Sorry but Anne Hathaway was not “rude” to this interviewer

Kjersti Flaa has been putting herself in the news recently. When she revealed that Blake Lively was rude to her in an interview, it went viral. It was part of a public takedown of the actress and Flaa got in on the hype. Now she’s trying with Anne Hathaway.

Flaa is a celebrity interviewer and has been sharing her less than stellar clips with celebrities online. For some reason, she decided to share one of Hathaway during the press for Les Misérables. She shared that Hathaway apologized to her after Flaa made a video about the interview. To Flaa’s credit, she did label the video “This might be my worst interview idea ever.” The idea was to have them sing the first question of the interview. Hathaway politely declined.

From there, what we see was a series of bad questions for Hathaway. She’s asked about love and Hathaway responds with a one-word answer and then when Flaa asks her about remembering her first crush, Hathaway also says she doesn’t remember with a quick “No.” If this was a romantic comedy they were talking about, it’d make sense but it was for Les Misérables, a movie where famously Fantine (Hathaway’s character) is a single mother who has to sell her body to try to survive before she ultimately dies.

The video went viral on social media with people claiming that Hathaway was rude to Flaa.

The reality is that Hathaway was beyond polite during the 2012 interview. She could have been rude to Flaa and told her the singing idea wasn’t going to happen in a much more direct way but she was nice about the situation. So why bring this video up now?

Anne Hathaway apologized when she didn’t need to

Flaa revealed that Hathaway sent her an email 12 years later to explain what was going on and why she was not as engaged as she should be during the junket. Personally, I don’t see why she needed to do this. Hathaway did nothing wrong in the original interview. In fact, it was odd for Flaa to post it at all given how people react to Hathaway.

Flaa posted a video reaction to Hathaway’s email, writing “Anne Hathaway just apologized to me for my bad interview experience with her back in 2012. This really made my day.” But she also encourage people to go and watch the video again on her YouTube page.

There are interview clips where celebrities don’t give interviewers the time of day. I’ve seen them. As someone who has the same job that Flaa has, I have never had an actor treat me badly or react rudely to me. I read the energy of the room and frame my questions accordingly. Frankly, it isn’t hard to figure out how a celebrity is going to react to a certain question.

You can (and should) adapt to the room you’re in. That’s part of our job. If someone is answering more serious questions but doesn’t love me making a joke, I adjust my strategy. It is just simply how we have to navigate celebrity interviews. Flaa has, in both viral clips I have seen, not changed her approach given the situation and it backfired.

While the Lively incident blew up given the public pushback at her, this interview isn’t showing anything negative about Hathaway.