Anne Hathaway has revealed she had to abandon plans to appear on “Hot Ones” after her doctor warned the spicy challenge could trigger early labor.
Hathaway, 43, is currently pregnant with her third child with husband Adam Shulman. The Oscar winner disclosed the medical advice during a recent appearance on the Talk of the Townsends podcast, where she explained how pregnancy disrupted what she had considered a natural promotional opportunity.
The actress had already filmed a fictional “Hot Ones” segment for her upcoming film “Verity,” an adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s best-selling psychological thriller. During production, Hathaway managed three spicy hot wings before switching to dummy wings for the remainder of the scene. She believed completing the actual challenge during the press tour would serve as clever cross-promotion.
“I thought that I was gonna be able to do the ‘Hot Ones’ challenge to do press for this film because it just made sense,” Hathaway said on the podcast. “But then I got pregnant, and my doctor said I couldn’t do it because I might go into early labour.”
She added: “So I still haven’t done the gauntlet yet. I’m not sure when that’s gonna happen. Maybe next year.”
The “Hot Ones” concept originated as a plot device during production meetings. Hathaway had questioned whether a scripted “Call Her Daddy” appearance with Alex Cooper sufficiently established her character as a cultural force.
“Alex Cooper and Call Her Daddy was scripted, and then I, just, in a production meeting, said, ‘Is that enough to establish Verity as an iconic cultural figure?'” Hathaway recounted. “Because in my head, if we could do something like, I don’t know, get a Gayle King interview and ‘Hot Ones’, that would be kind of the triple crown trifecta.”
In the film, Hathaway portrays Verity Crawford, a renowned author whose autobiographical notes reveal disturbing confessions about her husband Jeremy, played by Josh Hartnett. Dakota Johnson appears as Lowen Ashleigh, a struggling writer hired to ghostwrite for Verity at the remote Crawford estate. The supporting cast also includes Cooper in her scripted podcast cameo.
“Verity” represents Hathaway’s fifth film release of 2026, following “Mother Mary,” “The Devil Wears Prada 2,” “The Odyssey,” and “The End of Oak Street.” The project marks another high-profile adaptation for Hoover, whose novels have generated significant Hollywood interest following the success of “It Ends With Us” and “It Starts With Us.”
Early critical reception has proven polarized. One reviewer dismissed it as “Colleen Hoovers’ worst film adaptation to date,” while another praised it as “Epic. Unhinged. Stressful.”
The film arrives in theaters October 2.