There is a scene early on in Woman of the Hour, Anna Kendrick’s sophisticated and sure-handed directorial debut, where the film’s protagonist, Cheryl (Kendrick), a high-minded aspiring actress, is asked during an audition whether she’s okay with some nudity. She says that it is not for her, to which the casting director, a man, responds: “Oh, I’m sure they are fine.” The moment is shocking in its casual misogyny.
“That happened to me when I was 19,” says Kendrick, speaking over Zoom before her film debuts on Netflix on October 18. “That conversation is verbatim.”
Made from a deftly written script by Ian McDonald that appeared on the 2017 Black List (an annual survey of Hollywood’s best unproduced screenplays), Woman of the Hour includes a number of such nods to Kendrick’s personal experiences in Hollywood, added after she came on board as the director. Based on the stranger-than-fiction true story of Cheryl Bradshaw—a Los Angeles woman who went on a 1978 episode of The Dating Game only to be paired with the infamous serial killer Rodney Alcala (played in the film by Daniel Zovatto)—Woman of the Hour dramatizes and occasionally fictionalizes Cheryl’s experiences before, during, and after the game show. The result is a strikingly accomplished psychological thriller about the dangers of walking the earth in a woman’s shoes.
Kendrick, who has been navigating the entertainment industry for more than two decades (earning Tony and Oscar nominations for High Society in 1998 and Up in the Air in 2009, respectively), did not take on directing duties lightly. She was already attached as an actor and executive producer when the production faced some delays and ended up needing a new director. “I started to have this thought that wouldn’t go away: What if I pitched myself to direct the movie?” she says. “The more I tried to push it away, the more it persisted. And I started to feel heartbroken at the idea of anybody else doing it.” Still, the stakes felt high. “I am also aware that if I say something idiotic in front of the crew, there’s my own shame. And then there’s this weight of, God, are they all thinking this is why people don’t like women as leaders or directors? That was really scary.”
The thought brings Kendrick back to a period in her career when she worked hard to seem like “more of a boy than the boys.” “In my early 20s, when I would talk to guys about movies, the only movies I would reference were mob movies and exploitation films,” she says. “I learned that language so that I could get them to take my opinion seriously.”
When Kendrick got the job directing Woman of the Hour, however, she resisted making the movie too graphic or shocking—the qualities that would impress those guys she used to hang around. That visual discipline is just one part of what makes Woman of the Hour look and feel so much like the work of a veteran. Additionally, Kendrick worked closely with her cinematographer, Zach Kuperstein, to establish a consistent visual language that made the female victims of Rodney’s violence, some shown in flashbacks, actually feel seen rather than objectified. “We shot on lenses that had a lot of character,” Kendrick says. “I wanted the beauty of the film to come from the women, the setting, and their performances. And I wanted to put them in nature, in these beautiful settings, because we have such a limited amount of time to get to know them. And I wanted the space that they occupied to speak to the vastness and complexity of their lives beyond this one violent moment.”
She and McDonald worked together on the final script, stitching together favorite pieces from its multiple iterations over the years as well as some new ideas. A priority for Kendrick was steering away from salaciousness: To her, the movie’s emotional resonance came from the sense of grief that we feel throughout, watching women attempt to survive their circumstances, both emotionally and literally, from moment to moment. Something she immediately wanted to work on with McDonald was the ending—not a happy ending, of course, given the harrowing details of the true story, but a parting note that felt both emotionally satisfying and authentically open-ended.
Under Kendrick’s direction, a spirit of sisterhood also came into sharp focus in the story. In one instance, a kindly waitress protects Cheryl during her casual but hostile date with Rodney by refusing to serve them another round at Cheryl’s subtle signaling. “That was something I changed with the actress at the last minute,” Kendrick says. “She understood the assignment intrinsically. I’m sure she’s had a million of those moments in her life, as we all have.” She cites another scene in which a young woman in the audience of the dating show runs out of the studio. “One of the producers mentioned, ‘Oh, I thought this whole moment was really about her trying to get away from this dangerous man. But it’s all about her trying to warn this other woman.’”
Other interventions were more counterintuitive. Kendrick recalls playfully telling McDonald one day that he was perhaps giving Rodney’s victims too much agency; she knew that a woman so close to danger wouldn’t always raise her voice, take up space, or confront a male antagonist. “As modern women, we are told to take back our power and stop appeasing,” she says. “But sometimes it’s not that simple. Sometimes, that is the thing that’s going to put you in harm’s way. So playing [realistically] with that idea was interesting.” She continues: “Yes, women are supposed to have more agency. And nothing makes me happier than a big fantasy action movie where the heroine is just kicking ass. In our film, the Dating Game section, where Cheryl rebels and takes control, is almost that fantasy.”
Of course, working with great directors over the years also helped prepare Kendrick for her first excursion behind the camera. “The most beneficial thing might have been watching them adjust their temperament to the person they’re in front of. I’m watching Rob Marshall change the way that he speaks to a different actor, and I go, Oh, wow. He’s really not his authentic self with that person. And then when he has to adjust for me, I go, Wait, maybe that’s his authentic self,” she laughs. One filmmaker she called for advice before working on Woman of the Hour? Her A Simple Favor director, Paul Feig. “In hindsight, the guy known for Bridesmaids doesn’t seem like the first phone call you’d make here,” she acknowledges. “But I really like how he is as a collaborator. And I love the dynamic between him and his DP, John Schwartzman. I think of them as these archetypes: the sweetheart and the bulldog. John’s kind of a bulldog. And when I was interviewing cinematographers, I was like, I should probably hire a real sweetheart with Zen energy because I’m such a bulldog.”
Her own know-how as an actor was also an asset, helping her anticipate the cast’s needs and apprehensions. “They knew that I’m not someone who’s never stepped in front of the camera and made herself vulnerable that way,” Kendrick explains. “So there was a built-in trust that I’m coming from a place of good faith [when I say], ‘I know it feels wrong, but it is going to look right.’”
And what does she want to do next? “Everything,” she says. “There was a period where the only scripts that I liked were really dark, even darker than this movie. But then I started to come around to the idea that maybe that’s not the space that I want to be living in for two years minimum. There are times where I feel trapped in my own head, in my own darkness. Maybe I need to find something that has a little bit more upside. I would love to direct something else. But maybe something with 20% more optimism.”