Anna Kendrick: “I was forced into a place of dishonesty in my personal life”

Anna Kendrick knows what was missing. “In internet parlance, I was known as a bit quirky and likeable,” she tells me. She says the last two words with deliberately exaggerated vigor like a theater kid, a cheesy grin that's on the right side of annoying. If only. “But there’s not much room for sadness and fear.”

It's confusing to see Anna Kendrick sad. It's a bit like seeing a friend crying or an injured puppy with a plastic cone around its head. The actor's default mode is a doable squirrel, sometimes deployed with a song. Think of her Pitch Perfect films with their musical, Rebel Wilson-filled grit. Or her performance as a keen HR employee In the airwhich earned her an Oscar nomination. This spark plug energy tends to mask things on the screen—usually a little insecurity or a painful need for validation from an elder or peer—but it usually isn't sad or anxious.

Today the 39-year-old is sitting in the simple white kitchen of her home in Los Angeles. Her hair is sandy brown; she gnaws at her mouth. “Unfortunately, I know that moment when you're in a room with someone and you're like, 'How come ten seconds ago I thought everything was going to be okay, and now I'm not sure?'” Kendrick pulls The handcuffs closed. She pulled her sweater over her fingertips and pressed them to her face. “And I think a lot of people know that very well. Especially women.”

In 2022, Kendrick began speaking publicly about her relationship with a man she described as “basically my husband.” They were together for just over six years, during which, she claimed, she experienced “emotional and psychological abuse.” Because of the themes of her directorial debut Woman of the hourwhich is streaming on Netflix, and that of her latest film, Alice, darling — about a woman in an abusive relationship — it's hard to talk about Kendrick's work without also talking about her personal life. She agrees, even if part of her hates it. “For a second I thought that when I interviewed for this film I would just be asked about every member of the cast and crew and I would just gush about them and…” She trails off singing. “But no one has asked me about the sound team yet.” She says this with a laugh, but I can't help but cringe a little. It is the energy of the spark plug. It's good at masking things.

Woman of the hour revolves around a series of murders committed by Rodney Alcala, a good-natured predator who charmed at least eight young women in the 1970s, photographed them and then murdered them. The true extent of Alcala's crimes is unknown – some suspect he was responsible for 130 murders. Kendrick's film focuses primarily on a surreal episode in Alcala's killing spree: his 1978 appearance on the US TV show The dating gamewhere he was one of three bachelors trying to woo a young woman named Cheryl (played by Kendrick in the film).

The script came to her around the same time as the script Alice, darlingwhich was released last year. Cheryl, in Woman of the hourShe suffers death by a thousand cuts – an aspiring actress so used to being the target of snide remarks and latent misogyny that she barely bats an eyelid when it happens. “It actually feels like the most insightful work I’ve ever done,” says Kendrick. “It created a window into my mind.” It makes her feel vulnerable. A little scared. Certainly more anxious than usual.

The parallels between Kendrick and her two films also make conversations about her — and the women she plays in them — a little difficult to decipher. Ideas blur. The topics intersect. Anna is Alice, Cheryl is Anna again. “Sometimes the most distressing thing is not just the disrespect or mistreatment, but the fact that everyone acts as if it's not happening,” Kendrick says. “Which then convinces you that something isn’t happening. It makes you wonder if you’re just making it all up or if you’re paranoid or too sensitive.” She talks about gaslighting. “You sound crazy. You're fired. “He brushed your hair off your shoulder – that's nothing.” And yet, when you're there, you feel the threat hovering in the room.” Kendrick speaks quickly and clearly. Every syllable is pronounced. If we were talking in a theater and not over Zoom, you would hear them from the back of the rafters.

Kendrick didn't plan on speaking publicly about her past relationship, but she got into the habit of talking about it in interviews Alice, darlingIn 2022, he said it felt like “the Band-Aid had been ripped off.” After the relationship ended, Kendrick told her agents that she had to stop working and had no interest in reading the comedy scripts that had become her livelihood.

