“Serial killer movies — like war movies — frequently romanticize the very thing they’re claiming to critique. And that’s a trap I worked hard to avoid,” says screenwriter Ian McDonald of Woman of the Hour. “I wanted to treat the people who were killed with dignity. To acknowledge their fundamental role within the case, while also suggesting that they had larger, more dynamic lives outside the story, and not limiting them to mere ‘victims.’”
In the 1970s, Rodney Alcala embarked on a killing spree, luring women under the guise of being a photographer in search of models. Despite being a registered sex offender who had recently been released from prison, he notoriously appeared on The Dating Game, a show that weekly featured three hidden bachelors answering humorous questions from a female contestant who would then choose one for an all-expenses-paid date.
Anna Kendrick makes her directorial debut with Woman of the Hour, a taut thriller based on the true story of a woman who reluctantly makes an appearance on the popular 1970s show The Dating Game, and chooses a bachelor who turns out to be a prolific serial killer.
Told through the vantage points of the victims and survivors, Woman of the Hour serves as a keen reminder of the all too real dangers that women face, and the countermeasures they almost intuitively understand how to deploy, in their interactions with dangerous men.
Frankly, it’s the type of story only a woman could tell. And with her trademark wit and humor on full display — both in front of and behind the camera — Kendrick presents a shrewdly observed, shockingly funny, and unnerving film in her first turn as director. Here she discusses her personal investment in telling this story, how she came to direct it, and what types of stories she’s attracted to as a director.
Anna Kendrick directs Woman of the Hour from a screenplay crafted by Ian McDonald.
The stranger-than-fiction story of an aspiring actress in 1970s Los Angeles and a serial killer in the midst of a yearslong murder spree, whose lives intersect when they’re cast on an episode of The Dating Game. Rodney Alcala was a killer in the midst of a killing spree when he brazenly took part and won a date on the popular TV game show “The Dating Game”.
In conversation with Anna Kendrick, director, executive producer, and star of Woman of the Hour
“As a director, Anna is passionate and meticulous. She’s able to go deep into how characters feel and behave while also keeping the larger narrative in mind. She also just had a very clear, uncompromising vision for how she wanted the film to look and feel, which was inspiring. I can’t say enough good things…Weirdly, we both grew up in Maine about 15 minutes from each other. We were also apparently in a Christmas pageant together when we were kids, and her dad worked as a substitute teacher at my high school. So there’s a way in which it feels like this was meant to be.” — Ian McDonald, Screenwriter
When did you first get involved with Woman of the Hour and how did you come to eventually take the helm as director?
Initially, I was attached as an actor and producer. I actually remember telling a friend, “it’ll be nice because it’s a great movie and a great part, but I’m not in every scene so it won’t be too big of a workload.” Little did I know what would happen in the end. I think we were about two years into development when I became aware that I was much more invested in the movie. Usually, I’m a bit laser-focused on my character, but in this case, I found myself asking everybody how they were feeling about every aspect of the movie, from the producers to the writer. Then we suddenly found ourselves with a start date and no director.
So we started talking about who we could go out to, who seemed like they’d be an interesting fit, and I think for the first 48 hours of this conversation, I had this thought bubbling up that I was resisting so hard. To even have that thought in my brain felt like pushing myself off a cliff.
I think I first said it out loud to a director friend who I initially got in touch with to see if he wanted to direct the movie. He read the script and he said, “It’s a great script, and there’s part of me that would love to do it. But I think you want to do it and I think you should, and I think you’re ready. Frankly, what’s taken you so long?” And that was really important and validating. I ended up formally pitching myself to direct a couple days later.
Was the desire to direct something that you’d nurtured for a while? After having produced several films, at what point did you start entertaining the idea? Or was it a matter of just waiting for the right opportunity to come along?
