Anna Kendrick had gone public with the abuse she endured during a seven-year relationship. It’s a part of her life that she’s only gently touched on in the past.
But now the 39-year-old has bravely shared how a long-term relationship left her confused and broken – and how seeing a therapist gave her the courage to escape.
In a recent episode of Alex Cooper’s Call Her Daddy podcast, Kendrick said it took her a long time to realise she was in fact being emotionally abused.
Why? Because his behaviour didn’t follow a general pattern of abuse.
The Pitch Perfect star ‘couldn’t pretend’ anymore
“It came out of absolutely nowhere. It’s like a frog in boiling water thing where it started slow,” Kendrick explained to Cooper.
She added that her partner had actually convinced her she was the problem.
“I was in a situation where I loved and trusted this person more than I trusted myself,” she explained. “So when that person is telling you that you have a distorted sense of reality and that you are impossible and that all the stuff that you think is going on is not going on, your life gets really confusing really quickly.
“I turned my life completely upside down trying to fix whatever was wrong with me.”
Kendrick was manipulated into thinking she was antagonising her partner, and recalled one incident where she was screamed at.
“He told me one day I was terrorising him because I was just crying,” she recalled.
“I couldn’t pretend that things were fine anymore,” which is why she was in tears. “He screamed in my face, ‘You’re terrorising me’.’
Initially, even couple’s therapy session didn’t work, because the therapist was unable to see past Kendrick’s partner’s manipulation.
Eventually, after a number of sessions, the professional caught on.
Kendrick’s art imitated life
“At the end, I had the unique experience of finding out that everything I thought was going on was in fact going on,” Kendrick explained to Cooper.
It was the beginning of the end of a toxic chapter for the Pitch Perfect actress. It also marked a boom in her career.
She’d just signed on to play the lead in Alice, Darling – a film about a woman in an emotionally abusive relationship.
At this point, she hadn’t divulged her abuse to anyone out of fear they’d talk her out of playing the part. For her, portraying Alice it was cathartic.
“I had just gotten out of a relationship that was extremely similar to the movie and I didn’t want anybody to tell me to not do it,” she recalled. “I had this kind of springboard for feeling and recovery that a lot of people don’t get.”
Kendrick’s work has taken on a more serious tone in recent years – and her directorial debut Woman of the Hour might be some of her best stuff yet.
Based on the true story of a 1970s serial killer, Kendrick plays Sheryl Bradshaw, a bachelorette on a dating show, The Dating Game.
One of her contestants, Rodney Alcala – a man who’d already committed a string of murders. He just hadn’t be caught.
It too touches on the theme of abuse, perhaps that’s why she wanted to bring the story to the big screen.
“He was really good at pretending to be something he wasn’t,” Kendrick told Netflix.
