May 4, 2008 - Anne Hathaway was in the middle of shooting a scene in which she takes on a major bad guy when the press visited the set of Warner Bros Pictures’ Get Smart, the big screen version of the classic TV series. Hathaway handles the role of Agent 99 made famous by the beautiful Barbara Feldon in the comedy series which ran on TV from 1965-1970. The Office star Steve Carell plays Maxwell Smart, the bumbling but well-meaning agent played by Don Adams in the television show.

Directed by Peter Segal from a script by Tom J. Astle and Matt Ember, this new take on Get Smart hopes to draw in fans of the old show as well as introduce the characters to a whole new audience.

Anne Hathaway Interview

Are you finished doing that scene?
“No. Gosh no, we’re going to be doing it for another 3 days.”

You have to fight that big guy for three more days?
“Yes, and I kick a little ass for three more days. For me at least it’s a 3-part fight sequence. The first part I’ve lost my gun in an earlier scene so it’s hand-to-hand combat and I pick up a pipe as a weapon. And then I have to battle him hand-to-hand, and then I just sort of get dazed and confused. My favorite bit is when I get to run up a wall and turn around and punch him. And then I bake some cupcakes, you know.”

It’s a hard act to follow from the series because she’s one of the iconic women spy characters.
“Yes, she is and it is very big. They are very big shoes to fill.”

Have you met Barbara Feldon?
“No, I haven’t met her. We were lucky enough to have Don Adams’ wife, daughter and granddaughter on set.

His daughter said that she had talked to Miss Feldon and that she approved of my casting and was actually very happy with it, and that made me feel very good. So I feel like I have the blessing of the icon and that’s part of the battle.”

Is it hard holding a straight face when Steve Carell starts to improvise?
“Yes it is, but I think that’s the reason why I got the role was because in audition I was able to…it’s almost impossible to keep up with him and match him joke for joke because he’s a genius at it, and even if I were good at it I’m not a genius. I have very little experience doing it and he’s just Steve Carell. I mean, it’s what he’s known for so I don’t ever beat myself up for not being able to match him beat for beat. But in the audition I was able to keep a straight face as he just went off and was making everyone else crack up, so I think that got me through the door.”

In the series your character was more of the straight reactionary to Don Adams’ character. Does your character get any zingers in this movie?
“Oh yeah. Yeah. We all loved the original series and you will not find bigger fans than us. We all decided we wanted to be very respectful while at the same time wanting to put our own mark on the film. So, what we talked about with Agent 99 was rather than making her a carbon copy of Barbara Feldon’s creation, we decided to respect the spirit of 99 which was she was a fully realized woman of her time. So rather than take Barbara Feldon and put her in 2008 is when the film comes out, we decided to make 99 a fully actualized woman of 2008. So, as a result, I do get some zingers. I’m a little bit of a hellraiser and hopefully I also bring…we also retain some of the elegance of the original character.”

Have you been looking for this sort of kick-ass role for a while?
“No, I don’t usually go out there and say, ‘Okay, now it’s time to do an action role. Now it’s time to win an Oscar,’ just because the latter will probably never happen and the former who would have thought it? So this one just sort of fell from the sky. I never expected to get it. I just really wanted to meet Steve Carell, which is why I auditioned. You can imagine my shock when I got the role.”

What sort of training have you had to do?
“A lot of martial arts training, just general conditioning. I wanted to get some dance in to try to get the grace of the character, but that sort of fell by the wayside. So I’ve been trying to do it on my own. I also for a second thought about doing some improv comedy training. But like I said, I just thought it was probably better to let Steve take care of that and just try to keep a straight face.”

What’s the relationship between Agent 99 and Max in this movie?
“Well, our Get Smart is an origin story so it’s how Max became an agent. What we decided - rather what they decided and I agreed with when I got cast - was that 99 would already be an established agent and one of the best that CONTROL has. So Max heard about her for years, not realizing she was a woman. She’s been away on deep cover, comes back, they meet and, through a series of circumstances, they’re assigned as each other’s partners. So in the beginning 99 is a superior agent. She is in a position of strength because she has more experience, and as a result she’s a little disdainful of Max. But as he starts to win her over, you start to see the chemistry that made the original series so wonderful come out.”

Can you talk about the costume you’re wearing today? Is it the same costume you wear for the whole movie?
“Oh no. We have many costume changes. Some logical, some not, which is one of the fun things about making a big old action movie. All my costumes have a nod to the ‘60s, while at the same time everything’s contemporary. That’s sort of the look that Deb Scott was going for. Just a special little note about today is this outfit originally had 5” stiletto boots and we just thought, ‘Oh, that’s going to look so great,’ and then I tried fighting in them and it wasn’t so great.”

What are some of the more outrageous ones, some of the more illogical costumes?
“We just assume that 99 has backpacks dropped all over Russia for her, so that’s why she can pull couture out of a hat when in the scene before she didn’t have any. So it’s stealthy, we figure she has things stapled to the bottoms of tables and goes to pick them up. That’s our backstory. You can come up with your own. That’s the fun of movie-making.”

Page 2:The Gadgets, the Series, and Possible Sequels