Earlier this week, something strange happened on Twitter. A video started trending, racking up retweets and quote tweets with mostly positive reactions celebrating its instant mood-boosting effect. It was a funny, lighthearted video; the kind that makes you pause and smile during a busy workday. This wouldn’t in and of itself be newsworthy, except that the subject of the video was Anne Hathaway
In the clip from The Kelly Clarkson Show, Hathaway faces off against the host in a sing-off style competition called “Name That Tune,” in which Clarkson’s band begins to play a song and the two must race to begin singing it. The moment that went viral sees Hathaway beating Clarkson to the buzzer with the American Idol alum’s own smash hit “Since U Been Gone.” Following the distinctive build-up to the song’s chorus, Hathaway steps forward and belts her freakin’ heart out. Clarkson is floored that she didn’t recognize it. Literally. She drops to the floor and sort of just hangs out there, face-down.
The whole thing was totally primed to take off on social media—“Since U Been Gone” is a perfect pop song, Clarkson is the most beloved person in the country and it’s fun to see celebrities fangirl over each other. Was it probably staged? Sure. Was it still an absolute delight to behold? Hell yeah, it was.
But even in 2022, it’s surprising to see the internet collectively rally behind a video of Hathaway being the most unabashed theater kid version of herself. There was once a time when the ubiquitous distaste for Hathaway was as widely known and accepted as the fact that puppies are cute or pizza is delicious. She fell victim to the cruel, misogynistic cycle that often afflicts beautiful, young, talented female celebrities when they become too popular. Uncomfortable with a woman achieving a certain level of unmatched success—especially one who appears to be working very hard to get and stay at the top—people begin looking for faults.
By the early 2010s, Hathaway was everywhere. She had successfully made the transition from Disney darling to serious actress, first appearing in Brokeback Mountain and a few years later earning an Oscar nomination for Rachel Getting Married. For a while, she was a fixture in rom-coms and crowd-pleasing comedies, from The Devil Wears Prada to Bride Wars to Valentine’s Day. She even scored the coveted role of Catwoman in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises. She was one of the most famous actors working in Hollywood, and so, as the story often goes, the public began to turn on her.
Hathaway’s crime, ultimately, was her earnestness. She tried too hard, too visibly. In 2013, the Hathahate reached a fever pitch when she won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her moving turn as Fantine in Tom Hooper’s big-screen adaptation of Les Misérables. She was skewered for her overly treacly acceptance speech, which began with the fateful whisper, “It came true,” in reference to her character’s ballad “I Dreamed a Dream” from the movie.
That the loud public disdain for Hathaway can ultimately be boiled down to her eagerness and her ensuing success is clearly rooted in sexism. Nobody called Joaquin Phoenix a try-hard when he lost 52 pounds to play the Joker and wouldn’t shut up about it. This year, when Andrew Garfield embarked on an extensive press tour in an obvious bid for an Oscar nomination for his excellent performance in Tick Tick...Boom!, it was rightfully regarded as a charming and clever career move.
The tides first began to turn back in Hathaway’s favor around the release of Ocean’s 8 in 2018. Ocean’s 8, you’ll recall, is a movie about Cate Blanchett wearing gorgeous suits, but Hathaway also appears in a juicy supporting role. A lot had changed since 2013—accused sexual predator Donald Trump was in the White House and even Taylor Swift was publicly identifying as a feminist. Heck, there was an all-lady version of Soderbergh’s bro-y Ocean’s heist series! Five years too late, people began to admit that maybe the public’s treatment of Hathaway was a tad unfair. Maybe, just maybe, it was the result of centuries of internalized misogyny.
Now, four years later, the “Since U Been Gone” video seems to indicate that Hathaway’s much-deserved redemption arc is finally complete. Her appearance on The Kelly Clarkson Show was just one stop on her press tour for WeCrashed, the AppleTV+ series she co-stars in with Jared Leto based on the true story of WeWork founder Adam Neumann’s demise. Hathaway plays Rebekah, Neumann’s wife and business partner.
In an interesting turn of events, Hathaway is the unrivaled star of the new show’s PR blitz. Last week, she stopped by The Late Show With Stephen Colbert and did an inspired impression of Lady Gaga in The House of Gucci. Adopting a far more convincing Italian accent than Gaga’s, she uttered the famous “Father, Son, House of Gucci” line from the film. One person tweeted the clip with the apt caption, “Anne Hathaway saying Father, Son and House of Gucci just added 10 years to my lifespan.” (Meanwhile, a friend sent me the video with the straightforward message, “Congrats on this,” in case it was not already clear that I am a fan.)
Another recent moment of redemption for Hathaway came when Variety shared a snippet of an interview with the actress from the red carpet premiere of WeCrashed. The interviewer asks her if she has any advice for this year’s Oscars hosts: Amy Schumer, Regina Hall, and Wanda Sykes. Hathaway—who infamously co-hosted the 2011 Oscars with a catatonically high James Franco and now frequently appears on lists of the ceremony’s worst hosts of all time—self-deprecatingly replied, “Nothing from me.” Tons of Twitter users rushed to her defense, saying it wasn’t her fault she was stuck with a bad co-host. One person summed it up best when she wrote, “BABY GIRL DON'T BLAME YOURSELF YOU DID NOTHING WRONG.”
As writer Evan Ross Katz eloquently put it in a recent Instagram caption, “I’m so glad that we as a society have come around to recognizing Anne Hathaway’s intense theater kid energy as an endearing quality vs. one worthy of ridicule.” Though disappointingly overdue, the Hathahate reckoning is a win for theater kids, overachievers, and those of us who aren’t ashamed to admit we’ve watched The Princess Diaries no less than 30 times. Welcome back to the world’s good graces, Anne.
