Anna Kendrick & Cast Discuss The Chilling True Story Behind 'Woman of the Hour'

I don't know what's worse, man. I don't know if it's worse to audition and get the part or do something else and for Anna to be like, that's my guy. Of course, I'm the one that's right. But, um... And welcome the woman of the hour! I was really blown away by all of your very deliberate shots and cutaways and reactions that work to build tension. Um, there... The work you did with your DP, Zach Kupferstein, stands out because every single shot conveys an emotion, whether it's fear or trepidation or embarrassment. Zach was incredible and so organized. But I spoke to him early on about the way that I hoped to use reflection and distortion in key moments. A woman through a camera lens or through a mirror or a car window in moments when she's being really missed as a whole person, in moments where she's being looked at but not seen. Because it's tricky to put that across in a film without using a kind of established visual language of the way that a predator might view a woman. If I use his literal perspective, am I contributing to a normalization of women being objectified on film? And it was just tricky. And so that was, you know, a way that I wanted to attempt that. And then, you know, you sort of add in these moments with performance where, for example, Tony Hale's character, like, seemingly won't look at me and will only look at me through the mirror. And I keep trying to get him to actually just look at me. And that, I thought, created some fun performance moments. And I'll say that, you know, getting certain things across to the audience. Look, I'm biased because this is what I've devoted my life to for, you know, since I was 12. But I always think that performance is king. To me, like the whole reason that movies exist is as a vehicle for great actors to give great performances. and I love that every department in the movie thinks a movie is a vehicle for great production design or a great costume design or a great cinematography which is exactly as it should be um of course I'm the one that's right but um I mean look Anna you know she's an actor actor first so she understands what what helps actors and and she made it clear that she wanted to do this section of the movie like a play you know like the show so we did I think it was like a 20 page scene um of of the whole sequence of the show you know tony coming in presenting the contestants and anna and and it just felt like um like it was real like we were there like you know there was no cuts in between it just kind of flowed together uh and you know i that was such a smart move from Anna i mean i remember that set on that game show and just i mean shout out to the set design like the oranges and the pinks it was very of that time and they did a beautiful job but yeah i think now that he says that i it was it was shot very chronologically um and also just her angles that Anna chose like there was one angle where she's looking you're looking through the glass and you don't really know what's going on so what i so appreciate that Anna did is it's the perspective of the victim this whole movie is the perspective of the victim and if anything Rodney is kind of the b story you know the story that she wants to tell is like the victim story and the culture at the time, which is, you know, so fantastic. Bachelor number two. What are girls for? Why does this feel like a trap? I don't know. Why does it? How did we as a society allow the dating game to happen? Oh, my God. I mean, truly, that's a great question. It's really, really horrific to think that that a serial killer made it on that show i mean um but i think you know thankfully i i don't think and hope that wouldn't happen today but in in many ways there's things yeah i mean yeah there's still just like so many ways in which we um still have so many steps to move forward even now yeah um in terms of just like honoring people's instincts and also listening to people when they're raising alarm about something and taking it seriously or at least investigating. And yeah, it's pretty devastating to think that that actually happened. I mean, I'm a kid of the 70s. So I remember this show. I remember seeing it. I remember vaguely hearing about this specific story, but then it wasn't really until this that I obviously did a deep dive on all the facts. But man, just the allowance and the acceptance of a lot that was said you know my character uh Ed Birch you know off stage he was obviously incredibly demoralizing to women and objectifying and he had his on stage presence but you couldn't help but like that off stage bleed into it you know just like little remarks he would make and just also that his detachment i would you know i went to on youtube and just watched not just him but a lot of hosts there was just this kind of rhythm of their speech and it was kind of like you know welcome to the dating game like it was kind of a character that he put on which just kind of fed into that whole detachment from humanity you know that i saw anyways yeah i mean i don't know how Pat Sajak did it for as long as he did man but like i mean it's it has morphed you know thankfully yeah thankfully we've gotten a lot better as a society we've got a long way to go but just you look back at that time and it's just crazy they were talking about the 70s you know what i'm saying there was there was no phone with uh swiping then so i guess uh you got to go to national television to find love um hey it's it's still hey listen man it's still happening there's so many dating games nowadays um but the fact that he had the courage to you know be on national television knowing the things that he