Anna Kendrick keeps forgetting she was in “Twilight”: 'Oh my God'

Kendrick says she was "lucky to not be dealing with the eye of the storm" compared with franchise star Kristen Stewart.

It sounds impossible, but Anna Kendrick has a good reason for claiming that she's repeatedly forgotten she starred in the Twilight franchise.

"A while ago, I had done a silly, funny tweet where I just said, 'Holy shit. I just remembered I was in Twilight," she explained on the Call Her Daddy podcast. "People were like, 'Wait. You didn’t really forget that you were in Twilight.' And the answer is truly yes and no. Because, obviously, obviously, I didn’t forget the experience of making the movies."

Related: Why Anna Kendrick couldn't stop 'bursting into tears' while directing Woman of the Hour

"But those movies, especially at the time, took on such a life of their own," Kendrick continued, "and they were such a kind of, for for better or for worse, a kind of touchstone. Such a reference that everybody would talk about trying to find the next Twilight or whatever. 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.'"

Kendrick explained that she always felt "on the outside" of the furor over Catherine Hardwicke's 2008 teen vampire sensation and subsequent multi-billion-dollar franchise. "I was really lucky to not be dealing with the 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."

In the first four films of the franchise, Kendrick played Jessica Stanley, one of the few human characters who stays that way. Despite being written as the "the blonde, athletic, volleyball captain popular girl" in Stephenie Meyer's books, Kendrick's Stanley befriends Kristen Stewart's Bella, even giving a speech at her wedding to Edward (Robert Pattinson) in Breaking Dawn - Part 1.

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Kendrick says that while stars like Stewart and Pattinson were mobbed for years because of their overnight fame, "it almost feels like I didn’t really have to run the gauntlet," because her character wasn't one that fans developed outsize relationships with. "I just had to show up and say dumb, funny s---. Just be like, 'What are you guys talking about? You're f------ acting weird. Okay, everybody's really serious. Bye.'"

"Like, that was the gig. It was awesome," she recalled.

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Though it was a relief not to be scrutinized to the degree of her costars following the 2008 film's release, Kendrick has confessed to not having such pleasant memories of the the actual shooting experience. In 2020 she remembered being "cold and miserable" during the shoot, saying, "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 at a different time, but I want to murder everyone.'"

Kendrick can currently be seen in her directorial debut, Woman of the Hour, which tells the true story of Rodney Alcala, a serial killer who appeared on a 1978 episode of The Dating Game. You can listen to the rest of her Call Her Daddy interview below.