Anne Hathaway has apologized to a reporter who accused her of being “dismissive” during an interview.
In a YouTube video posted on Tuesday, Norwegian entertainment reporter Kjersti Flaa, 51, said the Oscar winner offered her a mea culpa after the journo posted a clip calling out Hathaway for her attitude at a 2012 press junket.
Flaa recently made headlines for sharing an “uncomfortable” 2016 interview with Blake Lively that “made me want to quit my job.” On Saturday, the reporter posted a video on her YouTube channel titled, “This might be my worst interview ever,” which discussed her interactions with Hathaway while the star was promoting her movie “Les Miserables.”
Flaa shared that the actress was put off by a gimmick she cooked up for her interviews with the “Les Mis” cast. The reporter wanted to sing her questions to the talent and ask them to respond in song.
“I had this idea that I was going to sing the questions and the actors could sing the answers back to me,” Flaa recounted. “Kind of a silly thing, but I thought it was fun. It was a musical, after all, and most actors played along with it.”
Hathaway, however, “was not very positive to that idea,” according to Flaa. The actress “was being quite dismissive towards me and it created some reactions,” she added, referring to responses she received from viewers.
The video caught Hathaway’s attention, much to Flaa’s surprise.
“Yesterday, I did receive an email. It was from Hathaway’s publicist and he forwarded a message to me from Anne Hathaway,” the Norwegian reporter revealed. “I have to say I was pretty shocked. I had not expected her to reach out to me at all. I thought she was never going to even see that video. But she did. And she did something pretty amazing.”
“She sent me a long email explaining to me what she was going through right then when she did this interview and she apologized for giving me an awful interview, basically. It was so touching to me,” Flaa continued.
“Talking about it makes me almost teary eyed because I was just so grateful that she did that. And it was a very personal note.”
Flaa did not share any details about what Hathaway told her.
“We decided that I wouldn’t share exactly what was in the email,” she said. “But I just wanted to share with you guys what she did because I thought that was just so amazing.”
Flaa told her viewers she replied to the email, saying, “‘You know, I’m so grateful that you did this.’ And it means a lot to me that she did. And I said, ‘You know, if you ever want to sit down and talk about it, I’m here.’”
Hathaway reportedly invited Flaa to interview her in May when she’s promoting another movie.
“I’m really looking forward to that,” Flaa added. “And thank you so much for doing that. And just. I mean, I have so much respect for people who own up to their mistakes and say they’re sorry. So it’s such a powerful word.”
“I mean, this is so amazing. So thank you, really from the bottom of my heart for saying that you were sorry.”
The reporter also said that the interview was “a long time ago now,” and she has “no hard feelings about it.”
In a clip from Flaa’s 2012 interview with Hathway posted on Saturday, Flaa can be heard explaining the conceit for her interview to the actress.
“So I was going to ask you to do the first question and singing. Can I sing it to you? And you can sing back the answer?” she asked.
“Well, I won’t be doing that,” Hathaway replied. “But you’re more than welcome to sing.”
Flaa didn’t change course, though. “I thought, ‘Heck, I am going to do it anyways,’” she recounted.
“So Anne Hathaway was not very excited to be singing to me, and that interview just went completely downhill after that. She was just being, like, so dismissive of me.”
“She hated me,” Flaa went on. “Let’s face it, she really hated me. And she didn’t like that idea at all either. That was pretty obvious.”
After posting the interview to her YouTube channel in 2012, “a representative from the studio” that made “Les Mis” allegedly told her to “take it down.”
“He was like, ‘You know, if you, if people are going to see that, you might be blacklisted.’ And I was like, ‘Okay.’ Basically, because she wasn’t very nice.”
“Maybe it was too much to ask her to sing back,” Flaa conceded. “But she could have been nice for the rest of the interview. It’s just like, I was just sitting there trying to make it a little more fun for everyone. And she wasn’t having it. And then she was, you know, annoyed with me for the rest of the time.”
Flaa did note that Hathaway was nice to her when she interviewed the star on subsequent occasions.
And it certainly all seems to be water under the bridge at this point.
