Dakota Johnson and Anne Hathaway on Truth, Public Scrutiny, and Verity

Dakota Johnson, Anne Hathaway, and Josh Hartnett say their new film Verity — the screen adaptation of Colleen Hoover's bestselling 2018 thriller — is built to divide its audience. In a recent press-junket conversation with an entertainment content creator, joined by her friend, the cast revealed what they hope viewers will take from the film, which arrives in theaters Oct. 2 via Amazon MGM Studios: that the movie is less about solving its central mystery than about confronting why people are so quick to turn others into villains.

Johnson stars as Lowen, a struggling writer hired to complete the book series of Verity Crawford, a famous author left unable to work after an injury, who uncovers Verity's unpublished autobiography filled with disturbing confessions about her pregnancies and children. Hathaway plays Verity, with Hartnett as her husband, Jeremy.

The conversation began on a lighter note, with the interviewer admitting she had grabbed her friend's arm for the entire screening and declaring that stories about wealthy families in turmoil are her favorite kind of movie.

A playful exchange about how one of the stars manages everyday tasks with her very long nails — gas pumps, credit cards, even a wand-shaped device for mobile payments — gave way to bigger reflections, when the interviewer suggested that modern life is really about escaping our own reality and embracing the stories we want to believe.

The cast agreed that the film captures a distinctly divided moment, one in which people increasingly choose their own version of the truth, and pointed out how unusual it is for a thriller to let audiences experience that on a narrative level. For them, one of the film's greatest pleasures is that viewers will walk out arguing about it — a welcome relief, they noted, from the heavier fights of daily life.

Hathaway, whose title character is at the center of that argument, said she was drawn to the script because it works both as a fun, sexy thriller and as something deeper: an examination of why we need to make people into villains. She plays a woman who is treated as both villain and victim, a duality she connected to her own experience of life in the public eye and the scrutiny that comes with it.

The theme struck a chord with the interviewer as well, who vented about how people form lasting opinions from secondhand stories and half-truths. Hartnett and Johnson echoed the sentiment, with Johnson noting that age has taught her not to sum up an entire person based on a single experience — you never know what someone might be going through — and that allowing yourself to simply not know may be the healthier path. Hartnett agreed that such restraint is rare these days, calling it lovely to see.

The interview's most emotional moment came when the interviewer thanked the cast for portraying the darker side of pregnancy so honestly. She said the film lets a woman finally say the quiet part out loud — the feelings of being trapped, ashamed, drowning, failing, or only seen as a vessel for another life — truths that many mothers carry silently out of shame. Hartnett and Johnson received the thanks with visible emotion, clearly moved that the film's honesty had landed with a real viewer. It's that blend of popcorn thriller and raw confession that the cast believes will make Verity the fall's most argued-about movie.