Cheryl Bradshaw trusted her gut when she refused to go on a date with Rodney Alcala, and that decision may have saved her life.

In 1978, Bradshaw appeared on “The Dating Game,” a show in which three eligible bachelors competed for the affections of a bachelorette.

Bradshaw ultimately chose Bachelor No. 1, Rodney Alcala, who wooed her with suggestive jokes and innuendos throughout the episode.

However, when Bradshaw spent more time with Alcala after filming ended, she changed her mind about dating him.

“She said, ‘Ellen, I can’t date this man. Strange vibrations are coming from him. He’s very strange. I’m not at ease. Is that going to be a problem?” Ellen Metzger, the show’s former contestant coordinator, said on ’20/20’ in 2021. ‘And of course I said, ‘No.’

It would later turn out that Alcala was a violent serial killer and sex offender. He was linked to the murders of six women and one girl in the 1970s, and authorities believe he could have actually killed more than a hundred people.

Bradshaw’s experiences on “The Dating Game” inspired the new Netflix thriller “The Woman of the Hour,” starring and directed by Anna Kendrick.

Not much is known about Bradshaw in real life. During the show, she introduced herself as a drama teacher from Phoenix, Arizona.

Kendrick, who plays Bradshaw in the film, told TODAY that Bradshaw has now passed away.

The actor and director says there are “so many things” she would have liked to ask Bradshaw.

“I would ask her what it felt like for her to rely on herself,” she said.

Kendrick also said that while Bradshaw’s intuition was admirable, he is not suggesting that Alcala’s murder victims were less able to sense danger.

“I think it’s tricky… because I want it to convey the message that you have to listen to your gut. But at the same time, sometimes it’s not that easy,” Kendrick said.

“I think there was a point where one of the producers asked if there had to be a really clever way for my character to outsmart or outsmart Rodney, and that’s why she survives,” she continued. “And I thought, ‘I think that would be a disservice to the other women who were no less intelligent than her, and that sometimes it’s a combination of trusting your gut, but sometimes it’s too late for that.”

“Sometimes you have to trust your gut and you just get blind luck on your side, and that’s how you kind of manage to get out of situations that other people couldn’t,” Kendrick added.

In 2010, crime profiler Pat Brown suggested that Bradshaw’s rejection could have angered Alcala and prompted him to commit further crimes.

“It makes you wonder what that did in his head,” Brown told CNN. “That’s something he wouldn’t take very well. They don’t understand the rejection. They think there’s something wrong with that girl: ‘She was playing with me. She played hard-to-get.’”

Kendrick said she thinks “that could certainly be true, given his pattern.”

“I will also say that there are certainly a lot of murders that we don’t know about, so it’s hard to know for sure,” she added.

Alcala committed two known murders after his time on ‘The Dating Game’. He was convicted of the 1979 murder of 12-year-old Robin Samsoe, and later that same year was convicted of the murder of 21-year-old Jill Parenteau.

It later emerged that Alcala had already committed several murders before appearing on ‘The Dating Game’.

He was convicted of the murder of Cornelia Crilley in 1971, the murders of Jill Barcomb, Georgia Wixted and Ellen Jane Hover in 1977, and the murder of Charlotte Lamb in 1978.

Although Alcala’s criminal history is chilling, Kendrick said that when creating “Woman of the Hour,” she was more interested in the stories of his survivors and victims than in exploring Alcala’s psyche.

“I really don’t care why he is the way he is,” she said. “I don’t find him interesting or worth investigating.”

Alcala, who was sent to death row for his crimes, died in 2021 at the age of 77. California prison officials say he died of natural causes.