We all know that Anna Kendrick has starred in a bunch of hit movies.
Most recently, she played Sheryl Bradshaw in Netflix’s Woman of the Hour, which was also her directorial debut.
But Anna’s breakout role came back in 2008, when she starred in Twilight.
Anna appeared in four of the five Twilight films: Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse, and Breaking Dawn — Part 1.
Anna played Jessica Stanley, aka the best friend of protagonist Bella Swan, famously played by Kristen Stewart.
It was such a moment at the time, and now, Anna has given us all a little more context behind the viral tweet.
Appearing on the Call Her Daddy podcast last week, Anna recalled to host Alex Cooper, “A while ago, I had done a silly funny tweet where I just said, ‘Holy shit. I just remembered I was in Twilight.’ And people were like, ‘You didn’t forget that you were in Twilight.’”
“The answer is truly yes and no. Obviously I didn’t forget the experience of making the movies... But those movies, especially at the time, took on such a life of their own, and they were such — for better or for worse — a touchstone,” she said.
“I would find myself in business conversations talking about, ‘Oh, yeah. I’ve heard that there’s a book series that just got optioned that we maybe wanna try and make it the next Twilight.’ And then I would be like, ‘Oh my God, I’m in that. I’m, oh my God,’” she said.
Anna went on to explain that she felt lucky to avoid the masses of negative attention that leading actors Robert Pattinson and Kristen faced when Twilight was released.
In addition to masses of paparazzi, Kristen and Robert faced backlash from several fans of the OG Twilight book series, which the films were adapted from. A couple of years ago, Twilight director Catherine Hardwicke reflected on the frenzy surrounding Kristen and Rob, saying, “That was a tough situation for [both of them] to be in.”
Anna said on Call Her Daddy, “I was really lucky to not be dealing with the eye of the storm. You know? I think that a lot of the folks that were in the movie, even in the later movies, as long as you were a supernatural character, if you had one line, you couldn’t leave your hotel room.”
“People were crazy, and people were criticizing, ‘Oh, but she has green eyes in the book,’ or whatever. And I just didn’t have to deal with any of that,” she continued.
“So it almost feels like I didn’t really have the gauntlet that…most of the other people did. I just had to show up and say dumb funny shit,” she said. “It was awesome.”