On a recent episode of Dax Shepard‘s Armchair Expert podcast, Anna Kendrick opened up about her experience in an abusive relationship. The Pitch Perfect star said the relationship seemed healthy for six years—until one day everything changed.
“This was somebody I lived with,” she said about her former partner, whom she did not name. “For all intents and purposes (he was) my husband. We had embryos together. This was my person.”
Kendrick said that she suddenly felt like she was “living with a stranger,” and even believed one of them might have been ill. “That actually gave me a moment of relief,” she said. “'Maybe he has a brain tumor, or maybe I have a brain tumor.' Then we can do something about it. There’s an answer.”
Eventually she learned that there was another woman, and she said every time she tried to address the issue, “I’m curled in a ball, you’re screaming at me, and I don’t know how we got here.”
“It was hard for me to recognize this as an abusive relationship because it didn’t follow (the normal) trajectory,” the Alice, Darling actress shared. “This is unusual that this is six years of very happy, loving relationship and then an overnight shift.” She added, “I have so much shame about not leaving.”