Anne Hathaway wanted to make Eileen as a reaction to a creepy question she got as a teenager
During one of her first press events ever, a reporter asked Hathaway if she was a "good girl or a bad girl"
Aux News Eileen
Director William Oldroyd’s Eileen just premiered last night at the Sundance Film Festival, and Anne Hathaway—who leads the film with Thomasin McKenzie—used the occasion to talk about how the film connects to a very creepy experience she had when she first started acting as a teenager.
As reported by Variety, during a post-screening Q&A, Hathaway shared this story: “I just remembered one of the very first questions I ever got asked when I started acting and had to do press was: Are you a good girl or a bad girl?” Hathaway says she was 16 at the time, which presumably means this was during the early days of her one-season Fox series Get Real (featuring the on-screen debuts for both Hathaway and Jesse Eisenberg), and Hathaway says that her “16-year-old self wanted to respond with this film.”
Hathaway previously talked about how the screenplay for Eileen, based on Otessa Moshfegh’s book of the same name, impacted her, saying, “I had to sit with this one. I had to go back to it. I had to walk away from it. It kept revealing itself to me.” Hathaway also said at Sundance that she was drawn to the project because she wanted to work with Oldroyd, saying his film Lady Macbeth (featuring Florence Pugh in her breakout role) was “an extraordinary work” and a “study of female complication” that hit her “really, really deep.”
Eileen stars McKenzie (doing what is apparently an impressive Massachusetts accent, if Variety is to be believed) as a prison secretary who breaks out of her gloomy day-to-day existence when she develops a relationship with a psychologist (Hathaway) that eventually takes a dark turn. Eileen does not yet have a distributor, but… that’s why you take a movie to Sundance.
37 Comments
…don’t leave us hanging! Did she say she was a good girl or a bad girl?
She she said she wasn’t bad, but just drawn that way. Oh wait, that was Jessica Rabbit.
The correct reply is, “Are you a pervert? Because I am literally a 16-year-old child. SECURITY!!”
We would have also accepted “Eat my 10-year-old pussy.”
You don’t have to answer that question!
Sounds like we may have to watch this movie to find out.
You watch the movie and then report back to us if she gets naked at all.
I started reading the book but i dunno, it was just too bleak for me and i gave up maybe 1/3 of the way through. perhaps it got better as it went along, though. of course the movie could be great anyhow.
I would watch a Catwoman Beyond project with her in the future mentoring a younger Catwoman
Still bummed that Juno Temple got basically nothing to do in The Dark Knight Rises as the Holly Robinson-type character whose name I can’t remember…
It’s already been cancelled by HBO Max
didn’t love the book, but this is very good casting of both of them…book was a little derivative, I wonder how they will do it without using a lot of voiceover
Derivative of Hitchcock’s Rebecca? Moshfegh has said Hathaway’s character was named after that.
Derivative of We Have Always Lived in the Castle, The End of Alice, and at least one other that I can’t remember right now.Especially because the books it apes are among my favorite books, I found the mimicry a little trying.
I’m struggling to get through We Have Always Lived in the Castle, but I’m propelled by the hunch that once I understand what the hell is going on, I’ll be able to reread it with more enjoyment.
it’s one of the greatest books of all time. However, even though the casting of the film version is excellent (Taissa Farmiga, Crispin Glover!), Park Chan-wook’s “Stoker” might be a better quasi-adaptation…the film focuses too much on Sebastian Stan’s character, Cousin Charles, who is not as interesting as Matthew Goode’s version. For something really really weird, if you look at the IMDB and Wikipedia of Stoker they make no mention of Castle, they all only refer to Hitchcock’s “Shadow of a Doubt”…which the movie frankly doesn’t resemble that much. Moreover, Joseph Cotton in Shadow AND Goode in Stoker AND Stan in Castle are all “Charlie.” Because of the interiority of the book, it might work as a stage adaptation a la Lookingglass Theatre Company, where Merricat’s voice comes through more. For people who really love the book I might recommend “The Wasp Factory”…just make sure you have a very strong stomach because it’s pretty horrifying.
It doesnt even reference this song?I mean come on!
Oh I swear…
I never understood their whole “meth-head farmer” aesthetic.
Nah, I think you got it perfectly.
This is also the name of my 80’s-themed adult film!
Our society has referenced this piece of shit about 100,000,000 times too many already.Move the fuck on.
When people say we don’t have movie stars anymore, I think umm Hathaway is a movie star in my books.
It’s the pictures that got small!
Is Umm her slightly less talented sister?
“First question Miss Hathaway, are you a good girl or a bad girl? Think about it carefully, as the answer will affect the intensity of my boner.”
Mine’s the same either way.
Hey great, the entire purpose of this article was about how asking that to a child is fucking creepy, and you just elaborated the joke further and people are upvoting you.The internet was a mistake
This place is an absolute cesspool.
Well, I was trying to make a point by making the subtext text, and I hope that’s what people are responding to. I’m sorry if that upset you, but I think there may have been worse things put on the internet.
I know, it’s terrible. We might just have to get a sense of humor.
“Are you a good girl or a bad girl?”That’s such a Teen Beat 1999 question.
I find the popularity of Otessa Moshfegh baffling. Her writing is just completely blah to me.
Sounds like a pen name selected by banging her head on the keyboard.
No one is asking the real question:
Why is Lil’ Annie Hathaway dressed like “Black Michelin Man”?
I hope the executive lived long enough to see Anne in “Love and Other Drugs.”