The Last Thing He Wanted is a novel by Joan Didion.It was published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1996.. Adapted from Joan Didion's namesake novel. The story centers on Elena McMahon, a reporter for The Washington Post who quits her job covering the 1984 United States presidential election to care for her father after her mother's death. The Last Thing He Wanted (1996) is a roundabout novel of Central American intrigue, secret government lethality, and a strong, deep woman of integrity relying upon, attempting to rescue, betrayed and led astray by weak, shallow, amoral or marked-for-death men.
Directed by Dee Rees.

It had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival on January 27, 2020. With Anne Hathaway, Ben Affleck, Rosie Perez, Willem Dafoe. A veteran D.C. journalist loses the thread of her own narrative when a guilt-propelled errand for her father thrusts her from byline to unwitting subject in the very story she's trying to break. The Last Thing He Wanted is a 2020 British-American political thriller film directed by Dee Rees based on the 1996 novel of the same name by Joan Didion, from a screenplay by Rees and Marco Villalobos.It stars Anne Hathaway, Ben Affleck, Rosie Perez, Edi Gathegi, Mel Rodriguez, Toby Jones, and Willem Dafoe..