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Anna Kendrick knows what was missing. “In Internet usage, I think I was known for being a bit quirky and relatable,” she tells me. She says those last two words with deliberately exaggerated theater kid pep, a cheesy grin that falls on the right side of annoying. As long as it’s normal. “But there isn’t much room for sadness and fear in that.”

It’s disorienting to see Anna Kendrick sad. It’s a bit like seeing a friend in tears, or an injured puppy with a plastic cone around its head. The actor’s default mode is a can-do squirrel-ness, sometimes deployed with a song. Think of her Pitch Perfect films, with their musical, Rebel Wilson-filled fluff. Or her performance as an eager HR employee In the airwhich earned her an Oscar nomination. That spark plug energy tends to mask things on screen – usually a bit of insecurity, or a painful need for validation from an elder or peer – but she is usually not sad or anxious.

Today, the 39-year-old sits in the stark white kitchen of her Los Angeles home. Her hair is sandy brown; she gnaws her mouth. “Unfortunately, I know that moment when you’re sitting in a room with someone and you wonder, ‘How come 10 seconds ago I thought everything was going well, and now I’m not safe?’” Kendrick pulls the handcuffs off 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 “my husband in every way.” They were together for just over six years, during which time, she claims, she experienced “emotional abuse and psychological abuse.” Because of the themes of her directorial debut Woman of the Hourwhich is streaming on Netflix, and that of her most recent 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 though part of her hates it. “For a moment I thought that interviews for this film would just result in me being asked about all the cast and crew members, and I would just talk about it and…” She walks away singing. “But so far no one has asked me about the sound team.” She says this laughing, but I can’t help but shudder a little. It’s that spark plug energy. It’s good at masking things.

Woman of the Hour revolves around a series of murders committed by Rodney Alcala, a smooth-talking predator who charmed at least eight young women in the 1970s, took their photo and then murdered them. The true extent of Alcala’s crimes is unknown; some suggest he may have been responsible for 130 murders. Kendrick’s film focuses mainly on a surreal episode from Alcala’s spree: his 1978 appearance on the American TV show The dating gamewhere he served as one of three bachelors attempting to woo a young woman named Cheryl (played in the film by Kendrick).

The script came to her around the same time as the script for Alice, darlingwhich was released last year. Cheryl, op Woman of the Hoursuffers death by a thousand cuts – an aspiring actor so used to being the target of derogatory comments and latent misogyny that she barely flinches when it happens. “It feels like the most revealing work I’ve ever done,” says Kendrick. “It created a window into my mind.” It makes her feel vulnerable. A little scared. Definitely more nervous than usual.

The parallels between Kendrick and her two films also make conversations about them – and the women she plays in them – somewhat difficult to explain. Ideas fade. Topics intersect. Anna is Alice, is Cheryl, is Anna again. “Sometimes the most torturous thing is not just the disrespect or the mistreatment, but the fact that everyone pretends it’s not happening,” Kendrick says. “Which then convinces you that something is not happening. You wonder if you’re making it all up, or if you’re paranoid or too sensitive.” She’s talking about gaslighting. ‘You sound crazy. You’re fired. “He brushed your hair off your shoulder – that’s nothing.” And yet, when you are there, you feel the threat that hangs in the room.” Kendrick speaks quickly and clearly. Each syllable is pronounced. If we were talking in a theater and not on Zoom, you’d hear her from the back of the rafters.

Kendrick had no intention of speaking publicly about her past relationship, but she had made a habit of talking about it during interviews for Alice, darlingsaying in 2022 that it felt like “the Band-Aid was being ripped off.” After the relationship ended, Kendrick told her agents that she had to stop working and that she was not interested in reading the comedy scripts that had become her bread and butter.

When I bring this up, Kendrick stutters. “I think I’ve reached a point of critical mass where it felt like…” She pauses, her eyes staring at the ceiling of her kitchen. “Oh boy, here we go,” she half-laughs. “I think what happened at that point was that I was forced into a place of performance and dishonesty in my private life.” She shakes her head. “I just couldn’t breathe unfair air for another second.” She remembers a period of trauma dumping on random strangers. “It’s a literal true story that in the aftermath of this really traumatic relationship, my plumber came over and asked how I was doing, and I just told him everything. I could no longer physically perform.”

This was particularly serious because performing was all Kendrick had really known. Born and raised in Portland, Maine, she was the archetypal preternaturally gifted child actor – the kind of person who inspires both awe and mild disgust. (As a former Insufferable Theater Kid, I believe I have the right to say this.) She was only twelve when she received a Tony Award nomination for her role in a Broadway production of Higher society. “Anna Kendrick, in a role that could be unbearable, is actually great,” wrote The New York Timesin a sentence that today reads as strangely prophetic of almost everything Kendrick did in the aftermath. “She is sharp, cunning and unfailingly self-aware.”

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Was Kendrick strangely confident as a child? “Oh yes,” she grins. “The problem with identifying as a theater kid, though, is that people expect you to know really intense theater details and trivia. So I chose it around the age of 12, just to protect myself.”

She made her film debut at the age of 17 Campan eventual cult classic about incredibly gifted theater kids who star in age-inappropriate plays at a summer camp. Parts in films such as the crazy thriller followed A simple favor and Edgar Wright’s anarchic comic book film Scott Pilgrim vs. the Worldand an inexplicably small role as Kristen Stewart’s human best friend in all five Twilight films. (“Holy s***. I just remembered I was in Twilightshe tweeted in 2018.) She became even more famous for being herself, the 6-foot-2 embodiment of sharp, spiky Obama-era sass, with a popular Twitter account and a bestselling 2016 book of essays . Sloppy little nobody. But somewhere along the way – and all theater kids will agree that this is commonplace – that early confidence waned a bit.

“There’s definitely a formative stage in adolescence where you realize there are people who know significantly more than you,” she says. “So you become the passenger in the car, only to be told as you get older that your job is to become 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 talk herself down. She was attached to it at first Woman of the Hour only as an actor, and recalls giving the film’s producers “the most ambivalent pitch in the history of cinema” when the original director quit. “I said, ‘Guys, if you think I can’t do it, I shouldn’t do it. If I’m not ready, don’t hire me.'” They told her to leave and refocus . and pitch again the next day. She returned with renewed confidence and was hired on the spot.

Kendrick, it turns out, knows her craft as a director more than well. Woman of the Hour is confident and visually arresting, full of clever approaches to depicting violence and beautiful use of space. There’s one particular shot near the end of the film, with Cheryl walking across a large parking lot, aware that Alcala is nearby, that is so chilling 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 place of healing in her personal life. Has the work been cathartic? She chews her mouth again. “Ooh, I think catharsis is dangerous,” she says. “For me anyway. It brings me some very welcome relief, but so far it has always been a bit temporary.” She starts talking before turning back. “I was about to say I should forgive myself for ever feeling doubt or sadness, but that implies I’m doing something wrong.”

She pulls her sweater closer to her chin so that she is now swaddled in white cloth.

“When those feelings creep in again, the worst I can do is say, ‘Damn it, Anna! I thought we were over this, you know? I just have to experience it more as something neutral that happens. That it is something I have no control over.” She lets out a big sigh. “I certainly don’t enjoy it, but it’s not a character that fails either.”

Instead, it’s just another facet to her. In other words: meet the new Anna Kendrick. Quirky. Recognizable. And yes, sometimes sad.

‘Woman of the Hour’ is on Netflix