Anna Kendrick’s Candid Story Of Surviving A 7-Year Abusive Relationship

During an episode of Alex Cooper's "Call Her Daddy" podcast, Anna Kendrick opened up about a seven-year relationship, which she admits was "difficult to identify" as abusive.

The "Trolls" actress did not disclose the identity of her ex, but she mentioned that the breakup occurred just before she began filming her 2022 movie "Alice, Darling," which centers around the theme of emotional abuse.

Anna Kendrick had previously shared her experiences during the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival.

On the podcast, Anna Kendrick let down her walls when she revealed that the abuse in her past relationship "came out of nowhere," which made it "difficult to identify" because "it didn't follow the traditional pattern."

"I was, like, reading all the articles and going, 'This doesn't look... like, some of it looks like how they're describing it, but not completely," she recalled of the seven-year relationship. "It was like an overnight switch... that went on for about a year. So it didn't follow that more traditional, like, it's like a frog in boiling water thing where it started slow."

Anna Kendrick added, "It came out of absolutely nowhere, but was built on this foundation of I had so much love and trust for that person, so I thought it had to be me."

"Like, if one of us is crazy, it must be me," she recalled thinking. "So it was very, very difficult to actually go, 'No, I think this is him. I think this is his stuff,' " she continued. "I turned my life completely upside down trying to fix whatever was wrong with me."

The "Twillight" actress then recounted a specific incident with her ex, telling Cooper:

"He told me one day I was terrorizing him because I was just crying because I couldn't pretend that things were fine anymore, and I just started crying. And he screamed in my face, 'You're terrorizing me.' But it was truly from the place of a person who believed that they were being terrorized."

The couple sought help through therapy, but Kendrick revealed that their therapist "just bought his stuff kind of hook, line, and sinker" for "a long period of time."

"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, like, right toward the end," Kendrick explained. She went on to describe how "something shifted" after she "yelled" during one of their therapy sessions.

Kendrick mentioned that she emailed her therapist to apologize for her outburst, but he called her to express that he was actually "so proud" of her for speaking out. "Things ended pretty quickly after that," Kendrick admitted.

The "Twilight" actress shared with Cooper that the breakup occurred just before she began filming her 2022 movie "Alice, Darling," but she "didn't tell anybody" about making a film focused on emotional abuse at that time, as it was too soon after her relationship ended.

"I was coming out of a personal experience with emotional abuse and psychological abuse," she previously told People at the film's Toronto International Film Festival. "I think my rep sent it to me, because he knew what I'd been dealing with and sent it along. Because he was like, 'This sort of speaks to everything that you've been talking to me about.' "

She continued, "It felt really distinct in that I had, frankly, seen a lot of movies about abusive or toxic relationships, and it didn't really look like what was happening to me. It kind of helped me normalize and minimize what was happening to me, because I thought, 'Well, if I was in an abusive relationship, it would look like that.' "

Describing her former relationship, Kendrick told People, "I was in a situation where I loved and trusted this person more than I trusted myself. So when that person is telling you that you have a distorted sense of reality and that you are impossible and that all the stuff that you think is going on is not going on, your life gets really confusing really quickly."

She added, "And I was in a situation where, at the end, I had the unique experience of finding out that everything I thought was going on was in fact going on. So I had this kind of springboard for feeling and recovery that a lot of people don't get."

Kendrick portrays Alice, a woman trapped in an emotionally abusive relationship with her successful boyfriend, Simon (Charlie Carrick), in the film, directed by Mary Nighy and written by Alanna Francis.

During a birthday trip, Alice appears distressingly distant to her friends, played by Kaniehtiio Horn and Wunmi Mosaku. As she gradually unravels due to the psychological manipulation Simon inflicts upon her, her friends make efforts to intervene and offer their support.