When I bring this up, Kendrick stutters. “I think I reached a point of critical mass where it felt like…” She pauses, eyes staring at the ceiling of her kitchen. “Oh man, here we go,” she half laughs. “I think what happened back then was that I was forced into a place of performance and dishonesty in my personal life.” She shakes her head. “I just couldn't spend another second breathing dishonest air.” She recalls a time when she inflicted trauma on random strangers. “It's a literally true story that after this really traumatic relationship, my plumber came over and asked how I was doing and I just told him everything. I physically couldn’t continue performing.”

This was particularly serious because Kendrick only knew performances. Born and raised in Portland, Maine, she was the archetype of the preternaturally gifted child actress – the kind of person who inspires both awe and mild repulsion. (As a former insufferable theater kid myself, I think I'm qualified to say that.) She was just 12 when she was cast for her role in a Broadway production of ” High society. “Anna Kendrick is truly magnificent in a role that could be unbearable,” she wrote The New York Timesin a line that now reads as oddly prophetic of almost everything Kendrick did in the aftermath. “She is sharp, clever and always self-controlled.”

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Was Kendrick strangely confident as a child? “Oh yes,” she grins. “But the problem with identifying as a theater kid is that people expect you to know really intense theater details and minutiae. So when I was about 12 years old, I signed off on it – just to protect myself.”

She made her film debut at the age of 17 Warehousea later cult classic about incredibly talented theater kids who star in age-inappropriate plays at a summer camp. Roles in films such as the crazy thriller followed A simple favor and Edgar Wright's anarchic comic film Scott Pilgrim vs. the Worldand an inexplicably minor role as Kristen Stewart's best friend in all five Twilight films. (“Holy shit. I just remembered I was there dusk“,” she tweeted in 2018.) She became even more famous for being herself, the 5-foot-10 embodiment of sharp, pointed sass from the Obama era, with a popular Twitter account and a best-selling essay the year 2016 The shabby little nobody. At some point, however – and all theater kids will attest that this is commonplace – that early confidence faded a little.

“There is definitely a formative phase of adolescence when you realize that there are people who know a lot more than you,” she says. “So you become a passenger in the car, only to learn as you get older that your job is to transform into the man in the driver’s seat. And that often feels like an unbridgeable gap.”

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As a result, she developed a tendency to belittle herself. She had been bound to them first Woman of the hour as a pure actor and recalls giving the film's producers “the most ambivalent pitch in the history of cinema” when the original director dropped out. “I said, 'Guys, if you don't think I can do it, I shouldn't do it – if I'm not ready, don't hire me.'” They told her to leave, refocus, and whip again the next day. When she returned with renewed confidence, she was hired immediately.

It turns out that Kendrick knows her stuff as a director. Woman of the hour is assured and visually arresting, full of clever approaches to depicting violence and wonderful use of space. There is a particular shot towards the end of the film where Cheryl is walking across a huge parking lot, aware that Alcala is nearby. The shot is so scary in its isolation that I'm convinced Kendrick could be a brilliant horror director.

I ask her if, between Alice, darling And Woman of the hourshe feels like she has reached a point of healing in her personal life. Was the work cathartic? She chews her mouth again. “Oh, I think catharsis is dangerous,” she says. “At least for me. It brings me some very welcome relief, but so far it's always been somewhat temporary.” She begins to speak before turning around. “I was going to say that I have to forgive myself for ever feeling doubt or sadness, but that means I'm doing something wrong.”

She pulls her sweater closer to her chin so that she is now covered in white fabric.

“When those feelings creep back in, the worst thing I can do is, 'Damn, Anna!' I thought we were over this, you know? I just need to experience it more as a neutral thing that happens. That it’s something out of my control.” She sighs deeply. “I definitely don’t like it, but it’s not a failure of character either.”

Instead, to them, it's just another facet. In other words, meet the new Anna Kendrick. Quirky. Relatable. And yes, sometimes sad.

“Woman of the Hour” is streaming on Netflix