Roald Dahl's The Witches

Secrets, Spells & Sorry-Not-Sorry: The Messy Real-World Drama Behind Roald Dahl’s The Witches (2020)

When you remake a beloved nightmare fuel classic, you hope the scariest thing is the prosthetics. For The Witches (2020), the real horror show was off-screen: secret pregnancies, PR firestorms, and a disappearing act from streaming. Grab your potions — this coven came with chaos.

Scandals & Controversies: When the Witches Went Too Far

The limb-difference backlash that blew up the coven

Instead of just traumatizing kids with rodents and wigs, the film ignited a full-on representation scandal. Anne Hathaway’s Grand High Witch is designed with three elongated fingers on each hand and missing toes — a visual tweak that disability advocates slammed as turning real-life limb differences into a horror trope .

• Paralympic swimmer Amy Marren publicly called the film out, asking if there was “much thought given as to how this representation of limb differences would effect the limb difference community,” warning that kids might start fearing limb differences after watching it ^[3][5].
• Comedian and presenter Alex Brooker said the imagery “jarred” him and could “add to the stigma” around disability, asking what message it sends if kids are taught to be scared of people with missing fingers ^[3].
• Actress Grace Mandeville blasted the choice to give the villains “a disability for absolutely no reason other than to make the character seem scarier,” saying she dreaded how a class of children might react to a new classmate with a limb difference after seeing the movie ^[3].
• Disability charity Reach reported its community was “appalled and devastated,” while the #NotAWitch hashtag became a rallying cry online ^[3][5].

Warner Bros. scrambled into damage control, saying they were “deeply saddened” that their “new interpretation of the cat-like claws” could upset people with disabilities and insisting the witches were “fantastical, non-human creatures” never meant to represent real people ^[2][3][5].

Anne Hathaway’s public mea culpa

Hathaway didn’t hide behind studio lawyers — she went straight to Instagram with a lengthy, emotional apology amplified by outlets like BuzzFeed and disability nonprofits ^[5].

• She wrote that she tries “to be sensitive to the feelings and experiences of others… because not hurting others seems like a basic level of decency,” and admitted: “I owe you all an apology for the pain caused. I am sorry” ^[5].
• The key confession: “I did not connect limb difference with the GHW when the look of the character was brought to me; if I had, I assure you this never would have happened” ^[5].
• She singled out children with limb differences: “now that I know better I promise I’ll do better,” and apologized to the people who love them “as fiercely as I love my own kids,” saying, “I’m sorry I let your family down” ^[5].
• Hathaway told fans to check out the Lucky Fin Project and #NotAWitch for “a more inclusive and necessary perspective,” essentially boosting the very campaign calling out her own movie ^[5].

The vibe: one part sincere contrition, one part textbook 2020 PR crisis response — but even critics of the film generally agreed she handled the apology better than the studio.

On-Set Drama: The Secret Baby in the Ballroom

Anne Hathaway was secretly pregnant the whole time

While she was busy screaming about “mice!” on screen, Hathaway was quietly growing a baby off it — and almost no one on the production knew. She later spilled to Entertainment Tonight and others that she was pregnant with her second son, Jack, during filming .

• “I didn’t really tell anybody that I was pregnant because I was still in my first trimester,” she said. Even in her second trimester, she only let “a couple people” in on the secret ^[1].
• The juiciest bit: costume designer Joanna Johnston wanted to put her in a tight corset for a dramatic “wasp waist.” Hathaway had to improvise her way out of it without saying, “I’m five weeks pregnant” ^[1].
• Her excuse to the costume team: “I’m just gonna feel really constrained… I’m gonna be funnier if I don’t have something.” In her own words, “It’s such BS but somehow I sold it,” and by the time she was 16 weeks along, Johnston finally “got it” ^[1].

BuzzFeed later ran with the revelation that yes, the Grand High Witch was pregnant under all that latex and CGI the entire time ^[6]. No wonder her cackle had extra power.

Wild Trivia & Behind-the-Scenes Spooks

Prosthetics hell: lashes, claws and nightmare faces

The beauty department didn’t come to play. According to a detailed makeup breakdown, all 65 witches in the film — including Hathaway — wore false eyelashes, with the team cranking through huge numbers of pairs to achieve the exaggerated, glam-grotesque look . One artist admitted, “I’ve never stuck on so many pairs of false eyelashes” ^[9].

Hathaway herself shared a close-up transformation clip on Instagram that Cosmopolitan described as “utterly terrifying” — the kind of thing you watch through your fingers while whispering “can’t look at it, can’t not look at it” . The mag declared they were “both terrified and excited,” which is pretty much the target vibe for a Roald Dahl adaptation ^[10].

Too scary for her own kids

Hathaway later admitted she won’t let her own children watch The Witches yet, saying they’re not ready to see Mom as a limb-altered demoness ^[9]. Imagine being four, flipping on the TV, and finding out your mother eats children for fun — fair call.

Industry Hexes: The HBO Max Vanishing Act

The film that got… deleted from its own service

As if the controversy and lukewarm reviews weren’t enough, The Witches pulled a third-act twist in 2022: it quietly disappeared from HBO Max. Horror site Bloody Disgusting flagged that the film was one of six Warner Bros. streaming originals abruptly yanked from the platform during Warner Bros. Discovery’s “bizarre shakeups” under CEO David Zaslav .

• Alongside titles like Moonshot, Superintelligence, and An American Pickle, The Witches was removed despite being branded an HBO Max original ^[8].
• An insider told IndieWire the axed movies were “part of a long list of films and series being pulled” as the company prepped to merge HBO Max and Discovery+; the content “tends to be shows and movies that are not performing on the service but have an opportunity for a partial write off” ^[8].

Translation: the Grand High Witch got sacrificed on the altar of accounting. The film stayed available on VOD and DVD, but its streaming exile became one more awkward chapter in an already cursed release ^[8].

Cast Feuds & Romance Rumors: Surprisingly… Boring?

If you were hoping for on-set catfights or illicit coven hookups, this is one area where the cauldron stays disappointingly empty. Available interviews and coverage paint the vibe as actually quite warm:

• Hathaway gushed about reuniting with Devil Wears Prada legend Stanley Tucci, saying it was “really special” to be “weird and silly” together again ^[1].
• There are no credible reports of feuds, dating drama, or screaming matches between Octavia Spencer, Kristin Chenoweth, Chris Rock, or anyone else tied directly to this shoot in the gossip channels checked.

So while the film triggered a global conversation about disability and got sacrificed in a streaming cost-cut, the cast themselves seem to have stayed more “found family” than “toxic coven.”