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Anna Kendrick, who is at the Zurich Film Festival for the European premiere of Lauren Miller Rogen’s “Babies,” spoke briefly about her next directorial project, “The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo.” Back in June, it
was announced that Kendrick would direct the Netflix film, adapted from Taylor Jenkins Reid’s best-selling novel.
“Obviously, over the moon and so excited,” she said of the project. The film is written by Liz Tigelaar (“Little Fires Everywhere,” “Casual”), with current revisions by Francesca Sloane (“Mr. & Mrs. Smith,” “Atlanta,” “Fargo”). Jenkins Reid is on board as an executive producer.
Kendrick spoke at length about her first experience behind the camera during the hour-long talk. She recalled being “really in a panic” ahead of stepping onto the set. What calmed her down? A lengthy conversation with “Pitch Perfect” co-star Brittany Snow, who had experienced the same first-time-director jitters when making “Parachute.”
“[Snow] is normally so emotionally attuned and sensitive and has all the room in the world for your big feelings,” said Kendrick. “She went: ‘You’re gonna get on set and know what to do, stop it.’ It was just so cut and dry and exactly what I needed to hear.”
Speaking about “Pitch Perfect,” Kendrick said there was a “historical revisionism” about the 2012 comedy. The actor said the film found a “second life” on HBO in a “pre-streaming” era. “At the same time, the studio asked me to record a full-length version of the ‘Cup Song’ and do the music video, which, again, I thought: What a waste of money, but sure!”
“Cups (Pitch Perfect’s ‘When I’m Gone’),” of course, became a massive viral hit, with over 2.5 million digital downloads, over 600 million combined views on YouTube and peaking at No. 6 on the Billboard Hot 100. “I don’t think anything that bizarre will ever happen to me again,” she said of the success. “It was so cool. I got a platinum record to hang in my house, like I’m Snoop Dogg or something!”
The film also gave Kendrick “10 girls who are family, in the truest sense,” including Snow, Rebel Wilson, Anna Camp and Hailee Steinfeld. “We didn’t choose each other. We didn’t ask for it. Now, we’ll be in each other’s obituaries [laughs]. It’s so lovely to have these people where, if any of us is experiencing something troubling, it’s really amazing, and I feel it sounds so corny or like I’m lying, but it’s like ‘Avengers, assemble,’ you know? When someone in the group chat tells us something difficult is happening, it’s like, ok: who is going over to her house tomorrow? What are we doing? How are we figuring this out? It’s beautiful.”
“There’s been a kind of revisionist history where people think of it as this sleeper hit and this box-office smash, which it simply was not,” she added of the film. “It did fine, but it wouldn’t have gotten a sequel off the strength of the box-office numbers.”
Still, the success has been “incredible” for Kendrick’s career. “Those movies became so successful that it meant that I could get projects greenlit that probably wouldn’t have been greenlit,” she said. “I don’t think the movie ‘Alice, Darling’ would have ever been made, or at least it wouldn’t have been made with me, if it hadn’t been for ‘Pitch Perfect.’ Those movies have brought nothing but positive things to me.”
The actor also spoke about reuniting with Seth Rogen in “Babies” 15 years after they shared the screen on Jonathan Levine’s “50/50.” The film, directed by Rogen’s wife Lauren Miller Rogen, is loosely inspired by the couple’s real-life story, and follows a couple who has to make a big life decision: whether or not to have children.
“They just have one of those relationships where you’re like, God, they just make it look so easy,” she said of the couple of creatives. “It’s just so simple. They genuinely just prefer to be around each other than not be around each other […] It feels like one of those, you and me against the world relationships; it’s just so lovely. It was great to just observe them together on set and go: ‘Oh, ok, I have my roadmap for this.’ […] It just felt very tender and gentle, and it was very easy to just try to play what I was seeing on set all the time.”
Kendrick also briefly touched upon another recent project, Chris Rock’s Toronto-darling “Misty Green.” She brought up the film when asked about a type of character she would like to play, revealing creatives don’t often think of her for an angry character. “I’m not usually asked to play rage or anger.”
She recalled being in a scene with Rich Sommer and Daniel Kaluuya, where the “Get Out” actor had to go “from zero to 60 in anger.” “We’re having a lovely dinner, and something upsets him, and he gets so explosively upset, and Rich and I were bonding over the fact that we don’t usually play characters like that.”
“I think that would be very challenging and exciting, because the fact is I’m like five-two on a good day, and I’m just not usually asked to play that feeling,” she added. “I hadn’t really thought about it until I was in this scene in ‘Misty Green.’ I think that would be something scary and interesting to do.”
