Created by executive producers and showrunners Lee Eisenberg and Drew Crevello, the eight-episode limited Apple TV+ series WeCrashed tells the story of Adam (Jared Leto) and Rebekah Neumann (Anne Hathaway), a power couple that started with the best of intentions, only to quickly become so power-hungry that it led to the dramatic crash-and-burn of one of the world’s most valuable startups. As the CEO of WeWork, Adam’s natural charisma partnered with Rebekah’s spiritual lifestyle sold a brand that people bought into and that skyrocketed to success until greed led it to spectacularly blow up in their faces.
During this 1-on-1 interview with Collider, Hathaway talked about why she was immediately fascinated by Rebekah, how she approached learning more about the woman under the surface and apart from the media representation, collaborating with the showrunners to build the character, the partnership she formed working with Leto, and how she loved the experience of making this series so much that she’d be interested in doing another TV project, if she finds herself drawn to another character.
Collider: Phenomenal work in this. This is a fascinating woman and a compelling couple to watch. When this project came your way, what was your first impression of Rebekah, and what ultimately sold you on wanting to play her?
ANNE HATHAWAY: Thank you so much for your kind words about it. It was an incredible experience, making it. I was fascinated by Rebekah, right off the bat. I didn’t know the WeWork story. I wasn’t familiar with it. I’d never heard of anybody involved. I guess my area of interest didn’t line up with that. So, I met Rebekah through the pilot episode of what I read, and then I Googled her and I met her through the media reaction. And then, I realized that I knew someone that also knew her and I called that person, and the person that they described wasn’t quite like either of those people. I thought, “There’s something really interesting here, about someone who comes off differently, depending on who’s talking to her.”
So then, I started working with (show creators) Lee [Eisenberg] and Drew [Crevello] and I said, “I think that what you have here is really promising and really quite good, but maybe we could focus on this and drop this a little bit deeper, and see where her story goes.” In the process of getting to know them better as collaborators and building this character, I realized that they were people I could trust, that weren’t there to humiliate or drag anyone, and that they actually were very interested in the complexity and nuance of who she is, as person, and her story. And then, the cherry on top was getting to work with Jared Leto. So, it all just lined up to be a yes.
How did you handle playing a character whose life is a drama, but is seen as a comedy to the outside world? How did you figure out what she was feeling, as she was experiencing each moment, separate from how everyone else was viewing her?
HATHAWAY: One of the key things that I found out by talking to people that knew her was everyone kept saying, “Oh, she’s so sweet. She’s such a sweetheart.” I thought, “Oh, that’s really interesting,” because that adjective never made it into the press coverage of her. That was just very interesting to me, in terms of adding a layer to her. I looked at everything and thought, this thing that’s happening, that seems like it’s not very nice from the outside, what if it was a sweet person doing it with good intentions, but it just went wrong? It just added a dimension to it that I was really interested in. But in terms of the comedy and the drama at the same time, that’s how I experience life anyway. That part came easily to me because that’s the way I just see things anyway.
It sounds like you didn’t meet Rebekah, but that you clearly studied her. You had material to watch and read, and you spoke to people in her orbit. Would you have wanted to meet her? Are there questions that you would’ve wanted to ask her, or does it feel like it worked more to your advantage to figure her out on your own?
HATHAWAY: Just given the approach of Lee and Drew, the creators, I didn’t think it was gonna be that helpful. And just being slightly conscious of this part of the process, which I’ve lived through several times, I just thought it would keep it cleaner, if we’d never met. This was just my interpretation of an experience, as opposed to this being the exact observations I made about someone I met.
Which makes, especially with someone like this. She seems so layered and, at the same time, while I feel for her, I also feel like she’s still a complete mystery.
HATHAWAY: I think she’s a person. At the end of the day, I just wanted to treat her with the same level of respect and grace that I would hope I would be treated with, if somebody was playing me, which is to say that she is a human being. We are all just human beings. Nobody’s better than anybody else. I find human beings to be a mixture of admirable traits, but also there are aspects of us that are developing. We’re not always the most idealized version of ourselves, at any given moment. That interested me, all of that, and exploring that, and playing a character who is, to me, very, very human.
What was it like to have this partnership with Jared Leto, throughout the making of this series? Your performance is so intertwined with his.
HATHAWAY: Yes.
It really feels like this was a real collaboration between the two of you.
HATHAWAY: Yeah. Don’t get me wrong, I work very, very hard and I take what I do very seriously, but any part of my performance that you enjoyed, would not have been there without him. We were total partners in this. I was so inspired by him. He sets such a high bar for himself. It’s thrilling. It really is. Just given the nature of our character’s relationships and how much they mean to each other, we really opened ourselves up to just representing their love. We treated each other with respect and gratitude, and it was a beautiful experience. It was wild, and it was really fun to just throw down and be ready for anything. I hope I’m not flattering myself, but I think we complemented each other, in ways that were very meaningful to me.
How do you think Rebekah viewed Adam, during all of this?
HATHAWAY: I think she saw him, but she didn’t see him like you see him and she didn’t see him as I see him. She saw him as she sees him. Certainly, in the beginning, she saw greatness in him, right off the bat. And I don’t know that other people had seen that yet.
You haven’t really done a TV series since Get Real, which is when I first became aware of you and I loved that show.
HATHAWAY: Oh, wow.
I loved that show and was crushed when it got canceled.
HATHAWAY: You must have been two.
You’ve done an episode or two, here and there, and I love the episode you did of Solos.
HATHAWAY: Thank you.
You’re really getting to live in a character for a longer period of time with this. Is that something you’re open to doing again, if you find yourself attracted to a character whose story can’t be told in the length of a film?
HATHAWAY: Absolutely. I loved the experience of this. I loved getting to spend six months with a character, just shooting it, let alone the prep that you do with it, developing that level of intimacy and feel for it. Plus, I just loved the people that I worked with on this one, so it was a real joy to do. When I was coming up as an actress, I always observed that British actors weren’t film actors, and they weren’t TV actors and they weren’t theater actors, they were actors. Someone like Helen Mirren, and there are no actual adjectives to describe Helen Mirren because she’s just Helen Mirren, she would do limited series, she would do film, and she be on stage. That always seemed to me to be the most exciting way to be an actor, so I’m just very excited now that that seems to have found its way to America.
WeCrashed is available to stream at Apple TV+.
Read Next
About The Author
