Woman of the Hour found a savior in Anna Kendrick, just when it needed one the most.
The true-crime thriller is now streaming on Netflix and marks the feature directorial debut for Kendrick, who also stars. The film is based on the story of real-life serial killer Rodney Alcala (Daniel Zovatto) and his reputation as the “Dating Game Killer,” as the narrative involves his appearance on a 1978 episode of The Dating Game with bachelorette Cheryl Bradshaw. (The name of the lead female character, played by Kendrick, is “Sheryl” for the film.)
During his conversation with The Hollywood Reporter, screenwriter Ian McDonald explains why he felt compelled to change dialogue from the game show, his failed efforts to connect with the movie’s subject and why he hopes the streaming film will be “received as art, not content.”
How did you know that this story would work for a film?
It really started when I read an article online on one of those lists of strange true crime stories.
Are you a true crime fan?
Sort of yes, sort of no. The serial-killer stories that I love tend to be fictional. The thing that got me interested in Rodney Acala was less him, and it was more everything surrounding him. As I did more research, everyone [who knew him and learned of his crimes] was like, “Yeah, that makes sense.” People will compare him to Ted Bundy, but Ted Bundy was really good at pretending to be this good-natured, all-American guy, and Rodney Alcala really didn’t even pretend. The thing that’s most interesting about him is the way in which the people around him look the other way, and how that enabled him to get away with bad behavior for as long as he did. Sometimes that’s police or The Dating Game or just the court system in general.
Your script was on the Black List back in 2017. How did it finally end up as the directorial debut for Anna Kendrick?
It was a very long process. I started the first outline in 2016, and so it’s been almost eight years. It almost died something like four times, where it was with one production company, and then that fell apart. There’s a podcast that came out about Rodney Alcala, and the podcast company had a first look deal with some TV company, and I’m like, “Mine died at exactly the time that this podcast was released. That’s the end of it.” And it’s heartbreaking; it’s awful. Honestly, when Anna came on to direct, everything had been moving very, very slowly, and then suddenly it moved extremely quickly, where suddenly we were going to be shooting in six weeks, and we had a financier and a budget. Anna saved the movie.
What was she like to work with?
It couldn’t have gone better. She saw the movie exactly the way that I did, and she just had really smart, incisive notes. But importantly, her notes were things that made the script more what I wanted it to be, not less. She was a fresh set of eyes, and she could see things that, over the course of years, I had become blind to. A wonderful collaborator.
Had you hoped to connect with the real-life Cheryl?
I tried to connect with Cheryl. I couldn’t find her, first of all, and to a degree, I took that as a choice. There have been these Dateline episodes about Rodney Alcala, and they have gotten previous victims to be on them, and she’s never appeared in anything like that. I took it to mean that she didn’t really want this one chance encounter with a psychopath to define her life. That’s part of the reason why I changed the name and a bunch of key elements of the biography and the background. It’s more like an alternative-world version of Cheryl. If this Cheryl had been on this game show, this is how it might have gone.
Is Daniel’s performance what you envisioned for Rodney?
He was just perfect. The really tricky thing was, if you go back and watch Rodney on the actual Dating Game, you couldn’t just take that dialogue and put it in a movie today because it would be like, “Obviously, he’s a serial killer.” Dating etiquette and norms have changed between 1978 and 2024, and just what’s a funny joke and what’s an off-color, off-putting joke, that’s changed in the last 50 years. If you just take that exactly as it was, people are going to be like, “Well, Cheryl’s an idiot.” Daniel’s big lift was making sure that contemporary audiences could feel the thing that the women are feeling, and he does a wonderful job.
Why would Rodney do something so public amid this crime spree?
He’s like a lot of sociopaths, where he doesn’t think he’s going to get caught. My guess is he probably thought it would be fun. There may have even been some element of showboating about it.
Are there key takeaways from the film that relate to contemporary society?
Rodney’s behavior feels very male to me, but he only represents one end of the spectrum of toxic male behavior. The other end of the spectrum is the boyfriend who’s like, “Don’t you think they would’ve vetted him?” The game show host is somewhere in the middle. So, really investigating all of that, and the way that looking the other way when there’s a problem in front of you aids and abets all of this. A lot of people will be able to look at the spectrum and go, “I can see myself in some part of this, and we have a collective responsibility to do better.”
What’s next for you as a writer, and are you getting offered projects that are similar to this one?
I’m working on five or six things right now, and I’m excited about all of them. The thing that I’m especially excited about is they’re all very different, and I’m trying to be really mindful and conscientious about not being “the serial killer guy,” mostly just because that would be a very depressing way to live. Actually doing the research it took to write this, which lasted years, was just grueling because you’re reading about terrible, traumatic, awful things — day in, day out — and yet there’s no other alternative because you have to engage with the material in order to tell the story truthfully. I’m proud of the movie, and I could see myself writing something like this again someday. I just want to make sure it’s not the only thing I’m doing.
What are your hopes for the film?
I know true crime is very zeitgeist-y at the moment. I hope it outlasts the zeitgeist. I hope it becomes a movie that we’re talking about in 10, 20 years. And my hope is that it’s received as art, not content, and that’s fully out of my hands. Both Anna and myself were very serious about the story we were telling and put a lot of thought and effort into it. I just hope it’s received that way because that was always my biggest fear, that it’s just like, “Oh, it’s another serial-killer, true crime movie of the week.”
English (US) ·