Anne Hathaway Wanted to Quit David Lowery’s ‘Mother Mary’ After Seeing Early Footage of Herself: “This Is Really Bad”

Who here has seen David Lowery’s “Mother Mary”? After years in post-production, it finally came out this year. Reviews were mixed, it made only $3 million against a $20 million budget, and everybody has moved on from it.

Except for its star, Anne Hathaway, who now tells Elle Magazine that seeing early footage of “Mother Mary” made her want to quit the movie. The Oscar-winning actress admitted that she spoke to her husband about leaving the project.

“This is really bad,” she recalled thinking when she reviewed the initial footage of herself. “I don’t know that I can ask people to come see this,” she told the outlet.

However, Hathaway decided to push through the embarrassment: “I came to the conclusion that there would be no shame if I was fired, but there would be if I quit,” she recalled.

She ended up taking dance lessons for months and continued to work on her singing during postproduction, long after the film had wrapped.

In “Mother Mary,” Michaela Coel’s character helms a “Phantom Thread”-style costume house and once designed for Hathaway’s pop star before a bitter falling-out. Now, amid scandal and addiction issues, Hathaway’s character shows up at her secluded studio seeking costumes for a comeback tour. The film is mostly the two women arguing in a barn, with only a few onstage glimpses. Hunter Schafer plays Coel’s assistant but has barely ten minutes of screen time.

Filming on “Mother Mary” began in May 2023, but after that, it was rewrites, reshoots and a lot of editing. So, technically, the film didn’t really wrap shootinguntil the end of 2024.

Last year, on The Last Video Store podcast, Lowery admitted: “I’m in the edit right now, and I have been wondering, ‘What is this movie?’ […] It wound up being the hardest thing I’ve ever done.”