Anna Kendrick Breaks Down How the ‘Most Ambivalent Pitch in Hollywood History’ Led to Her Directorial Debut

It’s been a long journey to get “Woman of the Hour” to the screen, and an even weirder one to get Anna Kendrick to both star in and direct it. According to the actress, that last piece was borne out of the “most ambivalent pitch in Hollywood history.”

Written by Ian McDonald, “Woman of the Hour” tells the weirdly true story of Rodney Alcala, a serial killer who ended up competing — and winning — on “The Dating Game.” He did so right in the middle of his multi-year murder spree. The film ended up on The Black List in 2017 and was purchased by Netflix in 2021.

In 2022, the film went on the market at the Cannes Film Festival, with Netflix no longer attached. Shortly thereafter, it was announced that Kendrick was attached to direct, after already being set to star in and produce it. Now, two years later, it’s finally streaming, back indeed on Netflix.

After such an arduous process to get it to the screen, Kendrick took great care to treat the story with respect — while simultaneously terrifying herself with the scope of it.

TheWrap: First, congrats on making your directorial debut. I want to start at the beginning of this film, literally the first scene, with Kelley Jakle. It feels like that scene sets the tone for the film, because there’s this one moment where she realizes what’s happening, her face sets, and it’s the decision of, “OK, I’m screwed, but I’m going to fight. We’re going to do this.” And I have to imagine that was intentional.

Anna Kendrick: I love that moment so much. I love her performance. She looks so strong and so defiant. And I love the idea of someone not being willing to go out without a fight, and even though she kind of knows that her fate is sealed, she’s not going to make it easy on this guy.

And there was a point where that scene was a little bit more traditional. There were a couple more shots and setups involved in the end of that scene, but it just didn’t really feel right. I don’t know, there was something about this scene that felt a little like it didn’t have a strong enough point of view. And I asked my editor to look around for this B-roll that we had shot, because we were just waiting for the actors to come to set.

There was this pan across the valley that rolled focus, and I remember thinking, “Man, this is so beautiful, but I have nowhere to put it,” and then going, like, “I think we should be on this, and we should just hear what’s happening.” Because I don’t particularly want to watch what’s happening. And at the same time, our imaginations are always worse than anything I can put on screen, and I think it keeps you in the emotion of what’s happening, rather than in just the horror of the mechanics of the thing.

And you did that for all the kills. You see the violence of it, and you certainly get the idea of what’s happening, but we don’t have to live through that viscerality.

Yeah! Yeah, I didn’t want anything to feel graphic or gory, I guess, but at the same time, I didn’t want to keep the viewer comfortable either. So I’m happy with a lot of the solutions we came up with to try to balance that.

While we’re on the topic of Kelley Jakle, I love that you and your “Pitch Perfect” co-stars show up for each other. Because, Brittany Snow, I know she gave you a pep talk, a blunt one. She also made her directorial debut this year, and there were some Bellas in there. I have to imagine, when you’re making your directorial debut, there’s a level of comfort that it adds when you have even just one friend on the production.

Totally! No, it’s funny because, that opening scene, I could see it so clearly in my mind — the performance. If anything, I feel like maybe it was my own insecurities as a director that was like, “I really need not only someone incredibly talented, but somebody who I have a shorthand with,” because I’m also asking a lot of the actress in that scene.

So, for me to meet someone and only work with them for one day, and be asking so much of them, physically and mentally, I don’t really know what I would have done. So I was very, very grateful to her, because I knew that I could be hyper-specific, and I knew that she would trust me.

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And frankly, even dragging her across the dirt in that last shot. It all sounds well and good that we’re going to put pads on her, and it’s going to be great. And then the costumes just won’t cooperate, and suddenly she’s going, “Just take everything off and let’s just do it. It’ll hurt, but I’ll get over it.”

When you’re doing research for this film, because obviously it’s based on a true story and it’s based on real people, how much research do you do into these women and into Rodney as a guy, and how much do you let the reality of it stay separate?

So I did a lot of research. A lot of it was just me and a subscription to Newspapers.com — was very, you know, low-budget film vibes. And then the prosecutor, Matt Murphy, really made himself available as a resource to me, which was incredibly generous. And there are so many details that felt incredibly moving and haunting that we wanted to keep in the film.

There’s even a nod to the smallest things — like one victim had personalized her tennis shoes with pen, and so that was something we put in the movie just because it felt so grounded and real and human, and really spoke to the life that that person had beyond the moment that we were meeting her in the film.

But at the same time, particularly for my character and the entire “Dating Game” sequence, I always kept saying, “He’s not JFK and I’m not Jackie O., we’re not going to get bogged down in perfect historical accuracy right now.”

Obviously, I could have made the dress that I wear look much more like the dress that Cheryl Bradshaw actually wore. But if anything, it feels almost like a nod to the fact that there are elements that we’re dramatizing, because it’s a more emotionally honest story to tell it in this way.

The other thing I think about is that, toward the end of this awful saga, there was a very Hollywood-ready story where a young detective, a 27-year-old detective comes on the beat, and he finally takes the case seriously. And then there’s the prosecutor who keeps him behind bars.

And there’s actually an out-of-the-box, ready-made Hollywood story there. But it would feel really emotionally dishonest to focus on those things, because after over a decade of injustice and incompetence and negligence, it doesn’t feel like we should be focusing on the procedural elements of the story, and trying to stay more with those visceral, emotional elements and to tell that story in the right way.

You really took on a lot with your directorial debut. It is a period piece, and you have to also direct a game show within a movie. It’s based on real people, and you have time jumps in there. At what point did you realize how much you loaded up your plate?

