Our complicated relationship with one of Hollywood’s greatest talents.
When I was in early primary school, my older sisters and I would watch The Princess Diaries almost once a week.
Our VCR copy of the early 2000s hit was well worn and had earned its place atop my mum’s bedside table. Where all our favourite films were stored.
Mia Thermopolis’ transition from a frizzy-haired, glasses-wearing, electric-scooter-riding geek to a slick-haired, unblemished princess gave me hope. Hope that, I too, could one day transform from a portly weirdo into an outstanding glamazon.
NB: My transformation is not yet complete.
Then came The Princess Diaries 2: A Royal Engagement. Then A Devil Wears Prada. Then Get Smart. Then Bride Wars.
Hathaway was dominating the screens, the red carpet and everything in between. If there was a rom-com or coming of age film to be cast, she was there to fill the lead role. And she was nailing it.
But then the 2011 Oscars happened.
That year, the award show had the added pressure of trying to attract a younger crowd. “Aha!” the organisers exclaimed, a proverbial light bulb burning bright above their heads. “We know just the pair to host.”
Cue James Franco, Anne Hathaway, and the most awkward introductory monologue to have graced the Academy Awards.
The crowd laughed politely and slapped their hands together with obligatory vigour. Critics were less kind.
“In what could go down as one of the worst Oscar telecasts in history, a bad and risky idea proved out in spectacularly unwatchable fashion,” The Hollywood Reporter wrote.
Meanwhile L.A. Weekly said the pairing “at best qualified as lazy, and at worst, totally embarrassing.”
“It was like the world’s most uncomfortable blind date between the cool rocker stoner kid and the adorable theatre camp cheerleader,” Producer David Wild told Ringer years later.
Unsurprisingly for the world we live in, Franco got away relatively scot-free.
However, Hathaway’s capital and credibility took a beating, and a very specific brand of trolls emerged. They called themselves the “Hathahaters”.
Prolific Hathahater #1: Howard Stern.
“Everyone sort of hates Anne Hathaway, and I’ve explained that I do too and I don’t even know why sometimes,” the radio host said in 2013, while interviewing James Franco.
“She’s just so affected (and) actress-y.”
Prolific Hathahater #2: James Franco.
The ultimate betrayal from her partner in the 2011 Oscars car crash.
“I’m not an expert on – I guess they’re called ‘Hatha-haters’- but I think that’s what maybe triggers it,” Franco agreed with Stern, during the 2013 interview.
Prolific Hathahaeter #3: Vice journalist Sarah Nicole Prickett.
“It’s not really Anne Hathaway I ‘hate,’” she wrote.
“It’s all the lesser, real-life Anne Hathaways I have known — princessy, theater-schooled girls who have no game and no sex appeal and eat raisins for dessert.”
And then, in 2013, she was named The Most Annoying Celebrity by The San Francisco Chronicle.
It’s bizarre, would you not agree? That an undeniably beautiful actress would be torn to shreds for doing nothing but be a little annoying?
Hathaway won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress in her role of Fantine in Les Miserables.It’s not the first time we’ve seen it happen.
We could call it the Taylor Swift effect. Or the Jennifer Lawrence effect. That is, when actresses or musicians have the spotlight shone on them a little too quickly, and a little too strongly. They are flung to stardom at rocket-rate, and it shocks the public’s system. Thus, they are subject to unrelenting vitriol.
If a para-social relationship (para meaning ‘alongside’) is the one-sided obsession we see in a fan becoming enamoured with a celebrity they’ve never met, this is the complete opposite. We’re dubbing this an ab-social relationship (ab meaning ‘away’) where an individual has an unexplainable hatred towards a famous person.
But there’s a happy ending to this seemingly unrevivable Hathaway declination story. Our love for her is being renewed.
It began at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival where appeared on the red carpet in an angelic white gown.
And then she stunned in a tweed mini, alà a young Coco Chanel.
She rocked a dizzyingly vibrant co-ord on set to speak with press about her upcoming Apple TV series with Jared Leto, WeCrashed.
And sported a Prada denim crop top on the front of French Elle.
Our renewed obsession with the superstar can’t just be because she’s defeated ageing, and knows how to rock a $10,000 outfit.
It’s because it’s no longer acceptable, in 2022, to hate women for simply succeeding. Somewhere, somehow, we’ve all forgiven Hathaway for her (non-existent) misdeeds and instead are praising her for who she is.
A beautiful almost-40 year old with undeniable talent, who can rock a crop top in ways we can only dream of.
