was going on inside each character, going through their personalities.
“Talking about the characters, talking about the book, asking questions of each other, asking questions of Colleen to try to understand what’s going on, internally, for these characters,” he said.
He said the film’s central tension comes from the fact that no two characters see events the same way.
“They all have a different version of what’s true. Each one of them individually believes a different thing,” Showalter said. “And so as a director, I’m just trying to honor each one of their individual realities.“
Hoover said she was confident in the cast well before cameras rolled, because of the chemistry and talent they possessed.
“I feel like before even the filming started, just knowing their history and the movies they’ve done in the past, I already knew that they would be able to bring it and be whoever they needed to be for these roles,” Hoover told Nitecast Media.
When viewing the film, one can also wonder whether he tried to tell a second story beneath the main one. Showalter explained that he takes on something personal to it, even if it isn’t the plot. In this case, he said, it is the creative process and the bond between readers and writers.
“Every project I work on, there’s something about it that’s personal to me that’s maybe not part of the story, in a weird way. There are things I want to say that I can use this story to do,” Showalter said. “I feel like there’s a lot in this book and in this movie that’s about writing and about reading, and I like that about it. I feel like an engine underneath it is the intense relationship that readers have with a book or with an author.”
One of the most talked-about parts of “Verity” is the way it leaves room for discussion. Hoover said she didn’t plan it that way, and the response to the book became her favorite part of the experience.
“I absolutely hoped that people would have the same feelings and discussions that they had after the book,” Hoover said. “Writing the book, that wasn’t my intention. I thought I was going to end it in a way that was wrapped up with an answer, but it didn’t end that way.“
“The conversation surrounding it kind of surprised me when the book came out, and so it became my favorite part of it, and I really hoped that that would come through the film, and I believe that it does,” she said. “I think they did a great job.”
Hathaway leans into the edge of her character and her unsettling point of view. The performance pulls the audience in more than one direction and keeps them asking who is really behind it all.
