Anna Kendrick Joked That She Wanted to “Murder” the “Twilight” Cast While Filming

Two years ago, Anna Kendrick forgot she even starred in Twilight but now, she’s opening about her involvement in the movie franchise and her memories don’t seem so blurred anymore. In fact, you can say they are almost as bright as Edward Cullen stepping into the sun.

In a new video interview with Vanity Fair, the Pitch Perfect star broke down her career in Hollywood and, as expected, a good chunk of her early days centered around Stephenie Meyer’s movie adaptations, which kicked off in 2008 and continued until 2012 with the release of Breaking Dawn Part 2. And, well, let’s just say Anna’s Twilight days were as traumatic for her as they were for some fans. In her walk down memory lane, Anna quippingly likened her experience filming the saga to a “hostage situation” and admitted that even landing the role of Jessica Stanley in its own came as “a shock” to her.

“I auditioned for Twilight because Katherine Harvick had seen me in a film at Sundance called Rocket Science,” Anna recalls in the video. “I really thought it was such a blow-off audition. I just thought, ‘well, I’ll you know, do as well as I can so that the casting director thinks of me for other stuff. I actually saw my friend Mae Whitman at that audition and we were both like, ‘What are we doing here? We’re obviously not going to be this like mean girl character.’”

To Anna’s shock, she landed the job, but the surprises didn’t stop there. To film the first movie, the cast headed to Portland, Oregon, which Anna remembers as being “cold and miserable.”

“I just remember my converse being completely soaked through and feeling like, you know, this is a really great group of people and I’m sure that we would be friends in a different time, but I want to murder everyone,” she recalled of the experience before adding that it was somehow also “bonding” in a very specific way. “There was like something about it that was like, you know, like you go through like some trauma event, like people who survive like a hostage situation. You’re kind of bonded for life.” 

Luckily, Anna remembers the second movie, New Moon, more fondly, mainly because “the weather wasn’t quite as intense.” She also revealed she was in the middle of shooting Up in the Air, which earned her first Academy Award nomination, while filming New Moon. “They rearranged a lot of scheduling stuff. It would have been a real d*ck move, but you know, legally they had the right to stop me from doing Up In the Air so shout out to those guys.”

As for the third and fourth installments, well, she doesn’t really remember much of those and, hey, we don’t blame her. “They all start to blend into one at some point because my whole job was just to go to like this family of very pale people who we never see eating,” she said. “Anyway, what did I do in the third movie? Oh, I did the graduation speech in the third movie. That’s right and I remember thinking like, ‘Oh, why did they make my character the valedictorian?’ She’s very obviously not a good student. But you know, they just wanted me to like have something to do.”

She did, however, end things on a high note with Breaking Dawn. “I was in the fourth movie and it was just like a wedding scene where again, I’m like, ‘Mmm, these people are so weird,’” she recounted. “Everybody else has been like giving their blood, sweat, and tears to the project for months. I show up at the end and I’m like, ‘Guys, we did it’s over.’”

If Anna’s new anecdotes prove something is that Twilight might have wrapped eight years ago but the franchise has left a permanent imprint on both its actors and fans — even if some are not entirely sure of its appeal in the first place. All in all, I’d say get ready for the series’ new book, and who knows, maybe even that long-awaited reunion?

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