I think for a long time, in my conscious mind, I was very much holding onto the belief that being a director just takes too much out of you. Subconsciously, I think I was sort of protecting myself because it feels really vulnerable to want to do something and say it out loud or even acknowledge it to yourself. So it was something that was under the surface for a long time, but maybe I just didn’t feel brave enough to admit it until this movie came along. And frankly I think the expedited timeline of this project was the reason why I was able to push myself off that cliff. I think I would’ve chickened out if I’d had more time.
The subject matter of the movie isn’t one that we’d naturally expect you to want to direct your first time out. It’s pretty dark!
Funny enough, I asked another director friend to read the script, and he said something along the lines of, “I’m so happy you’re going to direct, but I have to confess I’m surprised that this is what you’re drawn to…I can see there’s a lot of really interesting themes around being a woman in the world and the challenges that come with that.” He also specifically referenced the violence of the opening scene.
So I really had to sit with that and give it some thought. I ended up saying that I can understand why a movie that opens with an act of violence doesn’t really seem like it’s in my wheelhouse, but I feel like I’ve been through experiences where I can relate to being with another person and suddenly discovering you’re with someone deeply unsafe. And how earth-shattering it is to have that feeling of annihilation suddenly appear in a room that previously felt very safe and warm.
Those scenes where there’s either violence or the threat of violence don’t feel foreign to me. In fact, I had to fight for that opening scene. Some people wanted a very different opening. But I felt so attached to that scene despite most people knowing me as a comedy gal. So I understand why it would seem surprising, but for me, I felt very connected to the material.
What was your approach toward portraying the violence? Despite the inherent brutality of some of the scenes, none of the violence toward the women in the film felt gratuitous or salacious.
In general, my approach was that things that are beautiful should be beautiful, and the things that are awful should be awful. Yet the violence in the movie is rarely literal or explicit. I wanted to be removed from the violence without sanitizing it. Violence is uncomfortable. It shouldn’t be easy to watch. But sometimes the suggestion of it has more impact.
I’m not especially interested in violence, but I’m interested in the ways people try to survive dangerous individuals and dangerous systems. And there was something about Ian McDonald’s writing that felt so emotionally resonant. The scenes with violence don’t feel like they are really about the act itself. To me, they’re about the risk of annihilation we expose ourselves to through intimacy. They feel like scenes about shame. Whose shame is this? Do I have to take it on for you so that you don’t hurt me? And how badly might you hurt me if I don’t?
Have you always been attracted to these kinds of true crime stories?
I think that it’s such a compelling genre because we all are drawn to these terrible stories because our brains believe that it will keep us safe if we know everything about dangerous people and the people they prey upon. It feels like this built-in primordial instinct to keep ourselves safe. I just don’t know how else to explain why so many people, including myself, would want to immerse ourselves in stories like this. Maybe it indulges the fantasy that you could get a perpetrator to see that what they’ve done is wrong. But that’s just not how these people are wired.
You mentioned tapping a few of your director friends for guidance. Who did you lean on for advice?
There were a million people that I leaned on or wanted advice from. But coincidentally my friends, Jake Johnson and Brittany Snow had both just directed their first features right before I started Woman of the Hour. I was texting with Brittany the weekend before we started filming. I was so nervous, my confidence was at such a low point, and she said, “You’ll be fine. You’re freaking out right now, but you’ll get on set and you’ll know what to do.” She was right. It was like stage fright where you think, I can’t go out there. I can’t go out there. Then you hear the first chords of a song and you go, Well, I guess I’ll have to and you muster all your courage. And Jake was always around three months ahead of whatever I was doing, so I was able to call him at each new phase and ask about what to expect and what challenges he faced that he didn’t anticipate.
The original screenplay for Woman of the Hour made the Black List back in 2017 [then titled Rodney & Sheryl]. What was it like working with writer Ian McDonald?
Ian’s the absolute best. He’s an angel and is so brilliant at what he does. One of the things we worked on changing together was the ending. I had read this piece about one of Rodney Alcala’s victims — a girl who had survived and how she managed to do that. It became the most interesting part of the story to me.
