Verity

Verity stars Dakota Johnson as a struggling novelist who gets an unusual assignment. She's been asked to ghostwrite the final books by a superstar writer, played by Anne Hathaway. It’s an erotic thriller about marriage, manipulators, and (of course) murder. Based on Colleen Hoover’s bestselling novel, Verity is a story of deceit that wants you to keep guessing until the very end, and maybe even after that. Looking for more books adapted for the screen? Check out these episodes: "Wuthering Heights" is rude, moody and broody https://www.npr.org/2026/02/13/nx-s1-5712290/wuthering-heights-is-rude-moody-and-broody 'No Other Choice' is the perfect movie for our moment https://www.npr.org/2026/01/07/nx-s1-5662521/no-other-choice-is-the-perfect-movie-for-our-moment 'Little Women' Is A Dynamic Sister Act https://www.npr.org/2019/12/16/788456363/little-women-is-a-dynamic-sister-act Connect with Pop Culture Happy Hour: Letterboxd https://letterboxd.com/nprpopculture/ / Facebook https://www.facebook.com/pchh Our weekly newsletter https://www.npr.org/newsletter/pop-culture Support public media with NPR+ and enjoy perks for over 25 podcasts like this one. This show’s perks include bonus episodes and sponsor-free listening. Learn more at plus.npr.org http://plus.npr.org/. See pcm.adswizz.com https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:36Speaker 02

  Oh, this is hard, Josh.

• 0:37Speaker 03

  The headboard is key.

• 0:38Speaker 01

  It is a moment that I think you can get away with on the page. But when you put it literally on camera, it becomes incredibly silly.

• 0:51Speaker 01

  The bestselling novel Verity is an erotic thriller about marriage, manipulators, and of course, murder. And now it's a new movie.

• 1:00Speaker 02

  Verity is led by Dakota Johnson and Anne Hathaway, and it's a story of deceit that wants you to keep guessing until the very end. And maybe even after that. I'm Aisha Harris.

• 1:11Speaker 01

  And I'm Linda Holmes. And joining us today on NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour is Jordan Cruciola. She's the editor of the action movie newsletter, The Action Desk. Hey, Jordan, welcome back.

• 1:22Speaker 03

  Hello, thank you for having me. And I dare say I am a perfect third chair for today's conversation.

• 1:29Speaker 01

  Very nice, very nice. All right. Verity is based on the novel by Colleen Hoover, who you might know from either her many, many bestsellers or her previous film and TV adaptations. They include, of course, the not at all controversial It Ends With Us. Here, the story concerns Lowen Ashley, played by Dakota Johnson, a struggling novelist who gets the unusual assignment of ghostwriting the final books in a series by a superstar writer. That writer, named Verity Crawford, is played by Anne Hathaway. Verity has suffered serious injuries in a car accident that make it impossible for her to finish the books herself and even to communicate with anyone, although her near catatonic state is being kept quiet.

• 2:14Speaker 01

  Josh Hartnett plays Verity's husband, Jeremy. He's caring for her and their young son in their creepy mountain home. He brings Lowen there so she can read all of Verity's notes and drafts and outlines. But as Lowen starts going through Verity's stuff, she finds an unusual manuscript that seems to be more of a journal than a novel. And as we see parts of Verity's life in flashbacks, Lowen starts to wonder exactly what she doesn't know about these people. The film is directed by Michael Showalter, whose diverse resume includes everything from wet, hot American summer to the Hathaway-starring romance, The Idea of You. The film is from Amazon MGM Studios, so we should note Amazon supports NPR and pays

• 2:58Speaker 01

  to distribute some of our content. Verity is in theaters now. Jordan Cruciola, I'm going to start with you. How did you like Verity?

• 3:07Speaker 03

  I am a big fan of Verity. And the way Verity kicks off within five minutes of the movie, as is referenced in the conversation just before we started recording, perhaps the most grotesque meet-cute of all time between Lowen Ashley and Jeremy, Josh Hartnett and Dakota Johnson. Really, that's a tone-setting moment. And then we are just off to the races from there. And I was flying. I was flying this whole time, guys. I'm all in for Verity.

