We’ve seen her as a princess, a fashion assistant, a bride at war, and now, Anne Hathaway fills the shoes of a battered wife in desperate need of saving from her abusive husband. In Steven Knight‘s Serenity, a blonde Anne is the ex of fishing boat captain Baker Dill (Matthew McConaughey), who seeks her recluse ex out to ask him the ultimate favor: kill her husband. “The way Karen was described and the way she looked versus what she had going on inside intrigued me,” Anne explained in an EXCLUSIVE interview with HollywoodLife.com at a Cinema Society and Aviron Pictures screening of the film at the MoMA. “I knew that we were going to present her in this way, where she was always going to be beautifully made up, her hair was always going to be perfectly done, she was always going to be wearing flattering, slightly revealing clothing, and her eyes were going to be so full of rage.”
“I really liked the relationship between that, and I hope that by the end, that mask that I’ve described would have slipped, and you’d see the true person underneath it, and how she’d been contorted by abuse. I thought that was a really powerful opportunity,” she added. Anne’s impeccable ability to slightly remove that mask and show her vulnerability to her ex, to then quickly put it back on in the face of her abuser, proved she was the perfect choice for this role of Karen.
Ahead of the screening, director/writer Steven Knight revealed that every cast member in the film was his first choice, including Anne. In an interview with Us Weekly, Anne further revealed that she was shocked to be offered the role in the first place. “I’m not the hot blonde in Hollywood. I often get sent the grown-up girl next door,” she laughed. “It was challenging and an incredible opportunity. I’m so happy they thought of me.”
Following the screening of the mind-bending film, guests enjoyed an after-party at Magic Hour Rooftop.