A funny story: I remember going back and forth with Ian working on a draft, and after a while saying to him, “I have a note for you that I feel really weird saying, and it makes me like you so much as a person, but the note is: you keep giving the women too much agency.” [Laughs.] He was like, “I’m sorry! I guess?”
I completely understood why he’d want to give that to a female character. There were moments when these women were interacting with their boyfriend, or the game show host, or the killer and they’d say something to the effect of, “You’re making me uncomfortable right now.” But I needed to tell him that it would be unrealistic or unsafe for her to say that. And he got it. He understood why we needed to pare those moments back.
The actual episode of The Dating Game with Cheryl Bradshaw and Rodney Alcala doesn’t exist in its entirety anymore. Only snippets of it live online. What was it like shaping that narrative and filming those scenes? [Editorial Note: The real woman on whom the character is based is named “Cheryl.”]
Filming those sequences of The Dating Game was thrilling because Ian used the opportunity to almost write the fantasy version of what we all wish we could have said in a pivotal moment, but usually only say to ourselves in the shower a week later. I also got to talk as fast as I wanted without being told by someone to slow down. Maybe I should have given myself that note, but I was having too much fun.
We know that the real Rodney Alcala and Cheryl Bradshaw had a conversation after the show that made her decide to forgo the prize date that she won. We don’t know what went on in that conversation, so in the film we’re imagining what happened. Danny Zovatto’s performance took my breath away. It was only day two of filming and I couldn’t believe how dialed in he was. There were takes when I was watching him and telling myself, “Anna, don’t move, don’t even blink. Something incredible is happening and if you do anything that changes his performance at all, I’ll never forgive you.”
But I think the story itself is so compelling because of the idea that this dangerous and violent man went on a show like The Dating Game, where the goal is to choose a good guy, and won. It’s just comically perverse. I thought Ian took the conceit of “Scary Guy Behind a Wall” and extended that metaphor so beautifully and in that sense, The Dating Game itself really guides the movie thematically. We use the framework of the show as a way to explore the kind of existential terror of being seen, of who we let in, of what it means to be vulnerable. It taps into this question about who we trust.
What was it like playing Sheryl?
Sheryl is the most fictionalized piece of the movie. There’s very little public information about the real person, so our Sheryl’s life before The Dating Game is basically an imagined version of a woman in the 1970s. And her story became central in teasing out the thematic elements of the pervasive gender issues that were rooted in that era and persist today.
What I found really enjoyable about playing Sheryl was finding the constant balance in how she needs to move through the world to keep herself safe — sometimes in very literal life-or-death ways — but also just trying to stay in people’s good graces every day, whether that’s with a casting director, or a neighbor, or a game show host. I had a really good time playing with that dichotomy of who she had to be and in all of those moments, showing the audience how frustrated she is, how formidable she is underneath every little concession and every appeasing statement she makes.
So in that sense, I loved getting to play out this fantasy of her breaking free and getting a little bit of power back during the taping of the show. There was a point where I was worried that some of the stuff she does on the game show would end up feeling pedantic or petty. Then I realized, if I just play it as though none of the questions I’m asking really matter, and I don’t really care that this guy doesn’t know the difference between astrologer and astronomer, I’m just having the most fun I can, that’s still powerful. Because maybe for the first time in Sheryl’s life, maybe she’s not making herself small.
You’re the first to admit that every part of making this film was your favorite, but if you were forced to choose, what aspect of directing Woman of the Hour did you end up loving most?
Working with the actors. I know every department operates with the belief that movies exist to be vehicles for great production design, great cinematography, or great wardrobes and they should, they must. But it’s natural for me, as an actor, to think that movies exist as a vehicle for story and performance.
Every single actor delivered. I would’ve been so royally screwed if anyone didn’t. Everybody had to be incredible and I had the best time collaborating with the actors. Is there anything more enjoyable than watching great actors give great performances? In this lifetime, for me, there is not.
Woman of the Hour offers an all too rare take on a serial killer narrative that puts the victims first. What impact do you hope this film has on audiences, especially those who are drawn to true crime stories?
