Ashley Graham said that she “tried her utmost” during the uncomfortable Hugh Grant interview at the 2023 Oscars.
The Notting Hill actor was called “rude” on social media in March of this year after his red-carpet interview with the model went viral due to his rambling, uncomfortable responses.
Ashley acknowledged that before the cameras started filming, Hugh was “quite polite,” looking back on the awkward conversation in a fresh way.
However, once the cameras began to run during Ashley’s interview as she presented the red carpet for ABC, things took a little turn.
‘I could tell he didn’t want to be there, that was obvious,’ she shared.
‘Before, we were chatting, he was very pleasant. Then we started rolling and he was like, “I don’t want to be here”, and I was, “OK, work with me! I get it! But like, work with me?”’
‘I was trying my hardest to be my nice, upbeat self and he gave me what he had… It’s crazy how viral it went,’ she told The Sunday Times.
Hugh was asked during the interview who he wanted to win an Oscar, and he said, “No one in particular,” despite recent criticism from an actor with dwarfism over his selection as an Oompa Loompa in Willy Wonka.
When she asked who designed his suit, he responded, rather unhelpfully: ‘I can’t remember, my tailor.’
At one point during the curt conversation, the 35-year-old mistook his reference to William Makepeace Thackeray’s classic novel Vanity Fair with Vanity Fair magazine’s post-Oscars party.
The mum-of-three admitted that she didn’t ‘get’ the Vanity Fair reference he made and joked that her ‘public school system didn’t have that book, probably’.
When the interviewer joked that every British family had a ‘grumpy Hugh’, she replied: ‘I wish I would’ve known that. I just remembered him from Love Actually where he was charming!’
Ashley recently commended the Barbie live-action film for include a discussion on cellulite after Mattel produced a plus-size doll in her likeness in 2016 that lacked a thigh gap and had “thick thighs, a wide butt, and lower belly fat.”
Prior to the movie’s release, she had run into actor and producer Margot Robbie and told her about her experience with Barbie and cellulite. The Oscar-nominated actress then told her that there was ‘an inside joke throughout the whole movie about cellulite’.
‘Sure enough, I went and saw it and I was like, “Good,” because you have to talk about it – I have it, we have it, it is what it is. And Barbie never had it. Ever. So, I’m glad they talked about it and addressed it in their way,’ she said to People.
Since opening alongside Oppenheimer earlier this month, Barbie has seen record-breaking success at the box office.
The film’s total earnings have reached $781 million (£608 million), and Greta Gerwig recorded the largest opening weekend ever for a female director.
Barbie is in cinemas now.
