Anne Hathaway became emotional when she attended The Idea of You's first screening at SXSW earlier this year because the reception to the steamy rom-com reminded her of how the audience reacted to her 2001 movie, The Princess Diaries, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
The Academy Award-winning actress was in tears during the March premiere in Austin and addressed the crowd after the screening, “You have no idea the gift that you've just given us with your responsiveness, by being so connected to every little nuance in this. I will never forget this screening.”
Fall instalove with Anne Hathaway and Nicholas Galitzine in The Idea of You
At the New York event, Hathaway told THR that this was emotional for many reasons, one of them due to the fact that “this is one of my first streaming movies and so I just knew how special it was to get to see it with an audience, because that wouldn't be the path that this movie was going to take.”
But more than that, the actress continued, “I was in a film when I was 17 years old called The Princess Diaries — it came out when I was 18 — and the premiere of the movie felt so much like the premiere for this one. When I was 18 years old, it was my first premiere so I just thought that was the way it works, and it can go so well but that level of just instant audience love and embracing of it and feeling, I don't know, that audience satisfaction, you don't get that every single time. Sometimes movies are darker, sometimes movies are more challenging.”
She added, “This one, we really made it for everyone and to just feel everyone love it, I hadn't had that feeling quite in that same way since The Princess Diaries. And now I'm 41 and I know how to appreciate it.”
In The Idea of You, Hathaway stars as 40-year-old divorced single mom Soléne, who unexpectedly starts a romance with the 24-year-old member of the world's biggest boy band August Moon, Hayes Campbell, played by Nicholas Galitzine.
The actor said that during his audition, the actress “was so open and so playful and that's what I love about acting, that sense of play and collaboration. It is rare that you get that in the audition process. And to have someone who is such an amazing, incredible, huge star like Annie really open themselves up to you, it was very humbling.”
What is a boy band bootcamp?
He also spoke about the time he spent at a “boy band bootcamp” so he could play the band's lead singer.
Galitzine jokingly said, “They locked me in a room for hours and they just forced me to dance over and over and over again until I just engrained it.”
He does credit Danny Vitale, the film's choreographer, who was able to “ground my body as sort of a dancer, in a way. I'm not a dancer by trade, I was an athlete and I think getting rid of a lot of that rigidity was a very important thing and really just being able to own a stage and sort of command a bit of a presence, I think.”
The film, based on Robinne Lee's 2017 novel of the same name, has long been rumored to be based on former One Direction member Harry Styles' romantic escapades. Lee has dispelled that, but does acknowledge the similarities. Director Michael Showalter somewhat agrees.
He said, “I think there’s comparisons there to be made, there's comparisons with lots of public figures, but I think Hayes touches a nerve. There's a feeling about this character, and these two characters, that I feel like is something that’s very current in our society right now, whether it's Harry Styles or a whole bunch of other interesting public figures that I could mention and I just think that's part of what’s great about this story.”
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