I mean, that speaks to something in my personality. Which, look, I could frame it as though I just love a challenge, and I’m such a badass, but I think that there’s honestly part of me that was almost protecting myself emotionally a little bit by choosing something that was the worst possible circumstances, a super ambitious film with very limited time and resources — because that way, if it was a complete disaster, I could tell myself it was just the circumstances (laughs).

So, as much as I’d love to be like, “What can I say? I guess I’m just awesome,” I think that the reality of it is that there was part of me that knew that if the circumstances were perfect, I probably would be more freaked out by that, because then, “Hey, if you fail, that’s totally on you.” There’s nowhere to hide emotionally.

But I also do know that I’m a little bit of an on-set adrenaline junkie. Like, the days that we would start to run behind, I noticed that I would get really excited. It’s almost like, “Oh, my favorite animal is me on a film set when we’re running behind.” Because the way that I will turn into a drill sergeant to just make sure that we’re pushing forward and we’re keeping the train on the tracks, is an exhilarating place for me to be well.

I’m interested in the choice to direct this, for you. Because this was in the works for two years, you were always attached to produce. And then you got a start date, but had no director. Was that something where you were like, “I really want to direct this, but they’ll find someone. We’ll wait it out.” Or was it an impulsive, “Oh, we don’t have anyone. Yeah, I’ll do it?”

I think that it was the first thing for about 48 hours. I was just like, “No, Anna, absolutely not. Absolutely not.” This tiny voice was like, “Hey, maybe we should do this,” and I was like, “You better shut up,” because it’s so scary. And I did think it would make me so happy if someone super experienced and talented just swooped in and took care of everything, and I got to stay in the passenger seat.

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But yeah, that nagging thought wouldn’t go away. And so, I sort of pushed myself off of a cliff and told a couple friends, “Hey, would it be so crazy for me to direct a movie that starts prep in like, six weeks?” And most of them were like, “Um, yes, and also, tell me about the story and why do you think you should do it?”

And then I was suddenly pitching myself in truly the most ambivalent pitch in Hollywood history, I imagine. Because I think that I don’t have a lot of respect for false confidence. So I was being totally honest when I pitched myself and continually said, “If this is the wrong move for the movie, I want to do what’s right for the movie. So you know, if you guys don’t think I should do it, I won’t be offended. I really want to do whatever is best for the movie.”

But I think they were slightly weirded out. Because you’re supposed to be like, “I’m the only person who can do this. You’d be a fool not to hire me.”

You’ve said previously that the only note you had for the writer of the film was, “You’re giving the women too much agency.” Which, as a woman, I get what you meant. But I would really like to know what was the response you got to that note?

I think that it was like, “I’m sorry? I think?” Because, of course, I’m sure that every writer is constantly getting notes that their characters need more agency, and particularly right now, the female characters need more agency.

But I think I was also, really, underneath all of that, asking him to trust that I would get his intention in the scene, and I would get it through performance. And that I wouldn’t need, for example, Kathryn Gallagher’s character in New York, to say, “No, dude, we just met, and you’re making me uncomfortable” — that that was all going to come across in like a two-second shot in her eyes.

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Because, of course, I’m biased, but I prioritize performance over everything, and I think that performance is the most powerful tool that we have in filmmaking. So I was really also asking him to trust that I could put across all of those ideas without them necessarily being on paper.

It occurs to me that a lot of this movie is reliant on non-verbal cues. It’s the little shake of the head, “No, don’t give us another round.” It’s the look of the eyes. It’s the scene at the very end where the teenage runaway is in the car, the man looks right at her, sees her bloodied face and doesn’t react. That’s another challenge that you’re just adding to yourself as a director. I’m interested in how you find the balance of the show and don’t tell.

Gosh, I do feel like I probably erred on the side of subtlety to the point where it did mean that there were a couple of things that I had to kind of finesse in the edit, just for clarity’s sake, sometimes.

But I really was hoping that I could trust the viewer to either understand what was happening or live in the ambiguity and the uncertainty of it, because that’s very much the experience that you have in life sometimes — “What did she mean by that? What did he mean by that?”

And even in the parking lot, when Rodney kind of whispers something, I was always hoping that half the audience would hear it, and half the audience would go, “Wait, what the hell did he just say to her?” Because that’s the experience that Cheryl is having, is like, “What did you just say?” And, “How fast should I start running? If you actually said what I thought you said, do I need to start running?”

So, where do you go from here? Because you went from “Alice, Darling” to this, and these are both heavy things and heavy subject matter. I know that you’ve got “A Simple Favor 2” from here, but just as a creative, what are you looking for next? Where are you feeling pulled right now?

I mean, “Alice, Darling” and “Woman of the Hour” were both scripts that I got within the same month. “Alice, Darling” really came together very quickly, and this one just took a long time. But, I think that was out of being in a certain place in my life, mentally. And even more recently, I’ve been looking for something else to direct.

First of all, the challenge is finding something that I’m as passionate about as this script, because I think I really hit the jackpot. And the other challenge is, for a while I was really responding to increasingly dark material. And then, I don’t know, I think I’ve been feeling a little bit lighter, just in my inner life. And so I started responding to the scripts that had, maybe not an upbeat quality, but that had energy — even if that energy is, like, female aggression (laughs).

But that feels a little better. There’s an art imitating life thing happening with the stuff that I’m responding to. But it’s still pretty daunting to find something because I loved this script so much that it feels like, yeah, I don’t know, just trying to find a new home for at least two years, while knowing I just had the best experience on this first attempt.

“Woman of the Hour” is now streaming on Netflix.