Amid bizarre backlash, Anne Hathaway speaks about Yesteryear

Anne Hathaway has finally said something—on the record—about her much-discussed new film, which adapts Caro Claire Burke's buzzy debut novel, Yesteryear. If you've been remotely near BookTok or Film Twitter this past year, you'll know it hasn't been a dull journey: people online didn't just tear down the book, they decided Hathaway wrote it in secret. We've now heard from Hathaway and Burke, and it's as tangled as you'd expect from internet-driven hysteria over a literary debut.

Hathaway told The Hollywood Reporter at the premiere for The End of Oak Street: “I knew the intense feeling that I had for it, so it’s been really fun watching people discover it.”

The Ghostwriting Rubbish

Let's start with the weirdest bit. The rumour mill—stoked, as ever, by keyboard detectives—decided that because Hathaway's producing and starring in Yesteryear, she must've actually written the thing under a pseudonym. Why? Apparently it comes down to the acknowledgements.

Burke, sounding both exasperated and now wiser, admitted her mistake was thanking “probably 40 people” in the back of her book.

Internet sleuths scoured this section as if it were the Rosetta Stone, searching for evidence of Hathaway or any celebrity fingerprints. And it all kept spinning even though nobody unearthed any.

Burke knocked the theory down herself, pointing to a Substack review where the writer confessed they hadn't read the book but still felt “pretty certain” Hathaway ghostwrote it. There's confidence for you. Burke now says, if she had her time again, she'd give the acknowledgements a miss altogether, just to spare herself the grief of readers seeking “Easter eggs.”

The Book, The Film, The Timeline

Here's what genuinely happened. Caro Claire Burke finished her manuscript ages ago—long before Hathaway's name was publicly attached. Film rights always take longer to lock down than publishing deals, so by the time you heard Hathaway was on board, the main creative work was done. The role Hathaway snapped up is Natalie: a Tradwife influencer who gets jolted back to the 1800s. Hathaway and her production company Somewhere Pictures are leading the adaptation, with Hathaway playing Natalie and running the thing from behind the camera as well.

The real conversation with Burke, as she puts it, was about why Hathaway was right for the part—not about ghostwriting credits or secret pen names. In fact, Burke told The New Yorker that at that stage, “we already had the ending. We already had Natalie.” Hathaway was effectively competing against others for the screen rights and outlining her pitch to take it on.

Burke’s own explanation to The New Yorker: “In some ways, she was pitching to me, because there were other people who were vying at the time to have the rights.”

The Controversy & The Reception

None of this has stopped Yesteryear being a lightning rod for hot takes. Critics aren't exactly lining up to praise it—there's been knock-back for the book's “satirical ambitions”, some calling out its use of shock value, plenty less than thrilled with the ending. Meanwhile, Hathaway herself—when finally breaking silence at the Oak Street premiere—didn't touch this backlash, opting to focus on the passion she had for the story and her happiness for Burke instead.

Online, it's been a split: some readers racing through the novel, messaging Hathaway with disbelief, others convinced it's all one big elaborate celebrity prank. The director-star-producer at the centre of it all doesn't seem fazed, and for now, buries her head in the actual work of trying to deliver a decent film adaptation.

Hathaway leads the Yesteryear film, playing Natalie, with Somewhere Pictures producing.