Jared Leto has become famous not just for the roles he creates on film, but for the way in which he creates them. He is known for remaining in character during the entire production process, but it apparently is possible to get Leto to break character. Anne Hathaway actually did it during the filming of their new Apple TV+ series.
In the new series, We Crashed, Anne Hathaway and Jared Leto star as Rebecca and Adam Neumann, the founders of We Work. During a recent appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Hathaway spoke about the experience of working within Leto’s method, but she also revealed that she was able to crack Leto’s shell about midway through production. The infamous trailer for House of Gucci was released while the two were making the series, and when Hathaway channeled Lady Gaga’s character, it apparently threw Leto for a loop. Hathaway explains…
I really respect Jared’s process, and I had a wonderful time working with whoever that was [laughs], and we really created the most beautiful connection between us, and I always wanted to be really respectful, but the day the ‘House of Gucci’ trailer came out, I mean, I had to do something. I couldn’t just let it be… So the House of Gucci trailer came out and we shot a really intense scene all day… [I said], ‘Just one more thing,’ and I go, ‘Father, Son, House of Gucci’ because you have to! I didn’t know what would happen because he’s so intense in his commitment to his process, but I swear to God he split into three. It was like a Horcrux. It was like, over here was Jared, over here was Paolo Gucci, and here was Adam Neumann. I don’t think he did this, but in my memory he was like, ‘Waaaaah.’ And then he came back in, and I was like, ‘Oh dear,’ and he was like, ‘Whoa, I think I just time-traveled!’
Anne Hathaway tells Colbert that she didn’t really meet Jared Leto until this past weekend when the two of them appeared together at SXSW. It’s a sentiment that many of Leto’s co-stars have echoed. Hathaway says that even when she spoke to Leto prior to beginning production on We Crashed, he still wasn’t Jared Leto, he was still Paolo Gucci.
The Lady Gaga accent was the only thing anybody was really talking about when that House of Gucci trailer came out, so it’s little surprise that Anne Hathaway felt impelled to do something with it after they wrapped shooting for the day. And it was perhaps fitting since Gaga herself took a similar approach to that role as Leto often does.
And clearly Jared Leto was not expecting it, as it really did apparently have an affect on him when he h eard it. He says he “time-traveled” which probably means, for a moment, he shifted from inhabiting the character he had been playing, to once again becoming a character he had previously left behind. For somebody who takes his process so seriously it probably was quite strange for him.
From hearing Anne Hathaway tell it she really wasn’t sure what this little joke might do to Leto. Luckily, it seems he took it pretty well, and one assumes he went back into his current character without much difficulty. You can see Hathaway and Leto together in We Crashed on Apple TV+ starting March 18.