Exasperated Anne Hathaway fans are defending the Devil Wears Prada star after she was accused of being “rude” in a resurfaced interview.
The clip shows the US actor declining to discuss a conversation she had with Vogue’s editor-in-chief Anna Wintour, and laughing at the idea that she would ever share details with a journalist.
However, fans of the Princess Diaries star have jumped to her defence and dismissed the complaints on social media.
The interview in question took place last October at ELLE magazine’s Women in Hollywood event, after Hathaway wore an outfit that resembled her character Andy in the 2006 film The Devil Wears Prada.
The actor wore a black turtleneck with a brown crocodile skirt and jacket to the Michael Kors show at New York Fashion Week, complete with bangs. She sat next to Wintour during the show in September.
Asked whether she and Wintour had ever spoken about the movie – in which Meryl Streep plays Miranda Priestly, a character modelled after Wintour – Hathaway confirmed they had.
However, when the reporter pushed for information about what the legendary Vogue editor has “shared”, Hathaway replied: “Why would I tell you?” before laughing loudly.
The interviewer said: “Because I’m a fan and I need to know.”
“No, but you weren’t there,” Hathaway said, shaking her head slightly.
The interviewer said they “respected” Hathaway’s decision not to divulge her and Wintour’s interaction, and the actor thanked her.
A clip of the interview, which stops just before the interviewer said: “I respect that” has resurfaced on social media with some viewers branding Hathaway as “rude”.
On TikTok, some people commented that Hathaway was being “passive aggressive” or was displaying “mean girl vibes”.
But her fans took to Twitter to defend the Love and Other Drugs star, who also wowed them with her appearance at the Met Gala last week, and said she was well within her right not to share a private conversation.
“It’s a personal moment she didn’t want to share??” one person wrote. “Maybe if she was consistently doing it to certain people I would say micro/passive aggressive but it’s not even all that.”
Another said: “She just didn’t want to share personal stuff and made a joke about this and even laughed at herself… and the way she said, ‘but you weren’t there’ sounds really sweet to me, why would anyone be offended by this?”
A third added: “If Anna Wintour told me a secret I wouldn’t even tell it to my own cat.”
Speaking about the viral moment she recreated one of her character’s looks, Hathaway told Today that she hadn’t done so on purpose.
“It was kind of nuts, wasn’t it,” she told host Savannah Guthrie. “It was by accident. I was supposed to wear something else. The shoes didn’t fit, this was the other outfit that came.
“And then my hairstylist, who was so lovely and I had never worked with him before, just said, ‘Oh I know what to do’. And he threw my hair up in a ponytail.”
Hathaway said at that moment she realised who she resembled.
“I looked in the mirror and I thought, ‘Oh that’s funny, I wonder if anybody will notice’.”
