Anna Kendrick Donated Her Pay from New Movie "Woman of the Hour" to Victims of Violent Crime: 'The Least I Should Do'
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10/30/2024 11:58 AM
"I sort of asked myself the question, 'Do you feel gross about this?' And I did," Kendrick said of profiting from her new true-crime film
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Anna Kendrick on Oct. 22, 2024Anna Kendrick is sharing why she decided to donate the money she made from her new movie.
As Kendrick, 39, appeared on the Friday, Oct. 25 episode of Sirius XM's Crime Junkie AF podcast to promote her new true crime movie Woman of the Hour, the actress noted that she decided to donate her salary from the movie to the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN) and the National Center for Victims of Violent Crime after Netflix purchased the movie following its premiere at the 2023 Toronto Film Festival.
"Believe me, this was never a money-making venture for me, because all the resources went to actually making the movie," Kendrick explained, as she recalled taking the movie to TIFF last year.
"It wasn't until the week before TIFF that I thought 'oh, the movie is going to make money,' " she recalled. "I went from being like, 'Let me know when the movie happens,' to being like, 'Oh god I am responsible for this,' and then it was making the movie, making the movie, we just barely made the deadline to get into TIFF, and then it was like, 'Oh, there's money gonna be exchanging hands,' and I sort of asked myself the question, 'Do you feel gross about this?' And I did."
"I'm not making money off the movie," Kendrick clarified. "The money is going to or has gone to RAINN and the National Center for Victims of Violent Crime. It's still a complicated area but that felt like the least that I should do."
Leah Gallo/Netflix
Tony Hale (left), Anna Kendrick and Daniel Zovatto in 'Woman of the Hour'Woman of the Hour is inspired by the story of Cheryl Bradshaw and her encounter with Rodney Alcala, a real-life serial killer in the 1970s. In the film, Kendrick's character is cast on an episode of The Dating Game and encounters Alcala after he is selected as an ordinary contestant during the middle of his "yearlong murder spree," as an official synopsis for the film reads.
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The movie, which also stars Tony Hale, Daniel Zovatto, Nicolette Robinson, Pete Holmes, Autumn Best, Kathryn Gallagher and Kelley Jakle, tracks Alcala's murders during the 1970s and his encounter with Bradshaw during and after the taping of that Dating Game episode.
Leah Gallo/Netflix
Anna Kendrick (left) and Daniel Zovatto in 'Woman of the Hour'The new movie marks Kendrick's directorial debut; elsewhere on that podcast episode, she said she "really had fun making a period piece and playing up the kind of seventies of it all" while discussing instances of casual sexism she included in the film.
Woman of the Hour is streaming on Netflix now.
