This article contains major spoilers for Verity.
In a year that’s already seen her acting in the long-awaited Devil Wears Prada sequel and Christopher Nolan’s epic adaptation of The Odyssey (among others…), Anne Hathaway is once again starring in the film that everyone’s talking about right now.
The Oscar winner plays the title role in the erotic thriller Verity, sharing the screen with Dakota Johnson and Josh Hartnett in a big-screen adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s novel of the same name.
Naturally, whenever a popular book is brought to life as a film, some changes have to be made along the way, and Verity is no exception to that rule.
Here are just some of the biggest tweaks made to Verity’s original story when putting together the new movie…
First of all, Verity is described as a blonde in the book
While Anne Hathaway kept her signature brunette locks to play Verity, the character is written as a blonde woman through Colleen Hoover’s book.
Anne told Entertainment Weekly that changing the character’s hair colour was something she felt “panicked” about early on, recalling: “I thought for sure we were going to go blonde and I was having wigs made and all this stuff.
“Then Michael [Showalter, the film’s director] was like, ‘you know, I think it would be better – because Dakota is a brunette – if you stayed brunette’.”
She continued: “We’ve been talking a lot about what makes a good adaptation and I personally don’t feel that it has to be a perfect adaptation [where] every single beat has to be in there. But you have to get the spirit of it. And if you do that, then I think that you can forgive Verity for having brown hair, and stuff like that.”
Verity and Jeremy’s family is bigger in the novel
In the movie version of Verity, Anne and Josh’s characters are parents to twins Crew and Harper, the latter of whom dies in an apparent accident shortly before the events of the film.
The novel, meanwhile, describes the couple as having a son, Crew, and twin daughters, Harper and Chastin, who die in two separate incidents, with Verity’s manuscript in the book claiming she killed Harper after blaming her for Chastin’s death.
Colleen Hoover has given this major difference her personal seal of approval, telling Variety: “That was actually a really good change.
“I had read all the versions of the script before [the director] had even come on board, and I remember them asking us to remove one of the children because it felt different due to the time allotted on film, and it gave the story a different vibe that was almost too dark and unrealistic.”
She admitted: “I was nervous about that, but when I read the next version of the script I was like, ‘oh, that’s the best change we could have made’. I am very open to changes, and I think readers are too when it comes to thrillers as opposed to romance.
“In romance, you are really connected in a different kind of way to certain aspects of a relationship, whereas in a movie like Verity, I think you’re more connected to the way you felt about the book while reading it.”
Tonally, Michael Showalter thinks the Verity film leans more into the ‘erotic’ aspects of the source material
“I loved the erotic nature of this story and something that was very important in this story is to bring that stuff out,” the film’s director, Michael Showalter, told Variety.
He added: “I have to credit Colleen, because in the script we added back in a lot of the more erotic aspects of it.”
The Verity film also honed in more on the All About Eve-esque dynamic between its two principal women
Like in the 1950 Mankiewicz film All About Eve, Verity introduces a younger woman who slowly begins to insert herself into the life of an older mentor, before taking over completely.
Michael observed during his Variety interview: “Something new that we added was this All About Eve thing that’s happening with Lowen [portrayed by Dakota Johnson].”
In the Verity movie, Lowen’s sleepwalking was removed from the story
In Colleen Hoover’s novel, Lowen is depicted as a sleepwalker, with readers offered a glimpse at her subconscious when her nocturnal goings on are described in the book.
While Dakota did shoot these scenes for the film, they were eventually left on the cutting room floor.
“[The sleepwalking is] a very important storyline in the book that helps you understand Lowen’s character, and we actually shot a lot of that stuff,” Michael noted. “Those scenes are wonderful and Dakota’s acting is incredible, but what you learn during the process of making a movie is how important it is to keep the focus and the momentum.
“You don’t have time to go on some of the diversions that you can in a book.”
Dakota also told Pedestrian: “I think there’s one thing that we both missed, which is Lowen’s sleepwalking, which is very alive in the book, and it’s so much of her psychological background and what is going on with her internally.
“But to watch someone sleepwalk isn’t really that interesting.”
Anne has said she’s hopeful viewers might be given the opportunity to watch these “remarkable” scenes at some point, with Dakota adding: “I had so much fun doing it, but it’s a weird [thing to portray on screen]. When you read it, you’re like, ‘Oh, I can see this because I’m imagining all these different details’. But then it’s hard to put that in [a film] because it’s silent. There’s nothing.”
