Anna Kendrick Opens Up About Escaping A 7-Year Abusive Relationship: “It Didn’t Follow The Traditional Pattern”

Anna Kendrick is sharing a deeply personal story about surviving a long-term abusive relationship. On the October 23 episode of Alex Cooper’s Call Her Daddy podcast, the Pitch Perfect actress opened up about the emotional and psychological challenges she faced during her seven-year relationship.

Anna, 39, admitted that it was hard to recognize she was in an abusive relationship at first because it didn’t fit the typical signs she’d read about. “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, adding that the abuse “came out of absolutely nowhere” and began to escalate suddenly, lasting for about a year.

What made it even harder for her to see the truth was her deep love and trust for her partner. As she explained,  the situation “was built on this foundation of I had so much love and trust for that person, so I thought it had to be me.”

She turned her world upside down, trying to “fix” herself, only to realize later that her partner’s behavior was the real issue.

Anna further shared how their couples therapist had been fooled by her ex for a long time. According to her, the therapist “just bought his stuff hook, line, and sinker.” However, the situation took a turn when Anna finally stood up for herself during one of their therapy sessions. After she yelled out in frustration, she emailed the therapist to apologize, but was surprised when he called her back to say he was proud of her for speaking up. 

“Things ended pretty quickly after that,” she revealed.

Anna also described a painful incident with her ex, where he accused her of “terrorizing” him simply because she was crying. “…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,” she said.

Anna’s experience with emotional abuse came into sharp focus while she was filming her 2022 movie Alice, Darling, which tells the story of a woman trapped in an emotionally abusive relationship. She shared that the timing of the project was deeply personal, as she had just ended her own toxic relationship. Hence, she didn’t tell anybody about the movie as she was determined to go through with it despite her emotional struggles. 

This isn’t the first time Kendrick has opened up about her past relationship. At the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival premiere of Alice, Darling, she touched on how close the film’s story was to her own life. However, her latest revelations offer an even deeper glimpse into the emotional journey she’s been on.