When Anne Hathaway went in to audition for Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Night Rises, she had no idea what role she was going for–but she had made some assumptions. In an interview with BBC Radio 1, via IGN, Hathaway related how she went to her Catwoman audition vibing a completely different femme fatale.
After The Dark Knight featured Joker so prominently, Hathaway could be forgiven for thinking the next film would mark his girlfriend Harley Quinn’s first appearance on the big screen.
“I came in and I had this lovely Vivian Westwood kind of beautiful-but-mad tailoring top with stripes going everywhere,” Hathaway said in the interview. “And I wore these flat Joker-ey looking shoes. And I was trying to give Chris these crazy little smiles.”
It was only after an hour of this that Nolan revealed he was casting for Catwoman, calling for Hathaway to make an abrupt change to her mannerisms while dressed to evoke a completely different character.
“About an hour into the meeting he said ‘Well, I’m sure I don’t have to tell you this, but it’s Catwoman,'” she related. “And I was shifting into a different gear. ‘Now ok, we’re slinky. We’re slinky. And I hate my shirt. I love my shirt, but I hate it right now. We’re slinky.'”
We all know by now that she got the part of Catwoman, but the DC universe would surely be very different right now if it was Hathaway who pioneered a role now inextricably linked to Margot Robbie.
Hathaway is now passing the Catwoman baton to Zoe Kravitz, who will appear as Selena Kyle’s Catwoman in next year’s The Batman.
