In the first three episodes of “WeCrashed,” now streaming on Apple TV+, Gwyneth Paltrow gets name-dropped quite a bit. But no, series star Anne Hathaway didn’t talk to the actress about her presence in the story; she didn’t want to put Paltrow in that kind of position.
Why exactly does Paltrow come up? Well, for those who didn’t know, the actress is cousins with Rebekah Neumann, the co-founder of WeWork. At the start of “WeCrashed,” we learn that Rebekah (Hathaway) is writing for her cousin’s website when she meets Adam Neumann (Jared Leto).
As the episodes progress, Gwyneth is shown as almost a bit of a sore spot for Rebekah, like when she is constantly asked by her wedding guests in episode two whether the actress will be attending Rebekah and Adam’s wedding. But, Hathaway didn’t think it would be right to pry into their relationship and ask Gwyneth about it directly.
“I did not want to put anybody in that position. I think that that probably maybe would have been a bridge too far, you know?” Hathaway explained to TheWrap. “If somebody was playing me, and then I found out they talked to my cousins, it would have rubbed me the wrong way. So I tried to keep everything very respectful and conscious, and tried to proceed in a manner in which, again, if it were me that somebody was doing it to, you know, I would just want everything to be done respectfully, consciously, tentatively, all those things.”
Gwyneth Paltrow herself does not make an appearance in “WeCrashed,” nor does a fictionalized version of her played by another actress. In reality, she had very little to do with WeWork. The actress appeared in a promotional video with her cousin while Rebekah Neumann was promoting WeGrow, a private school she founded as an expansion of the “We” brand, designed to get away from traditional education curriculums.
That said, Hathaway did talk to other people that knew Rebekah and Adam Neumann closely. It’s what helped her the most in crafting the character. She just went further back in the timeline.
“What was helpful was talking to people that knew them, and had known them maybe for a long period of time, who knew them before they met each other, who knew them before the valuation [of WeWork] came in, and were able to kind of help me play certain shifts that had happened,” Hathaway said.