The Witches: 5 Ways Anne Hathaway Is The Best Grand High Witch (& 5 It’ll Always Be Anjelica Huston)

Whether it’s necessary or not, HBO Max has released a new version of The Witches, first adapted into a film based on Roald Dahl’s classic novel in 1990, and starring Anjelica Huston as the terrifying Grand High Witch intent on blighting children from the planet. The ordinarily effervescent Anne Hathaway appears in the 2020 remake to usurp her title and puts her own signature spin on the diabolical character.

The new version follows the same basic premise as its predecessor and Dahl’s novel, about a young boy and his grandmother who encounter the Grand High Witch while staying at a luxurious retreat -this time Alabama in the ’60s- and dedicate their stay to stopping her and her cohort of witches from concocting a plan to destroy the children of the world. Hathaway’s unhinged performance has instantly garnered comparisons to Huston’s, whose embodiment of the role is still spellbinding 30 years later, but who is the best Grand High Witch?

10 Anne Hathaway: Physical Comedy

Ever since she became a breakout star in films like The Princess Diaries and The Devil Wears Prada, Anne Hathaway has made a name for herself by being an actress unafraid to fall down and let her dress go over her head. She’s comfortable with physical comedy because she’s played so many awkward characters with a tenuous grasp on their equilibrium.

Her skill with physical comedy is on full effect in The Witches, in which she slithers on the ground, makes a wide variety of elastic facial expressions, and contorts her body in ways that are both unnerving and delightfully humorous.

9 Anjelica Huston: Glamor

In Huston’s provocative memoir Watch Me, she reveals an interesting aspect of the Grand High Witch that may not have occurred to viewers. In collaboration with costume designer Marit Allen, who had been a fashion editor for British Vogue in the ’60s prior to working on The Witches, a persona was created in Huston’s apartment that centered on sex appeal.

Huston didn’t think that the character would have any, but Allen explained that while the other witches “dressed in ordinary clothes and looked like ordinary women”, the Grand High Witch needed to stand out as a liberated woman in command of her body.

8 Anne Hathaway: Memorably Campy

Instead of attempting to follow exactly in Anjelica Huston’s heels, Hathaway seems to have decided to make her Grand High Witch a campier, more humorous, and altogether more deranged version (think Ursula the Sea Witch from The Little Mermaid). She doesn’t hold back in an “everything but the kitchen sink” performance that will leave viewers either delighted or irritated.

Whether she’s vacillating between shrieking her lines or purring them, she punctuates her performance with dramatic tics and flourishes, which ultimately results in viewers never being able to take their eyes off her while she’s on screen.

7 Anjelica Huston: More Realistic

Huston’s Grand High Witch is a true female villain and an authentic antagonist who, despite her flair for the melodramatic, seems like the sort of eccentric woman who could exist in real life. Cunning, manipulative, and well-connected, she operates at the highest level of socio-economic excellence.

Because Huston’s film shows her interacting with other guests at the hotel who aren’t witches, viewers get to see how she might conduct herself in the world. They get the impression that she’s not just dangerous because she’s a witch, but because she’s a ruthless businesswoman.

6 Anne Hathaway: Personal Style

Both Huston and Hathaway’s Grand High Witches have considerable fashion sense, but Hathaway’s is the more de mode. Huston’s first appearance in her version shows her in clothing several decades out of date. Timeless and sophisticated, but meant to be indicative of her ancient presence.

Hathaway’s character by contrast struts around in the latest fashion of the ’60s, designed by twice Academy Award-nominated costume designer Joanna Johnston. She has numerous costume changes within a single day and is never not seen delivering maximum elegance and impact.

5 Anjelica Huston: Commanding Presence

Anjelica Huston doesn’t need her stunning wardrobe or jeweled gloves in The Witches to exude power – she simply demands it. Huston has had a commanding screen presence her entire film career, and at 5’10” without heels on, conveys confidence and authority simply by being in a room.

She turns on her charisma to full blast to play the Grand High Witch, and when she speaks everyone on the screen listens and obeys. She’s also able to speak in an accent that doesn’t bounce from Swedish, to German, to Scottish all in a single sentence as seems to be the case with Hathaway’s.

4 Anne Hathaway: Better Powers

Levitation. Superhuman strength. The ability to throw a stage and podium across a ballroom like it’s a can of soup. Anne Hathaway demonstrates her awesome powers 39 minutes into the film, reminding viewers and all the witches gathered at her conference that she is the most powerful one of them, all and not to be trifled with.

As the Grand High Witch, she has some notably disturbing abilities, such as expanding her jaw, shooting lightning bolts from her fingertips, and growing her arms to incredible lengths to chase mice down air ducts.

3 Anjelica Huston: Intimidating

Huston doesn’t need to remove her wig, her gloves, or her face to be seen as a serious threat. She’s capable of being intimidating with nothing but a withering glare. True evil seems to lurk behind her eyes, and when she focuses all her attention on a single person -such as a child- she seems to pour all of her malice into her body language and her voice.

Before she becomes the grotesquerie that she is at the end of her film, she’s scary simply by being a dictatorial nightmare around the hotel. That she transforms into something as outwardly heinous as she is on the inside is a revelation.

2 Anne Hathaway: Chaotic

A single word comes to mind when watching Hathaway’s performance as the Grand High Witch; unpredictable. She transitions from wailing to growling in a single sentence, and will appear beautifully sculpted one moment and then devilishly disconnected the next.

Her presence is a herald of chaos, a force which she uses to great effect with the hotel staff, the children, and Charlie’s grandmother, a kind healer. Not knowing what she’ll do next is the primary reason she’s so frightening, not unlike Batman’s Joker.

1 Anjelica Huston: Grotesque

Since it was released in 1990, The Witches had to rely on a lot of practical effects as provided by Jim Henson’s creature workshop. From animatronic little mice to the Grand High Witch’s reveal, they were responsible for bringing the impossible to life (the only small bit of CGI occurs in the scene where Bruno transforms into a mouse).

Due to the very realistic quality of the effects, the disgusting appearance of the Grand High Witch beneath her face mask is horrifying. It oozes, it drips, and the “warts and all” effect of the passage of time on it has ironically made it even more timeless than Hathaway’s very CGI version.

About The Author

Kayleena Pierce-Bohen
(1342 Articles Published)

Kayleena has been raised on Star Wars and Indiana Jones from the crib. A film buff, she has a Western collection of 250+ titles and counting that she’s particularly proud of. When she isn’t writing for ScreenRant, CBR, or The Gamer, she’s working on her fiction novel, lifting weights, going to synthwave concerts, or cosplaying. With degrees in anthropology and archaeology, she plans to continue pretending to be Lara Croft as long as she can.

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