Anne Hathaway Takes a Side in the Great ‘Verity’ Letter vs. Manuscript Debate

Some book endings stay with readers long after the last page, and Colleen Hoover’s ‘Verity‘ is one of the most argued-over of the past decade. Since the novel arrived in 2018, fans have split into rival camps over what really happened inside the Crawford home.

The film adaptation was always going to reignite that fight. Its central mystery hinges on an unpublished manuscript that appears to reveal Verity as a monster, and a hidden letter that flips the story on its head.

Now the woman at the center of it all has picked a side. The Hollywood Reporter asked Anne Hathaway whether she is Team Letter or Team Manuscript, and the ‘Verity’ star shared the answer in a piece posted on October 5.

Hathaway’s answer was immediate. Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, she said “Letter,” explaining that she sees Verity as “a terrified woman being very, very careful.” She pushed back on the argument that the letter was merely written as a cover-up.

“The reason that I’m letter, and I know that a lot of people who are team manuscript, they’re like, ‘No, she just wrote the letter to cover her you know what.‘ I’m like, she’s a terrified woman being very, very careful. And this is my thing about the manuscript: There’s a passage where Lowen is describing it, and she’s like, ‘I’ve got to be honest, this book isn’t very good, and it’s really just a lot about sex.’ And she’s just like, ‘I was pretty bored during the next 100 pages,’ but she said how much she was surprised that she liked Verity’s writing, and I think that if Verity really was this no good, villainous, horrible evil murderess that she’s made out to be, don’t you think the book that she would have written about herself would have been excellent?”

She adds: “I don’t know. I don’t trust Lowen. I don’t think Lowen’s well, and I think she sees herself as a victim in all situations, and I definitely don’t trust Jeremy. He goes from zero to crazy angry, real fast.”

For anyone who has not seen the film, the setup is simple enough. Dakota Johnson plays Lowen, a struggling writer hired to finish the series of the bestselling author Verity, and while working in Verity’s home she finds a manuscript that seems to confess to a horrifying crime. Later, a letter turns up hidden under the floorboards, claiming the manuscript was only a writing exercise and that Verity’s husband, Jeremy, is the real danger.

That leaves audiences with two incompatible versions of events. If you trust the manuscript, Verity is a killer who wrote the letter as a final cover-up; if you trust the letter, she was a frightened woman killed because Jeremy believed the manuscript was real.

Hathaway is far from alone in her camp. She told Entertainment Weekly that she does not trust Lowen, and said the writing in the manuscript feels so heightened that it has a performative quality. Johnson, who plays Lowen, said she is also Team Letter, even though her character had to believe the manuscript.

The cast has been candid about the way the debate shaped their performances. Hathaway explained that on set everyone had to be on whichever team their character needed, and that she had to understand Team Manuscript when she was embodying the manuscript scenes. Josh Hartnett told Entertainment Weekly he hopes the film’s ending sparks plenty of debate.

The author sees things differently. Hoover told the ‘Open Book with Jenna’ podcast that she is Team Manuscript, and said she was in Lowen’s head while writing the novel. According to The News International, she has also said that she wrote the book without being sure herself what was truth and what was fiction.

Hoover did later release a bonus chapter in 2022 that seemed to tilt things toward Team Letter, per Yahoo. She did not want it included in the film, according to what she told Entertainment Weekly, so the movie stops roughly where the 2018 novel does.

Anne Hathaway, Dakota Johnson, and Josh Hartnett star in an all-new trailer for #Verity. In theaters October 2. https://t.co/niq02J5nO5

— Rotten Tomatoes 🍅 (@RottenTomatoes) August 11, 2026

There is one major change at the end. Unlike the book, where Lowen destroys the letter, director Michael Showalter confirmed to Screen Rant that the letter is still in her pocket when the film ends, according to Yahoo’s ending explainer.

That small detail keeps the argument alive. The film opened at No. 1 with $32.6 million, per The Hollywood Reporter, and the ending seems to be a big part of why audiences have kept talking about it.

With the author, the star and the director all pulling in different directions, the debate is unlikely to be settled anytime soon. And judging by how Hathaway answered, she is not about to budge.

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