Anna Kendrick talks more about how her personal experience in an abusive relationship influenced her starring role in the new film Alice, honeynow playing in theaters in New York and Los Angeles pending a wider theatrical release on January 20.
Kendrick previously told People that the project, directed by Mary Nighy in her feature film debut and written by Alanna Francis, which premiered at the Toronto Film Festival, “resonated” with her because she “came from a personal experience of emotional abuse and psychological abuse.”
“I was in a situation where I loved and trusted this person more than myself,” Kendrick shared People of her past relationship while refusing to name the ex-boyfriend whom she says was abusive. “So if that person tells you that you have a distorted sense of reality and that you’re impossible and that all the things you think are going on aren’t going on, your life gets very confusing very quickly. And I was in a situation where at the end I had the unique experience of finding out that everything I thought was going on was actually going on. So I had a kind of springboard for feeling and recovery that a lot of people don’t get.
Now, talking to the Los Angeles TimesKendrick, who is executive producing the Lionsgate movie and not just starring in it, went on to talk about how her past relationship influenced her role in the film.
It was particularly important to Kendrick that the on-screen abuse not be physical, hoping to give a more nuanced view of an abusive relationship, something she hadn’t seen in many films, which left her wondering if what was going on with what happened to her was indeed abuse. .
She said, “That was a big part of my problem.” Well, he never hit me and I’m not really afraid that he’s going to hit me. How do I distinguish 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 wondering, ‘OK, do I have 30 seconds before I start performing or…?’”
The relationship even made her question her own experience, saying, “He’s so convinced I’m a monster that I can’t see how I’m not.”
And she doesn’t necessarily think the abuse could have turned physical.
“You don’t have to believe that it can get physical for you to feel that you are allowed to leave, that you deserve to be treated better, 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 the Time that she remembered writing in her journal, “I’m just going to try a little harder. If I could just do it right, if I could make it perfect, if I could just say it in the perfect way, I’d be fine.”
“It’s this totally irrational hope that if I’m just a little bit better, I’ll be safe. It’s like having pincers on your heart,” she said.
She also had strong feelings about how to play a key scene in the movie as her friends try to take 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 hit me on the tightrope of readiness,” Kendrick told the Time of what her character is feeling at that moment. “That was the expression I used that day, which I knew made me sound completely crazy. I was like, ‘If I break eye contact with her, I’ll fall off the tightrope. This is a survival technique.’”
Just like in the movie, where Alice begins to regain her sense of self and gain perspective on her abusive boyfriend while on vacation with friends, it was friendship that helped her return.
“That was the first thing that made me fall back into my body in a year and a half; someone who just did the one thing he couldn’t do, which was to tell me, “You’re right, I’m sorry, you’re not crazy.” I am so grateful to that person and the gift [they] gave me,” said Kendrick. “I don’t know how to describe it except I feel like one of those dorky CGI ghosts in ’90s movies that suddenly get back into your body, and you wake up and you’re like ‘Oh my God “I’m here. Oh! I’m hungry for the first time in forever.”
And in the movie and with her own recovery, she had to trust that she was evidence of abuse.
“I begged Mary, ‘Can Alice be the proof?'” Kendrick said. “Because not only do I want us not to make a movie that’s already been made, but I personally have to trust that I’m the proof. Part of it was like, if you can’t trust Alice, then I can’t trust myself either. So it was really, really important that the movie leaned so heavily on just staying with Alice.
She added of her own experience, “Sitting in grief and believing in my own body has been so much harder, but so much more rewarding. I have to believe that we can follow Alice and trust her, because that’s my job now: trusting myself.”
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