Anna Kendrick makes her debut as a director with Woman of the Hour, a Netflix film based on the true story of a serial killer who appeared on a television dating show in the 1970s. On The Kelly Clarkson Show, she explains her choices, alongside actresses Kathryn Gallagher and Autumn Best.
A story about who you can trust
Kendrick plays the contestant on The Dating Game, who chooses between bachelors hidden behind a partition. For her, the premise is a perfect metaphor: how can you really know someone, and trust your own judgement about whether a person is safe? Her aim was to centre the victim’s experience. While making the film, she noticed a pull towards the killer’s psychology, and found the scenes worked much better when she stayed with the people he harmed. Ruminating about the other person, she says, can keep you stuck and help you avoid your own grief.
Learning to say no
Her character, an aspiring actress in Los Angeles, tries to find her voice. As women, Kendrick says, “we sort of shrink and bend to survive”, emotionally, financially or literally. As a first-time director, she had to find her own voice too: when producers wanted to change the opening scene, she told them she was not sure she knew how to make that movie. Honesty, she has learned at 42, is more respectful than people-pleasing.
A new generation on set
Kathryn Gallagher remembers once choosing to stay polite on a set where she was not treated well, then blaming herself. Autumn Best, in her first film, sees things changing: having worked with many women directors, she arrives on set expecting support. Best, who has a limb difference, was delighted to play a role in which her disability was simply not the subject.