How Anna Kendrick’s abusive relationship inspired Alice, as Darling – The Hollywood Reporter

Anna Kendrick is being more open about how her personal experience in an abusive relationship has affected her lead role in the new film. Alice, honeyis currently showing in theaters in New York and Los Angeles before opening in wider theaters on January 20.

Kendrick previously said Everybody that the project, directed by Mary Nighy in her directorial debut and written by Alanna Francis, which premiered at the Toronto Film Festival, had “resonated” with her because of her She is “going through a personal experience with emotional and psychological abuse.”

“I was in a situation where I loved and trusted this person more than I trusted myself,” says Kendrick. Everybody about her past relationship while refusing to name an ex-boyfriend she said was abusive. “So when that person tells you that you have a distorted perception of reality and that you can’t and that all the things you think are happening aren’t happening, your life will really change. messed up very quickly. And I was in a situation where, in the end, I had the unique experience of discovering that everything I thought was going on was actually happening. So I had this kind of pedal to feel and recuperate that a lot of people don’t have.”

Now, talk to LA timeKendrick, who executive produced the film Lionsgate in addition to starring in it, opened up more about how her past relationship has influenced her role in the film.

In particular, it was important to Kendrick that the on-screen abuse was not physical, which will hopefully provide a more nuanced depiction of an abusive relationship, something she hasn’t seen in the past. many movies, making her wonder if what was happening to her was really abusive. .

“That was a big part of my problem,” she said. “Well, he never hit me, and I really wasn’t afraid that he would hit me. How to distinguish between normal conflict and abuse? Why is my body so scared all the time? Why do I wake up feeling like he’s in bed next to me and wonder, ‘Okay, do I have 30 seconds before I start performing or…?’”

The relationship even made her question her own experience, she said: “He believed I was a monster to the point where I couldn’t understand what I wasn’t.”

And she doesn’t necessarily think abuse can become physical.

“You don’t have to believe that it might make you feel like you’re allowed to leave, that you deserve better treatment, that you deserve to feel safe,” she told the newspaper. LA Times.

Kendrick added that she was “connected to Alice’s obsessive mind.”

She told time which she recalls writing in her diary, “I’ll try a little harder. If I can get it right, if I can make it perfect, if I can say it perfectly, I’ll be fine.”

“It is a completely irrational hope that if I get a little better, I will be safe. It’s like having a pair of pliers on your heart,” she said.

She also has strong feelings about how to play an important scene in the movie when her friends try to get Alice away from her abusive boyfriend Simon (Charlie Carrick). Specifically, she makes eye contact with her friend Sophie (Wunmi Mosaku) while not looking at Simon.

“Sophie’s actions just made me extremely ready,” Kendrick told the newspaper. time about what her character is feeling in that moment. “That was the phrase I used that day, which I know makes me sound absolutely insane. I was like, ‘If I break eye contact with her, I’m going to fall off the wire. This is a survival technique.’”

As in the movie, in which Alice begins to regain her sense of self and perspective on her abusive boyfriend while on vacation with friends, it is friendship that helps bring her back.

“It was the first thing that got me back in my body after a year and a half; someone just does one thing he can’t do, which is to say to me, ‘You’re right, I’m sorry, you’re not crazy.’ I am very grateful to that person and the gift [they] gave it to me,” Kendrick said. “I don’t know how to describe it other than it feels like one of those goofy CGI ghosts from the ’90s movies that suddenly enter your body, and you wake up and go, ‘Oh my God. , I’m here. OH! I’m hungry for the first time in my life.’”

And in the movie and with her own recovery, she has to believe that she is proof of the abuse.

“I begged Mary, ‘Can Alice be proof?’” Kendrick said. “Because I not only want us not to make a movie that has already been made, but personally, I need to trust that I am the proof. Part of it is, if you can’t trust Alice, then I can’t trust myself. So what’s really, really important is that the movie relies a lot on just staying with Alice.”

She added of her own experience, “Sitting in grief and believing in your own body is a lot harder, but so much more rewarding. I have to believe that we can follow Alice and trust her because that’s my job now: to believe in myself.”