• 3:40Speaker 01

  Now, see, this is the interesting thing, because I know Jordan well enough to know that Jordan likes a big movie. Jordan likes a movie that swings real, real hard and goes real, real big. Please refer back to Jordan and my conversation about the front room.

• 3:54Speaker 03

  I'm going to call it one of the great Pop Culture Happy Hour episodes of all time, is what I'm going to call that.

• 3:57Speaker 01

  Which we both treasure to this day, starring Brandy. Just find the front room, find the episode. Jordan likes a big movie.

• 4:06Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 4:07Speaker 01

  I think I actually wanted this movie to be bigger.

• 4:10Speaker 03

  And I think that's a great instinct.

• 4:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:12Speaker 03

  I could have gone for bigger. I could have gone for crazier.

• 4:14Speaker 01

  Yeah. How about you, Ayesha? What did you think?

• 4:17Speaker 02

  Oh, well, before every Dakota Johnson movie I see now, I think to myself, is she going to act in this one? Maybe?

• 4:26Speaker 03

  I love her. I love her, your honor.

• 4:29Speaker 02

  And the answer has consistently been shrug, maybe, maybe not. I look at her as the Dua Lipa of millennial leading ladies. She gives us next to nothing. And this movie even references the fact that she gives us next to nothing multiple times. At one point, Jeremy says to Lowen, I don't know if you're calm or in shock, after that very grotesque meet-cute. Sure, yeah, like, that can happen. That's a normal reaction to having someone get plastered by a car on a bike and blood is all over you in the first few minutes of this movie. That's normal. But then later on, he comments again, and she says, I have resting bored face. And I'm like, yes, you do.

• 5:07Speaker 01

  For a movie character, that's a little bit of a problem.

• 5:11Speaker 02

  That is a problem. And so, like, this movie is so sleepy for the first, I don't know, 20 minutes of this movie before Anne Hathaway's character really kicks in and, like, brings some life into this story. This movie should be bigger. It should be campier. It should be way more in the realm of something like The Housemaid.

• 5:30Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 5:30Speaker 02

  And I'm not saying Sydney Sweeney is that much better of an actress, but like, I think at least Sydney Sweeney kind of knew what kind of movie she was in, and...

• 5:37Speaker 01

  I think she's weirder. I think she goes bigger.

• 5:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, she loves big. She's good at big. She doesn't have holdback in her in a genre movie.

• 5:44Speaker 02

  Correct. And, look, this is a kind of different character. Lowen is a little different character. But like, I kept thinking to myself, like, who does disaffected Deadpan way more effectively than Dakota Johnson? And I kept coming back to Aubrey Plaza. Aubrey Plaza should have been in this movie. It would have been a little bit more interesting. I think she would have leaned more into Showalter's brand of camp. Like, there's also issues with the script and the pacing. Like, I don't think it's all into Dakota Johnson, but she's not helping.

• 6:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:12Speaker 02

  And so, I found this movie to be, like, frustratingly just not fun enough. I can go by all the kind of ludicrous machinations and the silliness. Like, I actually wanted that, and I wanted more of that. And this movie was not doing that. I have not read the book, so I don't know how closely it hews to the book.

• 6:32Speaker 01

  As I understand it, it hews very close to the book. However, I have not read the book. I've sort of looked over the book, which is sometimes something I do. I compare some sections to try to get a feel, right? But the women who sat next to me at the screening of this movie are huge fans of the book, love the book.

• 6:48Speaker 02

  Oh, great.

• 6:49Speaker 01

  And pronounced the movie cheesy.

• 6:51Speaker 02

  Okay, good to know.

• 6:53Speaker 01

  And we talked about things like, there is a moment in this story that involves the headboard of the bed.

• 7:00Speaker 02

  Oh, this is hard, Josh.

• 7:01Speaker 03

  The headboard is key.

• 7:02Speaker 01

  It is a moment that I think you can get away with on the page. But when you put it literally on camera, it becomes incredibly silly, which is very common with things that involve sex scenes.

