Anne Hathaway has admitted that for years she worried she might have accidentally upset Christopher Nolan while making ‘Interstellar‘. That fear only got bigger as the director kept putting out hit after hit without calling her up for any of them.
During an appearance on Late Night with Seth Meyers, Hathaway talked about the 12-year gap between her second and third movies with Nolan, who is known for working with a pretty small group of actors. She said she had this nagging thought that maybe she had done something wrong on set. “I was like, ‘I hope I didn’t say anything while we were in space,'” Hathaway said, laughing.
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Hathaway’s working relationship with Nolan began with ‘The Dark Knight Rises’ in 2012, where she played Selina Kyle. Two years later, they did ‘Interstellar‘, in which she played Dr. Amelia Brand. She has always called that experience life-changing. But then more than ten years went by without another project together.
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“It’s amazing. It’s incredible. And I got so lucky because I made The Dark Knight Rises with him when I was in my late 20s,” Hathaway said. “Then we made Interstellar, and I cannot believe that I’m in that movie. I love that movie so much, it’s so beautiful.”
The thing is, Nolan went on to make ‘Dunkirk‘, ‘Tenet‘, and ‘Oppenheimer‘ after that. All three were big critical and commercial hits and won multiple Oscars. However, none of them had Hathaway in the cast.
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Hathaway has said before that Nolan really had her back during a rough time after her Oscar win for ‘Les Misérables‘ in 2013, when she got a lot of online hate. “My career did not lose momentum the way it could have if he hadn’t backed me,” she told Vanity Fair. She also called him an angel who did not care about the backlash and gave her one of the best roles she ever had.
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So when he kept making movies without her, she started to question things. “And so I was like, ‘I hope I didn’t say anything while we were in space,'” she said again on the show.
But it turns out there was nothing to worry about. “But we would see each other; everything would be cool,” Hathaway said. “And then, yeah, I got the call.”
Anne Hathaway Calls Working with Christopher Nolan a Homecoming
That call was for ‘The Odyssey‘, Nolan’s new movie based on the ancient Greek poem. Hathaway plays Penelope, and Matt Damon plays Odysseus. This is their third project together, and Hathaway said it felt like coming home.
She also said she was happy to find out that Nolan has not changed much over the years. “One of my things that I was so happy to discover is that Chris is a remarkably consistent human being,” she said. “You’ve made so many incredible movies all in different genres, but your approach to it, your respect to the crew, how arduously you prepare and think about everything, that’s all there.“
She talked a bit about how he works too. “What I saw on The Odyssey in particular was he built the movie with his mind and then directed it while we were there with his heart,” Hathaway said.
The long wait actually made her appreciate working with him more. “So funny enough, my longing to be back on one of Chris’ sets really fueled my passion as Penelope because I’ve been on amazing sets,” she said. “There’s just nothing else like this. It does feel a bit like a homecoming because you’re just at the apex of what it is that you do. I’ve never encountered anything higher than this.”
Nolan seems just as happy to have her back. “This is the third time we’ve worked together,” the director said. “I’m just thrilled that these guys all agreed to come on board.“
‘The Odyssey‘ comes out in theaters on July 17.
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