'Verity' puts Anne Hathaway, Dakota Johnson and Josh Hartnett in a steamy Colleen Hoover thriller

In “Verity,” it’s hard to know who to trust.

There’s Anne Hathaway’s titular character, a wildly popular novelist who is unable to speak or move after a car accident, but whose secret, and disturbing, autobiography speaks volumes. There’s Dakota Johnson’s struggling author, Lowen, who has been hired to finish Verity’s remaining novels and who finds herself living in Verity’s home and fantasizing about her more successful counterpart’s life, and husband. And then there’s Josh Hartnett, as said husband, who is caring and responsible but perhaps a bit quick to suggest that Lowen borrow one of Verity’s dresses for their night out on the town.

It is all quite heightened in the way that one might hope for in a sexy, psychological thriller, which opens in theaters Friday. At some point, Lowen even starts to suspect that Verity might be faking her paralysis. And the actors often found themselves doing something that the script did not call for: Giggling.

“There would be some shots where Dakota and I would just have to stare at each other,” Hathaway recently told The Associated Press. “There’s just something about knowing that you’re supposed to be scary that makes you giggle.”

But that is just part of the fun of going big for a pulpy, popcorn thriller, where Johnson gets to blow vape smoke in Hathaway’s face and all get to participate in a fantasy sequence in which Johnson starts out kissing Hartnett’s character and ends with Hathaway on her lips.

“It just seemed really fun to play somebody who’s deeply unwell,” Johnson said.

“Verity" is the latest Colleen Hoover adaptation to make it to the big screen. After “It Ends With Us,” it is one of her more popular bestsellers. That film made over $350 million worldwide in theaters, but also became infamous for its off-screen legal battles .

On “Verity,” however, the drama stayed on the screen. For director Michael Showalter, it offered a chance to dip into a genre that he has been dreaming about since he took an Alfred Hitchcock film class in high school. “Rebecca” was a major touchstone.

Hitchcock, and Brian De Palma, were in his head when casting the movie too. It held extra significance that Johnson’s grandmother, Tippi Hedren, was in “The Birds” and “Marnie,” and her mother, Melanie Griffith, starred in De Palma’s very Hitchcockian “Body Double.”

Johnson deadpanned that she wasn't “really thinking about my mother or grandmother in erotic thrillers at the time of filming."

But after the fact she said she found it “inspiring in a way."

“I guess, because it’s something that has been in my family, it’s like a sense of understanding and bravery,” Johnson said. “I guess I’m inspired by my mother and grandmother that they can do, or did that. And so could I.”

None of the three leads had ever worked together before. Showalter likened them to a “super group.” He learned from Hitchcock that movies like these are as much about the characters as they are about the actors.

“I’ve always been trying to play roles that are very different from each other and from myself,” Hartnett said. “And I think as I’ve gotten older, people have allowed me more leeway to do that.”

Hathaway was a producer on “Verity” and came armed with big, cinematic ideas, Showalter said. The two had worked together on the romantic drama “The Idea of You,” and Hathaway was excited to help him make his “Rebecca,” and also to be in a role in which she was sitting and staring off in the distance for much of it. She had just come off several physically demanding productions. Stillness seemed like the right choice.

“Verity's” release ends an exhaustive streak of non-stop work for Hathaway that resulted in five major theatrical releases, and press tours, this year, including “Mother Mary,” “The Devil Wears Prada 2,” “The Odyssey” and “The End of Oak Street.” On top of that, she is soon going to give birth to her third child and then, after a bit of a break, plans to team up with Tom Cruise on a “Days of Thunder” sequel. But she is not patting herself on the back for any of it.

“Please let’s not over praise the pampered actress,” Hathaway said. “There’s a lot of pregnant women out there at home and in the workplace who didn’t get a manicure this morning. I’m very happy to do my job. I have so much support.”

Hathaway went on to speak about the thrill of watching audiences come back to movie theaters this year — something that she said she and her co-stars took for granted at the beginning of their careers. The annual domestic box office is up around 19% from last year; Hathaway's four movies have made just over $2.5 billion worldwide.

“This year in particular felt like the first time for me, post pandemic, post the strikes, where the movies were so exciting and people came out in droves to see them again and again and again,” she said. “It’s just been exciting to have so many offerings in a year that feels so important to the motion picture industry and, not to sound too, you know, grandiose about it, but to American culture.”

Hartnett chimed in: “But I’m with ‘The Onion’ saying that we’re becoming overly reliant on Anne Hathaway in our economy.”

Hathaway told him not to worry.

“I’m going to rest pretty soon,” she said. “This is the last one.”