A recent Anne Hathaway bomb may not have the detonation radius that some people believe.
in a V Magazine In a story published Monday, the “The Devil Wears Prada” alum said she was regularly asked to participate in uncomfortable chemistry tests while auditioning for roles in the 2000s.
“It was considered normal to ask an actor to kiss other actors to test chemistry, which is actually the worst way to do it,” Hathaway said. “They told me: 'Today ten guys come and you are chosen. Aren't you excited to make out with all of them? And I thought, 'Is there something wrong with me?' because he wasn't excited. I thought it sounded disgusting.”
He added: “It wasn't a power play, no one was trying to be horrible or hurt me. “It was just a very different time and we know better now.”
While Hathaway did not mention anyone by name, several casting directors who worked with her during that time denied that such tests had been performed on their sets.
“I certainly wasn't part of any audition that required her or anyone else to kiss, and it wasn't something done at Disney and Touchstone during the 15 years I was a casting executive on feature films, as far as I'm aware of,” Donna Morong, casting director of “The Princess Diaries,” which premiered in 2001 and We may see a third installment soon. — he said in a statement to The Times.
“I have no reason to believe that Anne Hathaway would lie about having experienced that in other casting offices, but it seems like a crazy way to measure whether two people have 'chemistry,' completely ineffective and, I agree, 'gross,'” Morong continued. . “As Anne said in her article in 'V,' she loved working with Garry Marshall and she never made any reference to kissing various actors during the casting of 'Princess Diaries.'”
For the record:
12:13 pm April 29, 2024An earlier version of this article said Linda Lamontagne helped cast Anne Hathaway in “Get Real.” Lamontagne helped cast the show, but she did not cast the pilot.
Linda Lamontagne, who worked as a casting director on the 1999-2000 series “Get Real,” also denied supervising any chemistry readings that matched the actor's description.
“I've been in casting since Capital News in 1988, and in all honesty, I've never had to have actors make out with me or any other actor for auditions or chemistry tests. “I don't want to disprove Ms. Hathaway… we simply didn't have scenes that required kissing talent,” Lamontagne said Thursday in a statement to the Times.
“If there was ever a scene and there were only a few in my career, we never selected those scenes to use in auditions. It's hard enough to audition for something that's new, or even established, and we don't want to make a talent feel uncomfortable. It's enough pressure,” she added, saying that while she doesn't disagree with Hathaway about such things happening, it hasn't happened on any project Lamontagne has done.
“Brokeback Mountain” casting director Avy Kaufman said. TMZ doesn't recall anything similar to what Hathaway detailed in her cover story. She told the Times on Wednesday that she didn't have “any good stories” to share.
As a producer on her upcoming film “The Idea of You,” which premiered March 16 on South by Southwest and premieres May 2 on Prime Video, Hathaway was able to invent her own chemistry test, which she recounted with V Magazine.
During auditions for the film, actors were asked to choose a song they felt their character would love and perform it in an attempt to make Hathaway's character, single mother Solène Marchand, dance.
Nicholas Galitzine, whose previous credits include “Red, White & Royal Blue” and “Bottoms,” won her over with an Alabama Shakes tune, Hathaway said.
“I was sitting in a chair like we came back from dinner or a walk or something, we pressed play and started dancing together. …No one was bragging,” she continued. “No one was trying to get the job. We were just in a space dancing. I looked over and Michael Showalter, our director, was smiling. Spark – spark!”