• 7:16Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 7:16Speaker 01

  There are things that if you write them in a book, they play one way. If you force an actor to actually say or do that thing on camera, it becomes silly. Or if not handled perfectly, it becomes silly. And I think for me, I will say, Dakota Johnson, I think, I share some of Ayesha's kind of general lack of response to her, like, inability to respond to her. But I think she always comes off fundamentally as a normie. I think in the kinds of roles that she's doing now, she always seems to me like this

• 7:55Speaker 01

  kind of simple, minimally emotional person who startles herself with these little moments of maybe transgressiveness or something like that, or darkness, but then always kind of retreats back to this, like, very basic kind of presentation. And I think if you've seen Anne Hathaway in a variety of things, right? And you've seen Josh Hartnett during the Josh Hartnett renaissance.

• 8:22Speaker 02

  Trapped.

• 8:22Speaker 01

  He has done such fabulous, odd duck work.

• 8:27Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 8:27Speaker 01

  In The Bear, in the wonderful Fight or Flight, my beloved Fight or Flight, and in Trap.

• 8:34Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 8:34Speaker 01

  Which is the M. Night Shyamalan movie, where he is so strange in such a jangled, unsettling, kind of really, like, semi-goofy kind of way.

• 8:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:47Speaker 01

  Like, I feel like Hathaway and Hartnett are 100% capable of doing a much weirder and more satisfying version of this movie. I don't know if that's real. I mean, Showalter obviously can do that in comedy, right?

• 9:01Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 9:01Speaker 01

  With Wet Hot American Summer and stuff like that. I'm not sure he found that gear... To direct this as a, an over the top kind of Gothic campy, you know what I mean? Like the screenplay is from Nick Antoska, who's, I know him mostly from TV.

• 9:18Speaker 03

  I'm so glad you shouted him out because I just want to give it up for Nick Antoska, creator of brand new Cherry Flavor, creator of the best horror series television has ever seen in Channel Zero. This guy, one of our great screenwriters.

• 9:32Speaker 01

  See, you love this guy.

• 9:33Speaker 03

  Love this guy.

• 9:34Speaker 01

  I associate this guy with, um, stuff like the TV adaptation of Cape Fear, which I thought was lousy, really not, not good.

• 9:44Speaker 03

  Oh yeah. Uh, it was really fun watching people watch that on Twitter and be like, what is going on at Apple TV?

• 9:50Speaker 01

  Well, and here's the thing, I think that had the same problem. I think he had trouble trying to execute the over the top campiness of something like Cape Fear.

• 10:00Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 10:01Speaker 01

  So I'm not sure either one of these guys really found the right gear for this movie. I would maybe have involved a woman, maybe, um, either to direct it or write the screenplay.

• 10:12Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 10:13Speaker 01

  I mean, obviously it comes from Colleen Hoover's book and, you know, I believe Anne Hathaway and Dakota Johnson are both producers and it's not that there were no women involved, but like, I might've chosen a woman director or I might've chosen a woman to write the screenplay and see if that gets you anything different. But I felt like they had a lot of trouble kind of plugging into what I thought was the optimal version of this story, which is something a lot weirder than what we got.

• 10:36Speaker 03

  I feel like the movie that we did get versus the one that is like Housemaid Loud, taking like big features of Amanda Seyfried Loud and big features of Sydney Sweeney Loud and all the stuff that's going on in that. Dakota Johnson, my beloved inscrutable heroine. Dakota Johnson in an environment where her sort of elusive strangeness, but beauty is meant to be this thing where you can't figure out the movie necessarily because you can't figure out what she's doing. I think that is a feature of Dakota Johnson and not a bug. That is why the Fifty Shades movies, I'm not saying that they are good movies.

