Anna Kendrick has revealed there’s a particularly ‘weird’ moment in her new movie Woman of the Hour that she actually experienced in real life when she was just 19 years old.
The crime thriller, which was also directed by Kendrick, 39, is based on the life of serial killer Rodney Alcala, who in 1978 appeared on the television show The Dating Game in the midst of his murder spree.
During an appearance on The View on Tuesday, Kendrick spoke about her role as aspiring actress Cheryl Bradshaw in the movie and how she drew from her own experiences in the industry to amplify certain scenes.
‘There’s this scene at the beginning where I’m in a casting office, and I stole little things from my real life,’ she told the panel, which included Whoopi Goldberg and Sunny Hostin.
‘There’s a moment where they ask me if I do nudity and they make this really weird, specific comment about my body that’s lifted verbatim from a thing that happened to me when I was 19,’ she admitted as Sunny gasped and replied: ‘Oh my gosh!’
Anna Kendrick has revealed there’s a particularly ‘weird’ moment in her new movie Woman of the Hour that she actually experienced in real life
The 39-year-old actress appeared on The View on Tuesday where she spoke about her directorial debut
The scene Kendrick was referring to occurs quite early on in the movie when her character finds herself in a Hollywood casting call in 1978.
When Cheryl tells the directors she isn’t comfortable with nudity, one of the men stares directly at her chest and says: ‘I’m sure they’re fine.’
Confirming this did happen to her two decades ago, Kendrick added: ‘I was just like, “Oh, do you guys mind saying this thing?” And I wasn’t sure I was gonna keep it in the movie but it’s funny in the movie. We can all laugh at my humiliation, that’s fine, we’re allowed.’
When Alyssa Farah Griffin asked the Pitch Perfect star why it was important for her to tell the story from a female perspective, she replied: ‘I knew, going into it, there were a couple of things that didn’t interest me, one being really graphic violence.
‘But the other being I didn’t want to make a whole movie about why he does this, it doesn’t matter and we can’t know.
‘And I really wanted to hopefully make something that talked about the kind of fear that most women have to operate with every day, every interaction that we have is like, how do I survive this interaction emotionally, maybe financially or physically and make a movie that was more about that.’
Host Sara Haines then said: ‘Well, and how many times you have to stuff the creepy feeling down until it could cost you your life,’ as Kendrick replied: ‘Right, and smile through it because if I seem uncomfortable, maybe that will trigger you.’
When Haines, 46, asked Kendrick how she can relate to the themes of the movie, she explained: ‘That character, she’s sort of wandering through the world and it’s almost like the question in every scene for her is like, “do you see me as human or do you see me as something else?”
Anna confirmed that the ‘weird’ comment made to her in the casting call scene, happened to her in real life two decades ago
The film is based on American serial killer Rodney Alcala, who is pictured here in court in 2013
‘And by the end of the film she sort of has her answer, and it’s not a great answer, but it’s some kind of resolution because that question of “what’s happening here, what’s in this room with us?”‘
Woman of the Hour is currently the number one watched movie on Netflix, but just days ago, eagle-eyed viewers spotted an unfortunate typo toward the end of the film.
At the very end of the film, viewers are given an update on what happened to the real life Alcala and this is where they spotted the typo, as one sentence read: ‘Alcala was rearrested in 1979. Only then did authorites begin to uncover the scope of his crimes,’ instead of ‘authorities.’
Posting a screenshot on X, formerly known as Twitter, one viewer wrote: ‘There’s a typo in Anna Kendrick’s new movie if anyone even cares,’ and others were quick to comment on it.
‘This infuriates me more than it should,’ one person admitted, while another agreed and wrote: ‘I am so so so angry.’
A third person joked: ‘Imagining Anna Kendrick typing this herself and cackling,’ while a fourth accused: ‘The way they left it in for engagement bait and they got the free marketing they wanted.’