An especially graphic scene was also removed from Verity’s manuscript in the movie adaptation
Many fans of Colleen’s novel have pointed out that the movie adaptation omits a key passage from Verity’s manuscript, in which she writes about a dangerous attempt to carry out an abortion on herself while pregnant with her twin girls, using a coat hanger.
This is unsuccessful, but the character of Chastin is described as being born with a scar on her cheek as a result.
None of this made it into the film, though a passage about trying to smother the infant twins with a pillow did.
Lowen’s fantasy about kissing Verity was not in the book
In fact, filmmaker Michael Showalter has claimed this particular moment was all Dakota and Anne’s idea.
“Anne and Dakota were like, ‘What if we started kissing? What if it’s Josh, but then Josh turns into Anne?’,” the filmmaker told The Independent.
He admitted: “It was first like, ‘we can’t do that’. Then, ‘we have to do that, and if it doesn’t work, then we won’t put it in the movie’. But it works quite amazingly.”
Coleen revealed to Variety: “That was one I was nervous about because it wasn’t in the book and I didn’t know how it was going to play out or how it was going to fit in, but it ended up being one of my favourite scenes – and made for a really fun trailer, too!
“So, I was relieved. As an author, when they add or take out something you hope it works, and luckily it did.”
Similarly, Verity’s voice was another of Anne Hathaway’s creations
Of course, when you’re dealing with a written text, details like voices can be hard to get across, which meant Anne Hathaway had to use her imagination when coming up with her characterisation.
She told IMDB that, because Verity’s voice exists primarily in Lowen’s imagination, it was important to her that it be “completely irritating”, which is how she ended up settling on a tone “an entire register” higher than her own.
“We leaned into making everything just feel annoyingly perfect,” she said. “Like, her hair is always annoyingly perfect, she’s wearing makeup [around the house], [she’s] that girl where you’re like, ‘oh god, just stop!’. And I wanted her to be completely irritating to Lowen.”
Anne suggested: “There’s just something very velvety about her writing. There’s something really seductive about it. And I think she enjoys reading her own work, and so much of the time that you spend with Verity in the story is actually from Lowen’s point of view, reading her writing.
“And so, I wanted it to have that kind of slightly artificial narrated voice. I wanted her voice in the letter to be slightly different and a little bit more raw. I wanted it to sound a little bit more like a person.”
“You make these choices and hope they’re the right ones,” she added.
Josh Hartnett also had some suggestions to show off more of his character’s personality
Costume designer Jacqueline Demeterio revealed to People that the Black Mirror star had some ideas to help viewers see from the get-go that his character is a family man.
“[He’s seen wearing] the necklace that Harper makes him,” she pointed out. “Then he has this bracelet on the whole movie that one of the kids made.
“That was Josh’s idea. He’s like, ‘I love the idea of one of the kids making something for me and I wear it’.
“[Josh] wanted to have that touch that shows he cares about his kids. That was very important for him, for his character.”
New details were added to Verity’s character to show the extent of her celebrity status
While it was always in the script that Verity should be a guest on the podcast Call Her Daddy, Anne felt the film should go further than that.
“In a production meeting, I said, ‘is that enough to establish Verity as an iconic cultural figure?’” she told the podcast Talk Of The Townsends. “Because in my head, if we could do something like get a Gayle King interview and Hot Ones, that would be like the kind of triple crown trifecta.”
And if you’re wondering whether Anne really did try those wings, the answer is… sort of.
“It was a big conversation about whether or not I would,” she said, pointing out that because she’d never done Hot Ones for real, she wanted to save herself for a future appearance. “So, I did the first three wings for real and then I switched into dummy wings.”
Director Michael Showalter also told HuffPost UK: “[Hot Ones] is not in the books. We wanted to put Verity in context, so that the audience could feel the kind of celebrity that she is, or the kind of public figure that she is.
“And so, showing that even though she’s this big best-selling author, she’s also accessible in that way. Hot Ones is the hot show. It had to be Hot Ones.”
Verity’s dramatic ending also plays out very differently in the original novel compared to the film
First of all, when Lowen presents Jeremy with Verity’s secret manuscript, in the book, he’s more pressed about where and how she found it, leading readers to believe that he was already aware of its existence.
The film, on the other hand, depicts him immediately confronting Verity with it, suggesting that he was shocked to discover it.
While both the novel and movie have Jeremy then kill Verity; the part where he dumps her body in the family estate’s lake, to make it look like she’d fallen in and drowned, was an invention for the film.
In the source material, Jeremy and Lowen leave Verity in bed, to make it appear that this is where they found her.
Verity is in cinemas now.