• 11:19Speaker 03

  I'm saying for what they are, they have this oddity about them where it's like, let's put, I think that the, the sense of her is like this, like she like is this insert normie into a spectacularly strange situation where anybody else would go in and have a larger emotional response and be like, this is really insane. Do you understand how insane this is? It's her just walking in and being like, uh-oh. And that's why Madame Web is modern performance art, because you have her at the helm of Madame Web. And I think that is the strange magic of Dakota Johnson that I think fits really well in this. Then you have Anne, who is making probably generating probably more money at the box office this year than any other person. Devil Wears Prodigy, Odyssey, this, My Cherished Mother Mary, somehow inexplicably

• 12:03Speaker 03

  styled as a 1950s housewife, despite the contemporary setting of the movie. Every time you see her, she has the hair of like a woman who's going to sell you a toaster in the mid-century, like in the era of Eisenhower. She is serving so much Anne Hathaway face in this movie. Just that like kind of closed eyes with like the kind of tense lip that's like slightly agape. And Josh Hartnett is just like the dreamiest husband man where because of the nature of the story, you have to keep wondering like, is he a bad guy? Is she a bad lady? Is Anne Hathaway marionetting this all catatonic? I was rapt by everybody doing their individual job in this movie that I think perfectly serves the mild, yes, it's a muted zaniness that this story possesses.

• 12:45Speaker 02

  I, I am almost persuaded by your enthusiasm, Jordan.

• 12:49Speaker 03

  My greatest weapon. I am the antithesis of Dakota Johnson, truly.

• 12:54Speaker 02

  But actually I admire that you were able to get so much of that out of Dakota Johnson's performance.

• 12:58Speaker 03

  I'm all in. I'm a long time, I bought stock way back in her sitcom days because the intentional funniness of Dakota Johnson, I'm also very sold on. So like, I think people think that Dakota is, doesn't mean to make things funny the way she does. I think it's like, consider, it seems to read for a lot of people is like her just messing something up so they're laughing at her, not with her. But there's one thing Dakota is going to deliver. It is a wry comedy line in the completely inappropriate space and time in a movie.

• 13:24Speaker 02

  Yeah. I will say she has like one line in here that like, I can't repeat because it's NPR and we can't use that word, which I think is like the best line delivery out of her in that entire movie. But I think again, this comes back to, and aside from my feelings about her, I don't think it's just her. I do think, as Linda was saying, it is an issue with the scripting and the pacing and like the way this movie is overall concedes because.

• 13:48Speaker 03

  Yeah. I can, I can absolutely get down with somebody being like, the pacing just wasn't there for me. I hear that. I hear that. I accept that.

• 13:52Speaker 02

  Because when I think of something like Fifty Shades, and look, I have not gone back to re-watch those movies, but I remember seeing them in theaters and the camp, high levels of camp were off the charts. And like she seemed to play into that in a really good way. It's funny because at my screening, like there were obvious Colleen Hoover fans, there were lines, people were very excited to get in. And our screening was very muted. And I think that says something because I think this movie was supposed to be a housemaid situation. And my housemaid screening was very like vocal, even something like Baby Girl. Remember Baby Girl? The discourse around that with Nicole Kidman? And those are the types of experiences that like I enjoy. I don't need this to be Shakespeare.

• 14:37Speaker 02

  I just want it to be silly and absurd. And I don't think Dakota Johnson, like she actually has said when talking about making this movie, that like, Showalter was trying to push her in the direction of camp. And she's like, that's not really me as an artist. And I'm like, you don't say, I can tell.

• 14:54Speaker 03

  Michael, what were you doing?

• 14:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:55Speaker 03

  That's a user error at that point. Like, sorry, you bought the car and now you're going to drive it, Michael.

• 14:59Speaker 02

  I think she can be funny. I just think so often she's usually funny in interviews. Like I still think of the Ellen interview. Like she's great at that.

• 15:08Speaker 03

  Oh, sure.

• 15:08Speaker 02

  But like, that doesn't serve as creating a character in this world and in making me want to like, honest, even Josh Hartnett didn't have much to do, like for me at least, compared to other movies I've seen him in, he didn't have as much to do.

• 15:21Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 15:21Speaker 02

  This was Anne Hathaway's movie and I agree with you. Anne Hathaway is fantastic. She's got range and she has more to do, like her eyes are doing more in her catatonic state.

• 15:31Speaker 03

  Can anybody act harder in a voiceover than Anne Hathaway?

• 15:35Speaker 02

  I don't know.

