“Verity Could Be a Brunette, but We Can’t Mess Up the Headboard Bite.” —Anne Hathaway

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Verity

TV + Movies

By https://thoughtcatalog.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/max-AsJirOOLN_s-unsplash.jpg?w=48 January Nelson

Updated 4 hours ago, September 30, 2026

Anne Hathaway was willing to let go of Verity’s blonde hair, but not the one detail she calls too strange to fake: the headboard bite.

A promotional image from the film Verity. Credit: Verity.

Talking about the new film Verity with co-stars Dakota Johnson and Josh Hartnett, Hathaway explained the calculus behind her adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s psychological thriller. Some things could bend.

A still from Verity, the film adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s psychological thriller. Credit: Amazon MGM Studios.

A brunette Verity, sure. The headboard bite, she said, was “too specific and unusual,” and if they were going to make the movie, they had to get a detail like that right.

NEW YORK, NEW YORK – SEPTEMBER 29: (L-R) Dakota Johnson and Anne Hathaway attend Amazon MGM Studios’ “Verity” New York Premiere at AMC Lincoln Square 13 on September 29, 2026 in New York City. (Photo by Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images)

She meant it literally. Hathaway and Johnson both said they never thought they’d bite a headboard on camera in their lives, and then they did, after stunt rehearsals to get it right.

NEW YORK, NEW YORK – SEPTEMBER 29: (L-R) Josh Hartnett, Dakota Johnson and Anne Hathaway attend Amazon MGM Studios’ “Verity” New York Premiere at AMC Lincoln Square 13 on September 29, 2026 in New York City. (Photo by Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images)

In Hoover’s novel, Lowen (played by Johnson) bites the headboard during an intimate scene with Jeremy, hoping to leave marks deeper than Verity’s older ones still visible in the wood.

NEW YORK, NEW YORK – SEPTEMBER 29: (L-R) Josh Hartnett, Dakota Johnson and Anne Hathaway attend Amazon MGM Studios’ “Verity” New York Premiere at AMC Lincoln Square 13 on September 29, 2026 in New York City. (Photo by Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images)

Hartnett didn’t have to bite anything, but he saw the aftermath. He recalled a prop table holding “a series of different pieces of the headboard with different bites on them,” and teased that his co-stars “must have sat there for a while.”

Amazon MGM releases Verity in US theaters on October 2, 2026.

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