Kendrick is back in the limelight to promote her new film Woman of the Hour, in which she made her directorial debut, and during a recent interview with Horowitz, the actress made a candid admission about her past experiences in front of the camera.
Horowitz asked the 39-year-old what the worst note she'd ever received from a director was, and Kendrick had quite a memorable experience to share.
“I remember a director once in a room full of 100 extras or something… being like, ‘Hey, on this next one just try something. Just make something up. Just improv something,” Kendrick explained.
She continued, “And [I did it] and then the director called cut and came over and, once again in front of 100 extras, was like, ‘Oof, let’s go back to the script!'”
“It really felt like a power move thing, to gain dominance or something. It was very, very icky.”
The Pitch Perfect star got the last laugh, adding, “And then the thing that I improved ended up in the trailer. So f*** you!”
In a recent interview with The Guardian, Kendrick spoke about her directorial debut with Woman of the Hour, a factually inspired thriller about Rodney Alcala, the serial killer who appeared in 1978 on The Dating Game.
Touching on the film’s title, coined by Kendrick herself, she said, “There’s something perverse and ironic about Woman of the Hour… this is supposedly Cheryl’s moment, but she’s an object of consumption and objectification.”
As for her thoughts on Ian McDonald’s script, Kendrick explained that small adjustments were made as there were certain things that might not have occurred to a man, like the subtle ways in which women communicate the discomfort they face in the presence of men.
“There is a strange secret language between women. There are certain things I wouldn’t risk saying to a man if we were alone, such as: ‘Hey, you’re making me uncomfortable.’ It speaks really well of Ian that he wanted to give the women that agency, but I felt the more honest thing would be if they didn’t express exactly what was happening inside them.”
In an interview with The Independent, Kendrick said “It does feel like the most revealing piece of work I’ve ever done.”
“It created a window into my mind.”
