Colleen Hoover has firmly established herself as a master of propulsive, page-turning plots that captivate millions of readers worldwide. Given her fiercely devoted cult fanbase, the bar is exceptionally high whenever one of her buzzy bestsellers makes the leap to the big screen. The latest adaptation to enter the Hollywood spotlight is Verity, based on the author’s gripping 2018 thriller of the same name. Because a vast majority of the story unfolds within a single, secluded location, the production team faced an exacting set of expectations when it came to bringing Hoover’s meticulously obsessed-over world-building to life.
The upcoming film adaptation stars Dakota Johnson as Lowen Ashleigh, an up-and-coming writer who finds herself thrust into an unexpected and lucrative opportunity. Lowen is tasked with ghostwriting the remaining volumes of a successful book series for famous, reclusive author Verity Crawford, who is played by Anne Hathaway. To accomplish this daunting job, Lowen is invited to stay at the remote Vermont estate where Verity lives alongside her husband, Jeremy, played by Josh Hartnett, and their young son.
Within the narrative, the house functions as much more than a mere backdrop; it holds the dangerous, dark secrets of its inhabitants and serves virtually as a character in its own right. Consequently, when the project was officially greenlit, finding the ideal dwelling was paramount to creating the precise, mysterious-yet-sexy atmosphere that the tense narrative required.
Production designer Amy Williams and location manager Elizabeth Krekel cast a wide and exhaustive net to find an elusive space that could check every single box on their creative wishlist. Reflecting on the search process, Williams notes that they kept an open mind regarding what the physical manifestation of the characters’ world should look like. They wanted a location that could best encapsulate the complex individuals inhabiting it and the chilling environment surrounding them. At the same time, Williams notes that they were eager to secure a primary filming location that had not already been seen onscreen by audiences.
The breakthrough came when Williams was shown a photograph of a striking residential property known as Beckoning Path, located in Armonk, New York. Currently functioning as a tai chi retreat, the residence was originally crafted by Jens Quistgaard, the chief designer of the renowned heritage Scandinavian homeware brand Dansk, for the company’s founders, Martha and Ted Nierenberg. When Williams first laid eyes on the exterior of the Armonk home, she immediately knew that no other property would be able to suit the story quite as well. Although she admits it was not an obvious choice that everyone on the production immediately envisioned, the striking architecture was an absolute fantasy dream come true for a self-described midcentury-modern enthusiast.
The 1960s architectural marvel features sprawling walls of windows and dramatic, gabled V-shapes along its exterior. Interestingly, this striking feature already contained a potent element of unintended symbolism—“V” for Verity—that Williams had initially hoped to find or deliberately incorporate into the set design. With its soaring peaks and sharp, uncompromising angles, the home possessed a unique dual nature. It could easily pass as a breathtaking architectural wonder basking in the daylight, only to transform into something infinitely more sinister as the shadows stretched across the property at night.
Even with the house’s naturally unique and seemingly tailor-made bones, Williams still had to fiercely advocate for its selection. She acknowledges that there were some members of the production team who felt a bit hesitant because the choice wasn’t the safest or most conventional route. However, Williams countered that Verity is inherently not a safe movie, and therefore the creative team needed to lean into an iconic and genuinely dangerous choice.
Because Beckoning Path currently operates as a tai chi retreat, redecorating the interiors was less about stripping away existing residential clutter and more about thoughtfully outfitting the vast space to match the chilling tone of the story. Williams and her creative team scoured high-end curated design platforms like 1stDibs to unearth tasteful pieces that would plausibly belong to a wealthy and successful family like the Crawfords, while simultaneously conveying the subtly spooky effect that serves as a hallmark of the film’s psychological suspense.
The overarching design objective was to make the sprawling residence feel deliberately inhospitable to children, ensuring it never read as a warm, fuzzy family home. Instead, the goal was to craft an environment that would genuinely make viewers feel uncomfortable while watching the unfolding drama. To achieve this unsettling aesthetic, nearly all of the interior decor and furniture bear spiky edges or harsh angular forms. The furnishings themselves begin to feel almost as threatening to the psyche as the human characters moving among them.
Among the most striking sets created for the production is Lowen’s bathroom, an immersive space designed by Williams that incorporates rough, imposing rock formations directly into the wall design, alongside a bath set in stone and warm wood ceilings. Every detail was meticulously planned to ensure the home’s interior design felt daunting, dangerous, and decidedly hostile to domestic tranquility.
While the physical house and its expansive grounds formed the undeniable backbone of the film’s location shooting, certain interior spaces on the property presented practical challenges. Some rooms were simply too cramped for camera equipment or failed to provide the optimal lighting conditions required for professional film production. For these specific areas—which notably included the narrow hallways, sprawling bedrooms, and Verity’s swank, glamorous home office—Williams and the production team designed and constructed detailed replica sets on a soundstage at Broadway Stage in Queens, New York.
Stepping into the role of an architect to build these studio sets was an exciting challenge for Williams, but doing so successfully required immense imagination and a deep, intuitive understanding of Jens Quistgaard’s original design philosophy. Because Quistgaard’s forms are exceptionally specific, much of the set design involved taking his midcentury principles and pushing them forward in a more dramatic, cinematic direction. This meant incorporating heightened verticals, steeper pitches in the ceiling, and even sharper angles to maintain continuity with the real New York home.
While the character of Verity remains an elusive enigma whose hidden inner motivations keep Lowen constantly guessing at every single turn of the twisting narrative, actress Anne Hathaway proved to be an invaluable asset behind the scenes. Having collaborated with Williams on multiple prior film projects, Hathaway brought a refined creative sensibility to the process of piecing together the titular character’s domestic life. Williams describes Hathaway as a genuinely great, open collaborator who possesses exquisite taste, making the process of selecting artwork, furniture, and decorative objects an enjoyable shared endeavor. Hathaway frequently acted as a trusted sounding board when Williams faced difficult design choices, such as deciding between a dramatic chrome desk or a classic wooden alternative, providing a level of collaborative luxury that is rare in the fast-paced film industry.