knew that he had done i feel like for him was just like a power move right just present yourself to the world to the nation and yet you know you're doing you know horrible crimes so it just plays on who he was as a person i think no matter what words they use the question beneath the question remains the same what's the question which one of you will hurt me there's an element of this movie that involves auditioning and being right for the role and so when you go out for the role of serial killer and then you get it is there an element that makes you think like why am i the right guy to play serial killer it actually gets worse dude um so i i i didn't audition for this um anna anna saw me in um and she told me this anna saw me in in a series that i did Station Eleven and when she saw it she was like that's that's that's rodney uh so i don't know what's worse man i don't know if it's worse to audition and get the part or do something else and for anna to be like that's that's my guy yeah i mean look it's it's definitely as as an actor something that i always kind of wanted to do you know i it's it's just fun you know uh studying their psychology and and studying their life and and building a character around it it's all it's all awesome so here we are man i did it excuse me man can you give us another round there were certain visual things that that felt important to me you know I remember when I was pitching myself I think I talked about the parking lot sequence at the end and how I could imagine this frame where you know you kind of see Cheryl and Rodney and it's you know the expanse of the isolation that they're in in that moment and and knowing that even if Cheryl ran for it, she wouldn't even make it out of the frame before Rodney was on top of her, you know, and really giving you that visceral sense of the kind of physical danger that she's in. You know, then on the other hand, I think about the tiki bar. And while there were, you know, very specific visual and production design things that that felt important in that scene, I changed that some of that scene like the night before we shot it to just make it um like significantly more subtle and I think if you read that scene on paper it would sort of feel like a scene where nothing happens and I was really really trusting that um Daniel Zavado who is extraordinary in the movie and I would be able to make something happen that felt really grounded but also really really real and present that's good I'm into that you know what's sort of miraculous about anna is the conversations we had on set were about the character they were you know sometimes about technically what she needed for a shot and um from my perspective it's all just about storytelling you know as if it were a play and when i saw the movie i think i really understood the depth of how specific and how intentional she was with each moment i mean the way silence is used the way um the music is used each shot it's it kind of blew me away we filmed this movie two years ago and i saw it two months ago and to get to watch it and and really feel like such a fan of it and that's because of her intentionality and she really i cannot believe this was her first film as a director she's she's remarkable it was surprising because i i remember we had to do um a reshoot or or we added a day or something like that but she showed me for the first time like i think the the beginning of the movie like the first like three minutes and i was like i love it you know i i love what you did here because you're like you said you're you're staying with the characters for maybe an extra two seconds but that really conveys the whole thing right and i mean i personally think that cinema should do that more i feel like we cut too quick um in a lot of things uh and so So seeing it was a surprise. There was no discussion prior. And I was actually like, yes, Anna. Like, that's awesome. I mean, obviously, it's a very fragile story to tell. So everybody wanted to, you know, feel like whoever's captaining the ship knows what they want. It's a safe space. And she just really did amazing with that. So what do you say? Autumn, I can't not talk about the final scene. I mean, it's everything that the movie builds up to. And so I just need to get your reaction to just seeing the final shot of the film and maybe what was going through your head and and what you remember about about filming that sequence yeah um when i really when it really dawned on me that i was going to be like the final frame of the film it stressed me out a little bit honestly it was a lot of responsibility i was like what do you mean the final frame of the film um but anna was so good at reassuring me that i was the person for the job you know and and without her being there to help me feel confident in myself as an actor and as a person i definitely i don't think i could have gotten to a place where i felt comfortable enough to really release and like let everything go you know and and we shot that very final clip of just the breathing on a separate day from everything else and so it was just a full probably 10 minutes of me just working myself up in like to get to that moment and we shot it all in a series and it was just and I was like we'll just keep rolling until you feel like you've really let it all out and it was just really beautiful it was it felt really natural too to kind of let that be a release of everything that happens in the film and as an actor it was very therapeutic to let everything go and yeah Anna was just so helpful in allowing me to take the space and the time that I needed to get there for that final moment and I think it yeah I'm just really proud of how it turned out.