We definitely wanted to find that balance between telling an emotionally satisfying narrative without glazing over the repeated miscarriages of justice that took place over the course of Alcala’s killing spree. Part of what was so frustrating about his story was learning that no one was looking for him. There were so many heroes who raised the alarm about him and what was happening, and the reality is that things were not set up to protect victims. There’s no happy ending with a story like this.So I hope the movie speaks to anyone who has made themselves small and pleasing because they were just trying to survive physically or financially or mentally. It’s for those of us who have thought “thank god I listened to my gut” and certainly for those of us who know the pain of thinking “I wish I had listened to my gut.” And I hope it encourages people to forgive themselves for doing what they had to do to survive.
What kind of stories would you be interested in telling next?
I’ll admit I am sort of surprised by the darkness I’m finding myself drawn to. Of the scripts that I’ve been sent to look at, the ones I’ve really liked seem really diverse, but I did notice that there’s this underpinning in each of them of a man who is very unwell and the story outlines the repercussions of his actions on everyone around him. Then there’s definitely part of me that’s drawn to the lighthearted stuff. I would love it if somebody sent me a comedy that I can just fall in love with. I also want to direct a musical so fucking bad.
“Rodney seemed like an impossible ask. It’s such a demanding character. I started watching Station 11 and when Danny came on screen I immediately said, Him. It has to be him. If he’s not available I don’t think I have a movie. Danny was beyond what I hoped for. I couldn’t get over how terrifying he could be in some scenes and how open and vulnerable and safe he was in others. He knows how to balance eruption and restraint. It’s just masterful.” — Anna Kendrick on casting Daniel Zovatto as Rodney
What attracted Daniel Zovatto to this project?
One of the things that attracted me was that it was going to be told from the perspective of the women. I thought it would resonate by being told in a way where it had a bit more sensitivity from the other side, and not just Rodney’s. When Anna and I first spoke over Zoom, we had a great meeting where we just bounced ideas about how I perceived the character and what we wanted to focus on. It went really well and right after I remember thinking, Oh my God, Anna’s going to kill it. She was so prepared and so studious in her way of approaching everything.
How did Daniel Zovatto approach playing Rodney?
In my research, one of the things I found interesting about Rodney is when a lot of these people commit heinous crimes like these, they usually have some sort of a broken family. Something happened in their childhood, they have traumas, they have something in common in that realm. With Rodney, he committed crimes for many, many years before getting caught, but the research showed that he had a normal childhood. Nobody thought that he was going to go down this path. It was a shock to everyone.
So I made sure I tried to capture that in the performance. His purpose was that he wants to feel power. He wants to be as close to being God-like as possible. He wants to be the man and he showed that in the way he killed some of his victims. And that was really disturbing to me because what it created was a freedom to allow myself to show charisma and flirtatiousness and invite the woman in. And then once she said something I didn’t like, or once I made up my mind that this is my next victim, you see the other side of the coin. There’s footage of Rodney when he’s older. When he’s already in prison and you see him in court defending his own case. But that’s not the Rodney I played. The Rodney I played was the guy who was onThe Dating Game.
How does a film like Woman of the Hour set itself apart from the pack in terms of all the true crime stories out there, especially serial killer narratives?
Again, I think having Anna at the helm makes a huge difference. I love working with female directors. There’s a different sensibility, understanding, and a way of seeing things that distinguishes their voices. They’re telling the same story, it’s just what point of view do we want to make sure that is heard? The point of view of the victims in this film is highlighted with a care I haven’t seen before. I think the performances that each of the actresses give are so full of life. You really feel for them and you fear for them.
What impact do you hope this film has on audiences?
I hope what people take away from this film is that there’s a better way of looking at things. Why do we always talk about the killer? Why are we not talking about all the people we lost so that we can really understand what happened, how families are affected? By having a story being told this way, we’re given an opportunity to really look at the bigger picture and not always focus on the bad guy.