Dakota Johnson and Josh Hartnett Join ‘Verity’ Cast

Photo-Illustration: by The Cut; Images: Getty Images

Since news broke that the venerable Anne Hathaway will play Verity Crawford in the Michael Showalter-directed film adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s novel Trutha big question has lingered: WHO will play struggling sexy writer Lowen Ashleigh? Well, we finally have an answer, and it’s the obvious choice: Dakota Johnson. Who else but the woman who breathed life into it Fifty Shades series could portray her properly?

In case you’re lucky enough to be unfamiliar with the plot of this novel, it involves Lowen—again, a down-on-her-luck kind of girl just trying to make it as a writer in New York City—into a heady affair with businessman Jeremy Crawford, who has hired her to finish his semi-comatose wife’s manuscript (Verity Crawford is, of course, a bestselling author of thrillers). Josh Hartnett, fresh off his success as a hot dad with questionable intentions in M. Night Shyamalan’s Traphas also signed on to the project as our Jeremy.

As someone who usually feels the need to read a book before watching its adaptation, I think it’s a benefit that probably no one feels that pressure in this particular case. Why suffer through sentences like “It is as if she were an egg, torn open and poured out, and all that is left are the little fragments of hard shell?” Instead, we can go to the theater and enjoy what will surely be a passionately acted fever dream. Everyone wins!