Adding onto the current wave of scam-centric TV, Jared Leto and Anne Hathaway channel WeWork founders Adam and Rebekah Neumann in Apple TV+’s new series WeCrashed, about the spectacular rise and fall of the co-working space company.
Leto was drawn to the role for the “fascinating character, compelling story, amazing group of people and Annie Hathaway,” he told The Hollywood Reporter at the show’s Thursday night premiere at the Academy Museum in Los Angeles, adding that living as Neumann throughout the shoot (via his much-talked about immersive acting technique) was “a lot of fun.”
That choice to stay in character on- and off-screen was also witnessed by those around Leto, as co-creator Drew Crevello remembered after starting the first few days of production with just Hathaway’s scenes, “In the middle of a shoot day, Jared — as Adam, with the accent and everything and this fully formed character — just walks onto the set and it was electric. Annie felt it, we all felt it. Adam Neumann showed up one day and it was pretty crazy.” The two stars had been texting throughout pre-production but had spent very little time actually together before portraying the passionate couple.
“In one scene in the show, unscripted, he pulls her off the bed and says like, ‘Howl at the moon with me,’” added Crevello. “It was just this crazy weird but romantic kind of gesture that created that instant bond between them.”
When it came to writing the show, based off of a Wondery podcast of the same name, Crevello and co-creator Lee Eisenberg, “spoke to dozens of former coworkers, friends of the Neumanns, childhood friends, investors, everyone,” who all placed the couple’s romance at the center of the business and its success. They did not, however, reach out to the Neumanns themselves, who have now been removed from the company and are living under the radar.
“This is a dramatic portrayal and we take artistic license and so we really wanted to maintain some artistic independence and distance,” said Crevello of that decision. Hathaway also spoke to people in the couple’s circle ahead of her performance, recounting, “again and again and again the word I heard about her is she’s ‘really sweet,’ which given what I’d read through the media surprised me and made me really want to explore what could have made a human being do all of these things, while still remembering I am a human being playing a human being and we’ve been advised for a long time not to judge each other.”
As for the possibility that the couple will watch the show, Eisenberg teased, “I hope everyone watches it,” as Crevello chimed in, “We’ll take every viewer we can get.”
Inside the screening, held in the museum’s David Geffen Theater, Leto praised the show as “an amazing experience, an incredible experience with these two madmen, from the start, this absolutely compelling character, extraordinary circumstances and the opportunity to work with the queen of cinema right here, one of the best actors ever in the history of film, Anne Hathaway.”
Hathaway, for her part, called the series ” one of the greatest creative experiences of my life,” thanking Leto as she “got to learn so much from you and you were so careful and safe with me on every level. Thank you so much, I actually don’t have the words so I’ll write them to you later.”
She also noted that the night of the premiere was a full moon, and in an acknowledgement to that improvised scene, asked the crowd before breaking out into a wolf-like call, “I was just wondering, as you get deeper into the series it’ll make more sense, but anybody want to howl a little bit?”
WeCrashed is now streaming on Apple TV+.
Source: Hollywood
