For Anna Kendrick, the emotional abuse plot line of Alice, Darling hit very close to home
“My body still believes that it was my fault,” Kendrick says of her own toxic relationship
Aux News Anna Kendrick
Anna Kendrick has become better known for her comedy roles in recent years, but let’s not forget she’s an Oscar nominee with a serious dramatic repertoire. But she typically isn’t connecting her work to personal experience: “Usually, it’s just I read a good script and I like the people involved, and I make the movie,” she tells People in a new interview.
But with her upcoming film Alice, Darling—premiering at TIFF—she “resonated” with the material unlike ever before. “I was coming out of a personal experience with emotional abuse and psychological abuse,” she reveals to the outlet. “I think my rep sent [the script] to me, because he knew what I’d been dealing with and sent it along. Because he was like, ‘This sort of speaks to everything that you’ve been talking to me about.’”
Of the relationship with an unnamed partner, Kendrick recalls, “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 continues, “And I was in a situation where, at the end, I had the unique experience of finding out that everything I thought was going on was in fact going on. So I had this kind of springboard for feeling and recovery that a lot of people don’t get.”
Kendrick admits most movies about toxic or abusive relationships “didn’t really look like what was happening to me,” which in fact “helped me normalize and minimize” the abuse she was experiencing. But with Alice, Darling, the script hewed so closely to her reality that she told director Mary Nighy that “‘if the movie was shooting in a month, I probably shouldn’t do it.’” Luckily, she had time to prepare, “So I wasn’t in danger of re-traumatizing myself.”
Still, “My body still believes that it was my fault,” Kendrick explains, noting that “recovery has been so challenging.” The actor reflects, “But like so many things in life. I think the piece that was most therapeutic was actually building relationships with these collaborators and sharing our personal histories with each other, and then creating this thing together.”
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I can’t believe I forgot that Anna Kendrick is an Oscar nominee with a serious dramatic repertoire!
Take a moment to compose yourself. Ms. Kendrick will await you apology.
I’m still baffled that Hollywood is full of superstar actors that I only know from Scott Pilgrim.
“I was coming out of a personal experience with emotional abuse and psychological abuse”…That sounds like it happened relatively recently, and so if the relationship in question was one that is publicly known, she’s either talking about cinematographer Ben Richardson or Bill Hader. She was in a relationship with Richardson for like six years before they broke up in 2020, and she and Hader started dating shortly thereafter (and they broke up in June).
I hope not Hader, then I feel his and Sally’s relationship is even more messed up on Barry.
Yeah, I really love Hader’s work, but I also love Kendrick’s, and it’ll suck even more if it turns out that it was him that was cheating on/gaslighting her (which is what it sounds like happened between her and whomever, just reading between the lines).
She got the script before she started dating Hader.
Fuck, please don’t ruin Bill Hader for me…
It can’t be Hader. She probably read the script a year or two ago.
If the movie’s premiering now, preproduction and casting were at least a year ago (or two). So I think Bill Hader is safe. For now.
Hopefully it is Jake Gyllenhaal. He seems like the type
Sounding like she was still healing when she read the script. Wikipedia says filming was June-July of 2021, so with the timeframe being at least a month prior (and probably several months, if not a years), probably not Hader.
This makes me wonder. She spoke bravely about the situation that is quoted in the paragraph in the article. But how many people writing about this else where will just saying something about “gaslighting” to just sum up her statement. Using that term seems to diminish situations and the effects on a person. Sorry I went off topic, but I think it applies.
Her experience sounds like the textbook definition of gaslighting, but I agree the term has been overused and misused to the point of losing its impact and meaning now. Seems like she is purposefully avoiding saying “gaslighting” in her quotes, and I’m kind of surprised AV Club didn’t label it as such either.
Sadly I think in recent years she’s really become known more for picking pretty bad things to be in. Or that’s all she’s getting offered. And I like her a lot and wanted to see her in good things.