Anne Hathaway is pregnant with baby No. 2 and she’s having fun with the people who ask about her impending bundle of joy. The actress told Ryan Seacrest and Liza Koshy on Live with Kelly and Ryan that she likes to make up unusual names when people ask what she plans to call her new baby.
According to People , the mom-to-be likes to wind people up even though she knows doing so is mean. The couple knows the gender of their child, but they are keeping it under wraps. That doesn’t mean, though, that they are not willing to joke about the situation when people express interest.
“It’s really cruel, but I enjoy it so much,” she said. “Everyone’s so sincere about it and happy for you and being nice to you and all those things, so I like to twist that.”
She and husband Adam Shulman apparently started to pull the prank when they were having their first baby, now-3-year-old Jonathan Rosebanks; they liked to “try to come up with names that are beautiful-sounding but will make other people intensely uncomfortable.”
“With Jonathan, we came up with the name ‘Quandré,’” Hathaway said. “And then you correct them, and they never get it right.”
They also told people that the baby was due in May just to have a little fun even though he was actually born in March.
This time, the couple has come up with a different name that evokes a similar response.
“Again, beautiful name … They say, ‘Do you know the name?’ And we go, ‘Africa,’” Hathaway said, pronouncing the word with a drawn-out “aaah.”
“And you make really intense, sincere eye contact and you don’t look away and you don’t blink,” she said. “And you have to watch them just squirm.”
While her family no longer falls for the prank, other people apparently still aren’t in on the hoax. The actress said that she had told someone that the new baby would be named Africa Bronx Shulman, eliciting a shocked response.
Hathaway has been making the media rounds this week to promote her new show, Modern Love , and while speaking with the Evening Standard , she jumped to the defense of Nobel Prize nominee Greta Thunberg.
She lashed out at critics — among whom is President Donald Trump — of the Swedish 16-year-old, calling their attacks on the activist “textbook misogyny” and their comments “patronizing.”
Q. Why do you think grown-ups in powerful positions are so afraid of you?
A. I think because they think their worldview is threatened. We should take that as a compliment. @GretaThunberg #ActOnClimate #climate #energy #go100re #GreenNewDeal pic.twitter.com/pu3Ei1726F
— Mike Hudema (@MikeHudema) October 11, 2019
Anne Hathaway added that she admires Thunberg and has been happy to see that many people seem to share her feeling.