• 15:35Speaker 03

  My goodness gracious.

• 15:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:38Speaker 01

  We'll have much more about Verity after the break.

• 15:42Speaker 00

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• 16:58Speaker 01

  So here's the other thing that I want to talk about, and I don't want to spoil any specifics of the ending, but I do want to say, one of the fundamental features of this book and movie is that it has this ambiguous ending.

• 17:11Speaker 03

  Right.

• 17:12Speaker 01

  Anybody who reads a lot of domestic thrillers, which I do, is going to be asking themselves exactly the questions that Jordan was talking about. Is Verity bad? Is Jeremy bad? Are they both bad? Is neither one of them bad? The decision that Colleen Hoover made at the end of the book when she published it was basically, who knows?

• 17:33Speaker 03

  Like, read exactly like that by Anne Hathaway. Who knows?

• 17:38Speaker 01

  And it's, obviously her name is Verity. So the whole thing is about truth and, and the manipulation of the truth. I generally dislike ambiguous endings unless you have a really good reason for it.

• 17:51Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 17:52Speaker 01

  And particularly in a genre movie like a thriller, there is a contract that you make with the audience. And I believe that the contract that you make with the audience requires that you answer the questions that you have asked. And I think when a thriller is setting you up to think, maybe one person is bad, maybe another person is bad. For the writer to say, I choose not to choose, I greatly dislike that and I don't think it works well. And I think it denies. I mean, obviously, there is a climactic sequence of this movie that is, in a sense, yes, it is over the top. But it has to be kind of hemmed in by the fact that you still have to leave room

• 18:35Speaker 01

  for the different interpretations that she wants to be possible. So you don't get Josh Hartnett in Trap or Josh Hartnett in some of these other things, because you have to be unsure how to feel about him, not just throughout the movie, where obviously that's what's going to happen.

• 18:52Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 18:53Speaker 01

  But all the way through, right? I think it really takes away from the force of the story to eventually be like, I think the only time that an ambiguous ending works for me is when the purpose of the ambiguity is to raise the question, maybe it doesn't matter. That's why you get an ambiguous ending, like the closing shots of Inception, for example, with the spinning top.

• 19:18Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 19:18Speaker 01

  Because the question is, does it matter whether the top is going to tip over or not? And that's an ambiguous ending that works for me, versus an ambiguous ending that, to me, feels more like a gimmick to me.

• 19:32Speaker 03

  Yeah. This one feels like it's very, it's a have your cake and eat it too ending for, it feels like, our authoress, Colleen.

• 19:40Speaker 02

  At the same time, though, I actually kind of was, I've watched my fair share of these domestic thrillers. So you always think, like, oh, I'm already two steps ahead of you, writer. Like, I have a feeling. And when the ending was revealed, I was like, kind of impressed by how silly it was and like, how boldly just nonsensical it felt. But at the same time, I was like, well, actually, and I don't think this is a spoiler, but like, maybe everyone is.

• 20:06Speaker 03

  Well, for sure.

• 20:08Speaker 02

  Of course. Regardless of what the real quote unquote "truth" is, all of them made some sort of choices that are like

• 20:15Speaker 03

  Oh, of course.

• 20:15Speaker 02

  bonkers and absolutely maniacal. And, but again, this also just comes back to not just the way that's, the twist happens, but also the fact that, like, Dakota Johnson's character has to make a kind of like, big turn.

• 20:27Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 20:28Speaker 02

  Like, her, her goals or what she wants, that just feels kind of out of left field, because it doesn't build to that, both in the writing, in a way that I think is like believable, and in her performance.

• 20:40Speaker 01

  And I'll tell you what, when I decided that I was going to check the book out, just to like, get a feel for it, read some sections, get a feel for what the prose feels like, I learned that after it was published, and after it already had many, many, many fans, a bonus chapter slash epilogue was added.

• 20:58Speaker 03

  An encore? What, is she a pop star now? Adding extra tracks?

• 21:03Speaker 01

  Which tells you, essentially, the answer to the question that you've been asking, that was left hanging at the end of the book, and is left hanging at the end of the movie.

