Anna Kendrick has just gone from Woman Of The Hour to ‘woman of the year’ in our eyes, after the actress and director revealed that she made “no money” from her directorial debut after donating her salary to charity.
Based on the true story of a woman who pairs with one of America’s most notorious serial killers on a 70s dating show, Woman Of The Hour delves into the grim tale of Rodney Alcala through the perspectives of his victims.
The film, under Kendrick’s direction, goes to great lengths to paint a picture of the societal challenges each of the victims faced at the time, and how these notions led to Alcala evading prosecution for as long as he did.
But while Kendrick had initially signed on to star in the film as Dating Game contestant Cheryl Bradshaw, a lengthy delay in securing funding meant that two years passed before an official start date was given. Only, during that time, the film had found itself without a director, which is when Anna Kendrick volunteered.
Careful to approach the film in a way that depicted the bravery of the women who fell victim to Alcala, Kendrick also drew upon her own personal experience of being in a coercive relationship – a revelation that the actress has only recently shared.
In an interview with The Guardian, Kendrick revealed that signing on to both Woman Of The Hour and her previous film, Alice, Darling, inspired a determination in her to honour the story of her characters.
“Everything else I was getting around that time I was just not connecting to. And suddenly there are these two really dark scripts with themes that feel very personal. I don’t think it was an accident that I responded to them.”
She went on to describe how her own experiences, and how women respond to, and show discomfort or fear in the presence of men, instructed some of the more nuanced parts of the movie.
“The only note I had for the writer was: ‘You’re giving the women too much agency,’” she says. “Which sounds strange, because writers want to give their characters agency. They’re constantly being pushed to do just that. But there is a strange secret language between women. There are certain things I wouldn’t risk saying to a man if we were alone, such as: ‘Hey, you’re making me uncomfortable.’ It speaks really well of Ian that he wanted to give the women that agency, but I felt the more honest thing would be if they didn’t express exactly what was happening inside them.”
Kendrick elaborated on the seven year relationship on a recent episode of Call Her Daddy, where she spoke about the complex journey she’d had with her own story of abuse.
“I was, like, reading all the articles and going, ‘This doesn’t look… like, some of it looks like how they’re describing it, but not completely,” she explained, after expressing how hard it was to determine the reality of her relationship.
“I was in a situation where I loved and trusted this person more than I trusted myself. So when that person is telling you that you have a distorted sense of reality and that you are impossible and that all the stuff that you think is going on is not going on, your life gets really confusing really quickly,” she explained.
For Kendrick, Woman Of The Hour was as much about dealing with her own trauma as it was about creating an avenue of meaningful discussion around the authentic experiences of Alcala’s victims, as well as centring their own humanity.
In an interview with SiriusXM about Woman Of The Hour, Anna Kenrick explained that it was this realisation that prompted her to forgo her own salary for the film.
“Once I realized, ‘Oh there’s going to be money exchanging hands,’ I asked myself the question, ‘Do you feel gross about this?’” Kendrick explained to the hosts. “And I did. So I’m not making money off the movie. The money has gone to RAINN and the National Center for Victims of Crime.”
“I think that it’s still a complicated area, but that felt like certainly… the least that I should do.”
READ NEXT: What ‘Woman Of The Hour’ Teaches Us About Trusting Our Instincts
This article originally appeared on Marie Claire Australia and is republished here with permission.
