Anne Hathaway was left rather embarrassed while promoting her new movie The Idea of You on The Tonight Show on Tuesday.

The 41-year-old actress appeared on Jimmy Fallon‘s late-night talk show on Tuesday to discuss her latest on-screen turn, which is based on author Robinne Lee’s 2017 novel of the same name and follows the story of a single mother who sparks an unexpected age-gap romance with a young musician.

But while the movie has garnered much interest – as well as critical acclaim from reviewers – Hathaway, who stars alongside Nicholas Galitzine in the flick, found herself facing a very awkward silence from The Tonight Show audience when she posed a question about its inspiration.

When asked about her on-screen love interest, Hathaway tried to describe how she knew Galitzine was the perfect person to portray him, before asking the crowd if anyone had read the book – only to be met with total silence.

Anne Hathaway was left rather embarrassed while promoting her new movie The Idea of You on The Tonight Show on Tuesday

She was trying to describe how she knew her co-star Nicholas Galitzine was perfect for the character, and asked the crowd if anyone read the book… but literally no one responded

In the film, Anne’s character Solène sparks up an age-gap romance with boy band member Hayes Campbell, played by Galitzine

After a few seconds of absolute silence, a stunned Hathaway covered her mouth as Fallon joked, ‘No, we don’t read,’ prompting the actress to respond: ‘Well, you should, it’s fabulous.’

Fallon added, ‘We don’t read. This is the Tonight Show. Yeah, you wanna go over to Stephen Colbert if you want to get people who read books.’

Hathaway covered her face with both hands as the audience laughed, before she composed herself and tried to recover.

‘Well, you have an awesome book ahead of you,’ she said, as Fallon joked that perhaps his audience might be more inclined to listen to the book, saying: ‘We do Audible here, does that count?’

The late night host then tried to get the interview back on track, adding, ‘OK, so it’s based on this book,’ as Hathaway joked, ‘What’s a book?’

‘Well the book does have a fan following… somewhere, and I think the book is incredible,’ the actress added.

She continued that her love interest character Hayes Campbell, ‘is just so beautifully written in the book and so we knew we really needed to find someone really special.’

‘And [Galitzine] walked in and I just thought, “Oh, that’s Hayes Campbell.” And that was almost two years ago, and now [he] and I have become really good friends,’ Hathaway said.

After a few seconds of absolute silence, a stunned Hathaway covered her mouth as Fallon joked, ‘No, we don’t read,’ as she added, ‘Well, you should, it’s fabulous’

Fallon added, ‘We don’t read. This is the Tonight Show. Yeah, you wanna go over to Stephen Colbert if you want to get people who read books’

‘Well, you have an awesome book ahead of you,’ she said, as Fallon joked, ‘We do Audible here, does that count?’

There has been much interest and speculation around the plot of Hathaway’s new movie – particularly when it comes to rumors that her on-screen love interest was in fact inspired by One Direction boyband star-turned-solo artist Harry Styles.

However, the actress has vehemently denied that there is any link between Galitzine’s role and the pop sensation, telling E! News back in March: ‘No! Everyone needs to chill.

‘Sorry, I probably shouldn’t be that reactive about it. I just think no.’

She doubled down on her denial last month in an interview with Stellar, pointing out that The Idea of You author Lee had also shut down the Styles speculation, while noting that the fact Galitzine is British was purely a coincidence.

‘You guys keep saying it. The author keeps saying it’s not!’ she said. ‘During the audition process, which I can speak to as I’m a producer on the film, we saw people from all backgrounds.

‘The idea was we weren’t looking for someone British. We were looking for Hayes Campbell.

Critic have praised Hathaway and  Galitzine’s chemistry in the Amazon Prime romcom

The Idea of You had its world premiere at the SXSW festival in March, and will stream globally on Amazon’s Prime Video starting May 2