New besties
ACTRESSES Anne Hathaway and Rebel Wilson have had their share of haters.
Hathaway was ridiculed for what some saw as her gushy, insincere public appearances, including the speech she made accepting the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for the musical Les Miserables (2012).
In 2015, Wilson – star of the Pitch Perfect comedies (2012 to 2017) – was accused by several Australian magazines of lying about her age and upbringing and fired from two movies as a result.
She cleared her name when she successfully sued the publisher for defamation two years later.
But each woman says the other is still misunderstood.
The pair became friends while playing con artists in The Hustle, a remake of two classic films, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (1988) and Bedtime Story (1964).
At a recent press day in New York, each actress shares the most surprising thing about her co-star.
Wilson, a 39-year-old Australian comedienne, says she was struck by “how cool and funny” Hathaway turned out to be.
“Because I’d read stuff and she got a bad rap sometimes in the press and I don’t know why,” says Wilson.
She believes they will stay friends. “I just respect her. She’s smart and so talented.
“It was just us two (filming) every day and going head to head. We both came prepared and she held her own in the scenes even though I would improvise in her face all the time and try to shock and surprise her. She would never break character.
“We just had the best time and we’re talking about doing other stuff together now,” Wilson adds. “We’re talking about doing a kungfu movie because we’re both obsessed with those Hong Kong films and love to use our physicality.”
In a separate interview, Hathaway, 36, says Wilson is intelligent and tenacious.
The actresses bonded during the sun-drenched film shoot in Mallorca, Spain, where they had adjoining hotel suites and spent much of their downtime together.
Hathaway says: “We had so much fun because we were in this amazing vacation locale – Rioja was affordable and we were working not-crazy hours.
“So, we would have these meals with great wine and make each other laugh,” says the star, who is married to 38-year-old businessman Adam Shulman. The couple has a three-year-old son.
But when it came to work, Wilson was all business.
The actress, who has a law degree and is a producer on the film, used her legal training to challenge the American ratings board when it gave The Hustle an R rating, which requires under-17 viewers to be accompanied by an adult.
“Rebel got upset and said, ‘I’m not taking this lying down. There’s nothing R-rated about our movie if Anchorman (2004) is a Pg-rated movie’,” says Hathaway.
“She went in, used her law degree and successfully overturned that rating, which is a huge deal because teenage girls are a big part of the audience for this movie.”
Her co-star has another unexpected quality too.
“Rebel’s shy. When I first sat down with her, I was surprised at how quiet and reserved she was because I was expecting she would be a few shades away from Fat Amy,” she says, referring to Wilson’s Pitch Perfect character.
“It made me excited to realise there was so much more going on inside of her. She has so many more colours in her toolbox than she’s shown.”
Sure enough, Wilson in person is both introverted and disarmingly open, regaling reporters with stories about going on the celebrity-dating app, Raya, in which she claims she once swiped left on actor Ben Affleck because “it was that week where they were talking in the news about him being an alcoholic, so I didn’t click on him”.
But Wilson does not need an app to meet famous people, according to Hathaway.
“She has this weird magnetic ability that just attracts celebrities,” she says, disclosing that while they were in Spain, Wilson bumped into Spanish tennis player Rafael Nadal and was immediately invited to his restaurant.
“She has one of the deepest (celebrity) selfie libraries of anyone I know,” says Hathaway with a laugh.
“She’s just great. She’s such fun.” - The Straits Times/asia News Network