Colleen Hoover and Michael Showalter on How Anne Hathaway and Dakota Johnson Made ‘Verity’ More Erotic, ‘It Ends With Us’ Drama and Sex in Movies - Variety

SalThis one's been sitting with me all day: Colleen Hoover and Michael Showalter on How Anne Hathaway and Dakota Johnson Made ‘Verity’ More Erotic, ‘It Ends With Us’ Drama and Sex in Movies. Curious if it hits you the same way.

DanaYou’re framing that like it’s some kind of scandal, but it’s really just two actresses doing their jobs on camera. What bugs me is how we automatically treat female sexuality in film as something that needs explaining or apologizing for every time a director mentions “erotic.” It shouldn’t require a post-mortem interview just because women are allowed to look like they want something.

SalThough I’ve sat through enough wrap parties to know when a cast is performing enthusiasm versus when it’s genuine. The fact that both Hathaway and Johnson agreed to frame Verity around desire rather than trauma suggests the script actually supported that shift. That’s rarer than people give credit for.

DanaWait, you’re saying you can tell real excitement from fake just by watching people at parties? That’s a pretty shaky metric for judging whether a movie scene lands. What matters here is that Verity treats eroticism as part of the character, not a punishment, and showing that distinction without needing a disclaimer is exactly what Hollywood hasn’t done consistently.

SalFair point on the metric, though I’d argue the issue isn’t the scenes themselves but the industry’s habit of hiding behind the word "drama" when they don’t want to label sex as a legitimate plot device. We see this cycle restart every few years whenever a studio gets brave enough to skip the apology tour.

DanaI’m not buying that "apology tour" line—it sounds like you’re blaming the studios for being scared instead of looking at why audiences still flinch when a woman looks satisfied on screen. The fact that Showalter specifically called out how much eroticism went into Verity tells me the room felt uneasy enough to over-explain it, which means we haven’t fixed the underlying bias yet.

SalThe audience isn't flinching; they're just used to seeing sex as a consequence for bad decisions, especially in books like It Ends With Us. When a film flips that dynamic, the first instinct is confusion, not offense, until we get tired of asking why a woman wanting things is such a radical concept.

DanaThat’s a stretch—people aren’t confused by a character wanting agency, they’re conditioned to expect pain for her. You keep attributing it to viewer habits when the real problem is how often films like Verity actually challenge those expectations instead of reinforcing them.

SalI’m just pointing out that conditioning takes decades to break, and expecting a single film to do the work feels optimistic. But I’ll grant you that the frequency argument has merit—if Verity doesn’t spawn three more similar projects within five years, the system isn’t changing, it’s just cycling.

DanaFive years is too long to wait for proof that anyone cares about nuance. If the pipeline stalls after Verity, it confirms that studios only greenlight these stories when the marketing angle is hot, not because they respect the material itself.

SalMarketing heat fades faster than most people think, and I’ve watched plenty of trends die out once the next big star attaches their name. The real test is whether the script survives contact with a director who isn’t trying to make a splash, just a solid film. If that happens, the genre stops being a novelty and starts being a standard.

DanaWaiting for a “solid” director ignores that the Verity project needed Hathaway and Johnson attached just to clear the hurdles in the first place. The risk isn’t in the directing chair; it’s in the fact that the industry still treats female desire as a sales gimmick rather than a baseline expectation for storytelling.

SalCalling it a sales gimmick misses that stars attach to anything with momentum right now, not just erotic plots. The real friction is whether the final cut keeps the intimacy grounded in the characters’ history instead of turning it into spectacle. I’ve seen enough trailers promise depth and deliver noise to know the difference matters.

DanaStars don’t attach to empty vessels, they attach to scripts that promise a payoff the audience can feel. By framing the casting as the main event, you’re letting the studio off the hook for having to justify why a woman’s pleasure needs celebrity validation to be taken seriously.

SalCelebrity names don't validate the plot, they just guarantee the cameras roll on a scene that might otherwise get cut for budget reasons. The actual work is done by the writer deciding whether that moment serves the character or the audience, and no amount of stardust fixes a lazy script. We're past the point where attaching a famous face makes the story meaningful.

DanaYou're hiding behind budget talk again, but the core issue remains that we need a lead actress's name to justify a scene focused purely on her enjoyment. It’s time we stopped needing a celebrity halo to prove that a woman’s satisfaction is worth filming. Let’s treat her pleasure as standard narrative currency, not a special effect requiring a star’s endorsement.

SalYou’re treating a movie trailer like a legal brief, but until the final cut exists, we’re arguing over shadows on a wall. The only thing that settles whether a woman’s pleasure is "standard" or "spectacle" is how the editor handles that silence after the act ends. Watch that specific beat in the release version, not the cast list, if you want to know if the industry actually listened.