Anna Kendrick is speaking up about why it was so difficult for her to “identify and name” a previous relationship as abusive. The Pitch Perfect actress, 39, told Alex Cooper on the Call Her Daddy podcast that she read articles about the signs of abuse, but what was happening in her relationship didn’t quite match what the articles said. This left her feeling like she was the “crazy” one in her relationship. Anna was in the relationship for seven years, but said the emotional abuse went on for about a year.
Though Anna eventually realized the relationship was abusive, it “didn’t follow the traditional pattern,” which made it harder for her to recognize the signs. “I was reading all the articles and going like, ‘This doesn’t look like — some of it looks like how they’re describing it, but not completely,'” she explained.
She went on to explain that she has seen abusive relationships described as “like a frog in boiling water thing where it started slow.” In her case, though, “it came out of absolutely nowhere.”
“The relationship was seven years, but it was like an overnight switch, and that went on for about a year,” Anna explained. Because she “had so much love and trust” for the person she was with, she thought she was the problem. “I thought it had to be me,” Anna explained. “Like if one of us is crazy, it must be me.”
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Because of what was happening, Anna tried to work on the issues herself and also sought help from a couples therapist. Anna didn’t name the person she was speaking about, but said, “it was very, very difficult to actually go, ‘No, I think this is him. I think this is his stuff.'”
“I turned my life completely upside down trying to fix whatever was wrong with me,” Anna told Alex, adding that it “didn’t help” that their couples therapist seemed to believe what her then-partner was saying during therapy.
During couples therapy, Anna explained, her then-partner remained calm, which was different from how he acted outside of therapy. Because of his calm demeanor during therapy, Anna tried to remain calm too, but eventually, she “yelled” during a session. Afterwards, she felt terrible and reached out to her therapist.
“I sent the therapist an email being like, ‘I’m so embarrassed. I’m so sorry. I know I need to control myself,'” Anna said. “And he called me, which he hadn’t done before, and was like, ‘No, I’m so proud of you.’”
When the couples therapist said that, Anna realized that something had “shifted.” “Things ended pretty quickly after,” she said, and later, the therapist apologized to her.
“I’ve had several sessions with him in the last several years where he’s apologized to me, because I think he realized what was going on right toward the end,” she said. Anna described the abusive relationship she was in as “extremely similar” to the relationship depicted in Alice, Darling, the movie she starred in shortly after her relationship ended.
When she decided to take on the role, she didn’t tell anyone about it because she didn’t want them to talk her out of it, she explained on the podcast. “It’s a similar thing where it was like pushing myself off of a cliff and not giving myself the time to go, ‘Is this a good choice?’” she said.
