Directing ‘Woman of the Hour’ Required Vulnerability

Anna Kendrick and I are discussing soundbite culture.

She’s winding down after a day of interviews for her directorial debut, “Woman of the Hour,” where she’s been navigating the tricky business of getting audiences hyped for the chilling true story about the time a serial killer was a bachelor on “The Dating Game.”

The movie, now streaming on Netflix, is a subversive take on the true crime genre. The story is not focused on the killer’s motives or his capture, but more of a meditation on all the secret ways women navigate the world to ensure their survival, which makes the movie tough to boil down into a few quippy quotes.

As we walk to Kendrick’s hotel suite, I crack a joke about someone asking her to sing while talking about serial killers (no offense to my fellow reporters, because four-minute junket slots are impossible) and she covers her mouth to suppress a knowing laugh. Because, when doing press, you must sell the movie — and if anyone gets that, it’s Kendrick, whose 70 screen credits include the “Pitch Perfect,” “Trolls” and “Twilight” franchises, as well as her Academy Award-nominated turn in “Up in the Air.”

Even though she’s been around the block, Kendrick was surprised by how much she was prompted to talk about herself, though she toplines the film as Sheryl, the bachelorette who unwittingly chose killer Rodney Alcala (Daniel Zovatto) for the TV dream-date. Kendrick thought that, as the director, she could focus more on the cast and crew’s contributions than her own. But most questions were about making the move from actor to director (including this interview — sorry!) or what it’s like to be a woman behind the camera.

“It’s a lot easier for me to talk in extreme detail about certain moments in certain scenes, or about movies that were inspirations than it is to answer the questions that come up the most frequently — ‘Why this project? Why did you want to direct?’” she says, sipping from a coffee cups filled with a couple shots of whiskey, neat. She’s grabbed a sweater to cozy up her junket attire and we’re both cupping our mugs like we’re sitting around a campfire.

“I think there is a bit of an expectation that I speak quite eloquently about the unique experience of being a female director,” Kendrick explains. “And then you’re going, ‘I’ve done this one time. I probably shouldn’t be, like, representative of those kinds of big questions.’”

But, as she cycled through one interview after another, Kendrick began to put her finger on something: directing “Woman of the Hour” required her to be more vulnerable than writing her memoir, 2016’s “Scrappy Little Nobody.”

“Those were real stories from my real life, but I was presenting them in ways that were often glib and mostly designed to be lighthearted and entertaining. Even though these are not stories from my real life, it feels, like, dangerously revealing,” Kendrick says, comparing the two experiences. “It feels like I’m revealing something about myself in every frame, no matter if it’s intentional or not.”

The realization confirmed something Edgar Wright, her “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World” director, shared about how the zombie comedy “Shaun of the Dead” was a “very personal” film for him. “It’s funny because, no matter what the subject matter is or the tone of the film, it’s like you can’t help but tell truths about yourself,” she says. “And that’s nerve-racking.”

So, what did Kendrick reveal in “Woman of the Hour”?

“Every moment of the movie is kind of a reflection of my own terror,” she says. “I don’t think it’s an accident that I responded to this script at a time when I’d just been through something really devastating and traumatic and that really changed my worldview.”

In 2022, while promoting the indie drama “Alice, Darling” about a woman in an emotionally abusive relationship, Kendrick revealed her own experiences with emotional abuse. She’d signed on to star in that film and “Woman of the Hour” — which shares similar themes of gender-based violence — around the same time, but the true crime thriller took longer to get financing for. Then, when “Woman of the Hour’s” original director fell out six weeks before the shoot, Kendrick pitched herself to direct.

“So, there is something in the movie that feels revealing of all the ways in which I’m a work in progress and not quite healed yet,” she says.

And that’s why her interviews involved a surprising amount of crying.

“It hit a point where I was like, ‘This is starting to look like a fucking move.’ Like, it’s so embarrassing,” Kendrick says, sounding just a touch exasperated with herself. “I’m trying to speak about all of this in a way that’s authentic, because this …” She pauses, trying to ward off the tears that spring into her eyes. “No, I will not do it,” she tells herself, but grabs a tissue — begrudgingly — and continues the thought.

“I’m trying to mix the desire to speak about it in a semi-articulate way with my desire to speak about things very authentically,” she explains. “So, I know that there are interviews where I’ve repeated myself, but I’m trying really hard to not fall into like soundbite territory, because everything about the movie really matters to me.” She leans down toward the recorder for emphasis and declares: “This isn’t because I’m drunk. I’ve had precisely four sips of alcohol and then I just start bawling in an interview.”

Honestly, it’s not the whiskey; it’s the soberness of the material.

“There is kind of a secret language of women that we frequently use to get ourselves out of jams,” Kendrick says. “And the tricky piece about it is that part of the reason that it’s so helpful is that it’s a fucking secret.”

The question that hangs over so many interactions that people have is: “Do you see me as human? Am I safe with you? Who are you underneath your mask?” she explains. “And the fact that we won’t get satisfying answers to that, and yet we have to continue living our lives, is complicated.”

It was a point of contention at times with male producers, who didn’t fully grasp the subtext of certain moments in the film. “Sometimes [they] would be like, ‘I’m not sure that that moment totally plays.’ And I was like, ‘I’m telling you that it does.’ And if there are men in the audience who don’t understand what’s happening in this moment, that’s fine with me. I would rather have it be more of a reflection of my lived experience, and what I imagine many women’s lived experiences are.”

Kendrick’s intuition was validated during the film’s test screening, where she hid in the back of a theater under a baseball cap pulled down low and a medical mask.

Her director friends — Paul Feig, Cord Jefferson, Jake Johnson and Brittany Snow — had given her a heads up on what to expect. “There’s gonna be one person that hates your movie,” she recalls. “One person that is an idiot and wouldn’t get it in a million years. Someone who loves it. And one guy who thinks he is Orson Welles and he’s going to make the next ‘Citizen Kane.’ And, down to the person, they were absolutely right.”

But one person’s reaction blew Kendrick away.

“One woman in the focus group really seemed to get what I was going for. At a certain point, she was talking about how it felt like an exploration of the fawn trauma response,” Kendrick says, referring to the body’s stress response of trying to please someone to avoid conflict. “I was gripping my chair because I was so excited, because that’s exactly what I was trying to do.” It turns out that audience member works with domestic violence survivors. “That was very, very cool and encouraging.”

The other reason Kendrick has been “crying all the time” is because she recently entered her “soft girl era.” Like, when she and her “Pitch Perfect” co-stars Kelley Jakle (who also appears in “Woman of the Hour”) and Chrissie Fit spotted a billboard for “Woman of the Hour” while driving in Los Angeles, Kendrick burst into tears. Fit captured the moment on camera and the sentimental clip got hundreds of thousands of likes on Instagram.