Anne Hathaway’s renaissance has been a wonderful thing to witness. For years now, the actor’s reputation has been based on the assumption that she tries just a little too hard, that insincerity lurks behind her desire to be everything to everyone.
For us true believers, this was always heresy – Hathaway’s total commitment to the task at hand, whether it’s shaving her head or hosting the Oscars, is what makes her Hathaway – so it’s a relief to see the rest of the world come around. Part of this change has been down to her willingness to experiment with high fashion. But part of it, in transpires, is that Anne Hathaway is apparently an Arsenal FC fan now.
The evidence came at a remote junket for Hathaway’s new movie The Idea of You. Between interviews, her co-star Nicholas Galitzine furtively checked his phone, pumped his fist and mumbled “One-nil”. This in turn caused Hathaway to clutch the arms of her chair, lean forward as if to vomit, briefly regain her composure, double-pump her fists, close her eyes and yell “WOOAR, LOVE YOU!” like Gregg Wallace slipping around in a big trifle.
Further clarification came when the next interviewer began her slot with such a look of extreme bafflement on her face that Hathaway felt the need to explain. “Sorry, we’re both fans of the same team, and there’s a match going on right now, and during our last interview they scored,” she said, before adding that Arsenal plays “English Premier League soccer”, and that “we’ve had a rough week.” The match they were following was Arsenal’s 2-0 victory over Wolves, although sadly there is no video footage of Hathaway making similarly guttural noises for each of the five goals that they scored against Chelsea last night.
Not that it matters, because the internet has already embraced Anne Hathaway’s decision to come out as a secret Gooner. There’s an image of Hathaway’s head superimposed on a player’s body, saying “This is my club. I fucking love this football club.” There are tweets calling her a queen. Someone repurposed the old Simpsons “Do it for her” sign and adorned it with pictures of Hathaway.
And we wouldn’t have known anything about Hathaway’s secret support, except that Galitzine happened to let slip about it last month. “You know, a really fun fact: Anne Hathaway is a massive Arsenal supporter as well,” he said. “I’m in a group chat with her family, who are all Arsenal supporters. [They’re] obsessed.”
It does seem to be a particularly well-hidden support, however. Before this year, there were exactly zero mentions of the terms “Anne Hathaway” and “Arsenal” together. Indeed, there has only been one mention of Anne Hathaway and football in general this millennium, during a New York Times interview from 2001, in which she declared that, during high school “I did normal things. I played soccer and studied a lot and did some acting and had good friends. Things were just fine.”
Further investigation reveals that Hathaway has, on occasion, enjoyed various other spectator sports. Earlier this year she sat unmoved through a basketball match between the Atlanta Hawks and the Charlotte Hornets, and another Hornets game last year. She also attended the 2022 US Open tennis championships, where she was photographed applauding in close proximity to Zach Braff. Before that she was photographed at Wimbledon in 2011, but that seems to be it.
Obviously this points us towards various potential conclusions. The first is that Hathaway is such a diehard Arsenal fan that she doesn’t want to overshadow the team’s performance with her physical presence at matches. The second is that Anne Hathaway has been turned into a master of surprise by her decades of celebrity, and is able to support her team incognito.
And then there’s the third conclusion, which is that Anne Hathaway isn’t really that much of a Gooner after all, and that she’s just leaning into this whole shtick because it makes for a breezy promotional opportunity for her new film. After all, would it be that much of a stretch to pretend to like a football team for clicks when we already live in a world where Glen Powell and Sydney Sweeney pretended to be in love while promoting their film Anyone But You?
Only Hathaway knows the truth, but maybe we can dig a little deeper. Whoever interviews her next, please be sure to dedicate the bulk of your time to interrogating her on her knowledge of Herbert Chapman’s managerial innovations between 1925 and 1934.
