Is Anna Scott the Worst?

Re-watching "Notting Hill" on its 25th anniversary

It’s the twenty-fifth anniversary of “Notting Hill,” one of the seminal rom-coms of the 1990s. I accidentally ended up watching the other day, and I am sorry to report that Anna Scott, the Julia Roberts character, is kind of the worst!

How does she treat poor Hugh Grant’s William Thacker character like dirt? Let us count the ways!  

First, they have their meet-cute in his travel bookshop. He is flustered and stammering and adorable. She is American. After he spills orange juice on her, and invites her back to his place to wash up and change, Anna kisses him. WITHOUT ASKING WHETHER HE WANTS TO BE KISSED. 

Now, the chances are good that Will does want Anna to kiss him, insofar as she’s played by Julia Roberts. I am also aware of the danger of applying 2024 thinking to a 1999 movie, and demanding that Anna Scott be an enthusiastic consent queen. But come on! If his character had done that to her – just planted one on her lips without a word of conversation -- we would have recognized it as problematic. At least, I think we would have.

Moving on. Anna thinks Edward’s blown her off (really, his goofball roommate never gave him the message). When he finally calls her back, she invites him to see her at her hotel. Except when he gets there, he walks into the middle of the press junket for her film – which William has not seen. The poor man is left scrambling (and blinking, and stammering) as he fumbles his way through a series of interviews with Anna’s costars. Which is funny, and gives him the opportunity to be adorably flustered some more and say Horse and Hounds a lot, but is also kind of rotten of her!

Then we arrive at the famous birthday dinner-party date where a guest has the absolute nerve to have no idea who Anna is. He tells her the arts are a terrible struggle and asks how much money she made for her last movie. “Fifteen million dollars,” Anna informs him coolly. I guess you could read this as a woman who is proud of her success and refusing to play down her boss babe status, but, to me, it seemed designed to make the interrogator feel ashamed. Then Anna attempts to co-opt the room’s sympathy as a victim of diet culture and painful plastic surgeries, with a series of not-nice boyfriends. Sad, yes. But William’s friends – whose numbers include a disabled woman, an unemployed man, and the aforementioned weird roommate – aren’t giving Miss Fifteen Million Dollars the win. 

 Next, Anna and William go back to her hotel room and she finds her American boyfriend there. Think fast, Anna! What will you do? Introduce William as a friend? A coworker? The hotel manager? Nah. How about pretending he’s the room service waiter! And not intervening when your boyfriend tells him to take out the trash! 

"Could you just adios those dirty dishes and take out that trash, too?"

So poor, sweet William – who seems to have no idea that Anna had a boyfriend – collects the garbage and goes. Then he doesn’t hear from Anna for months, until she turns up frantic at his doorstep because there are nude photos of her in the tabloids. 

William kindly allows her to hide out in his home. He feeds her, runs her a bath, gives up his bed, runs lines with her (the script for the fake thriller, which has Anna barking lines like “turn over four TRs and tell them we need radar feedback before the KFT’s return at 1900 – then inform the Pentagon that we’ll be needing black star cover from 1200 through 1015,” is hilarious).

And then, after Spike the Idiot Welshman accidentally tips off the press, Anna blows up at Will, accusing his “furry friend” of tipping off the press to “make a buck or two.” She’s outraged that he went outside in his underwear (as if he had any idea of knowing what was waiting out there!) and she refuses to listen to Will’s explanation (in her defense, he does tell her to stay calm, and that she’s engaging in “crazy behavior,” which has never helped any situation, ever). She accuses him of planning to profit from their night together – “Buy a boring book about Egypt from the guy who screwed Anna Scott.” After telling him “I’ll regret this forever,” she walks out the door. I get that she’s hurt and scared, but still: this is jerk behavior.

Then she disappears. Again. Seasons pass. When William learns she’s back in London, he screws his courage to the sticking place and hunts her down on location…where he overhears her dismissing him to another actor as basically some nobody. 

When Anna shows up with an actual Chagall painting, Will turns her away, telling her that if she left him again it would break his heart. Finally, he stops stammering and flustering and shows some smarts. Yay, William! Trust your gut! Run, far and fast! 

Except then he caves and goes chasing after her. Anna tells him she just blew him off because she didn’t want the other actor spreading her business around. Cue the happy ending.

I submit that Anna Scott is engaging in love-bombing and manipulation, treating Will like an object – a cute guy she can kiss, whether or not he’s consenting; a safe haven where she can hide, until she storms out. A guy who will run lines with her, take out her boyfriend’s trash and wait for her forever, because she’s a big-deal movie star and he is but a humble bookseller. 

She’s either showering him with love or ghosting him; either lavishing him with kisses and sex and pricy gifts or telling him he’s the worst, and that’s when she’s not throwing down gauntlets to test him (Will he pretend to be a journalist? Will he pick up the dirty dishes? Will he break the rules and follow her over the gate into the private garden?) 

Did any of this register back then? If Anna Scott had been played by an actress of less charm, for whom the audience had less goodwill, would we have noticed? If genders had been flipped and “Notting Hill” had been the story of a famous male actor falling for an anonymous female bookshop clerk, and treating her this way, would it have landed differently?

What do you think?