• 21:14Speaker 02

  I better get a Blu-ray extra for this.

• 21:16Speaker 01

  So I had the ambiguous ending, and I also resolved the ending.

• 21:19Speaker 02

  It's like, okay.

• 21:21Speaker 01

  I want to ask one brief bonus question. This is sort of an erotic thriller. Did you think this movie was sexy at all? Because I felt like, although they try to show some sex, I feel like this movie is obsessed with the idea that showing people's fingers and mouths is sexy. There's a moment where Dakota Johnson's character stirs her coffee with her finger and then sticks it in her mouth. And I was like, there's a spoon in this kitchen, somewhere. I feel like it's meant to just be like, everything is so sensual, and people are constantly like, there's a lot of biting, and there's a lot of bleeding, and there's a lot of people's mouths and lips and

• 22:00Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 22:01Speaker 01

  smearing icing on each other. And it all felt so effortful to me.

• 22:05Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 22:06Speaker 01

  And I just didn't, in the end, didn't think it was sexy at all.

• 22:11Speaker 03

  No, it felt like if you asked robots to make sexy, and the robots were like, I've seen sexy happen, and then they give you a recreation of what sexy is supposed to be. It's a bunch of sexy people who, together to me, in this context, are not a chemistry of sexy. That wasn't the kind of chemistry I was getting from this movie.

• 22:26Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, to its credit, we do actually get sex scenes, unlike some directors in movies. But this definitely does give the, one of the main sequences that occurs, where, like, the low-end character, Dakota Johnson's character, is like, imagining a sexual encounter. It was kind of vertigo-ish. It was like, supposed to be sort of dark and twisty and unpleasant, but then also clearly kind of hot. And was it hot? I don't know, not to me, but I could see

• 22:58Speaker 03

  No, not to me.

• 23:00Speaker 02

  I could see some people thinking, oh, like, she's in a bath. The kind of bath you would see at like, a spa, or like, a hot spring.

• 23:08Speaker 01

  This house is very wild. And I, the funniest thing to me about that sequence that you're talking about, Ayesha, is that at first, it seems like she is having this fantasy while, we will say, relaxing in the tub.

• 23:20Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 23:20Speaker 01

  But then the fantasy comes to a certain climactic point, and she wakes up in bed, like, she's waking up from a bad dream. And I was like, was she dreaming that she was fantasizing?

• 23:31Speaker 02

  I think she was also dreaming she was in the tub while dreaming. It was a dream within a dream.

• 23:35Speaker 03

  The fantasy where suddenly the, toward climax, the unmotivated red lighting appears, and I was like, oh, yeah, let's get an unmotivated club lighting in this fantasy. Absolutely.

• 23:47Speaker 02

  That was where I was thinking of vertigo. I was like, oh, this is like when you have the pose of James Stewart's face, and it's turning from like, red to yellow to blue to green.

• 23:54Speaker 01

  But truthfully, like, I will say, like, that all sounds kind of big and over the top, and I think if it had been more like that, it might have worked better for me.

• 24:03Speaker 02

  More of that.

• 24:03Speaker 01

  It's all of the kind of people walking around a well-appointed kitchen, having conversations. That's all the part that I thought was very, was quite boring. And never start a really campy movie with like, a scene in a conference room. Don't get to the conference room too early. Anyway.

• 24:19Speaker 03

  Don't get to the conference room too early.

• 24:22Speaker 01

  I think we have some mixed feelings about this movie, some mixed feelings about Dakota Johnson, but, you know, it is based on a very popular book, so if you go see it, you will probably run into plenty of people who are interested in it. That brings us to the end of our show. Jordan Cruciola, Aisha Harris, thank you so much for being here. It was very, very entertaining.

• 24:40Speaker 03

  Thank you so much for having me.

• 24:42Speaker 02

  Thank you, Linda.

• 24:43Speaker 01

  This episode is produced by Hafsa Fathama, Liz Metzger, and Mike Katsev, and it was edited by our showrunner, Jessica Reedy. Hello, Come In provides our theme music. Thank you for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. I'm Linda Holmes, and we will see you all next time.

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