The 'Moment' In Mother Mary Where Anne Hathaway Proved She Could Nail Playing A Pop Star
The first stop on Anne Hathaway’s insane run of 2026 movies is Mother Mary. The A24 horror film and pop star extravaganza had the Oscar winner looking to the likes of Taylor Swift’s Reputation tour and Beyoncé’s Renaissance to embody a fictional pop queen. CinemaBlend spoke to writer/director David Lowery about watching the actress transform into Mother Mary.
Mother Mary follows a seasoned music sensation years after leaving the spotlight due to a very public incident. She decides to reach out to her estranged fashion designer Sam (Michaela Coel) to make her the perfect outfit to step back on the stage again. Here’s what David Lowery told us about the time on set where he realized she had become Mother Mary:
There's a moment early in the movie where she snaps her fingers, and it is the first time… the pop star flair came through. And it was a stunning moment. And, what you see in the movie is the first take, because we realized, ‘Oh, that is what we were building to.’
The movie is primarily (and perhaps surprisingly) an intimate two-hander for the first half that follows Mother Mary and Sam back in the same room after many years apart. Since the movie was shot in order for the most part – with the sequences where Mother Mary is on stage in front of fans later on – Lowery didn’t get to see Anne Hathaway in full-on pop star garb right away on set. But she she brought it out rather quickly by unexpectedly doing a dramatic snap to a dialogue scene with Coel. As Lowery also said this about Hathaway’s pop star transformation:
It is all consuming. She went to a pop star bootcamp to play this part. I went into this movie thinking there'd be a little bit of preparation necessary, but she looked at the script and knew that it was going to take an immense amount of work to be able to perform the way that this character needs to perform to look like she's been performing on stage for 20 years, and she really took up that mantle and ran with it.
When CinemaBlend attended a screening of Mother Mary at Vidiots in Los Angeles, David Lowery also talked about how meticulous Anne Hathaway was in the recording booth recording the soundtrack to her pop star character along with going to “bootcamp” and even talking to Charli XCX about her experiences as a pop star. Charli XCX wrote the songs for Mother Mary alongside Jack Antonoff. Check out the Mother Mary trailer below:
Mother Mary has been earning smash reviews, with people calling it a “visually fascinating chamber piece”, having an “intoxicating air that draws you in” and a “dive-off for the ages”. Hathaway clearly embodied this role with a lot of commitment, and it shows in the final, enrapturing product.
You can see Mother Mary in select theaters now, with it going wide this weekend. It’s one of five films on the 2026 movie schedule Anne Hathaway is in this year. You’ll also be able to see her in The Devil Wears Prada on May 1, The Odyssey on July 17, The End of Oak Street on August 14 and Verity on October 2.
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