Anna Kendrick received a blunt pep talk from her Pitch Perfect co-star Brittany Snow before directing her first feature.

After she signed up to direct Woman of the Hour, the actress reached out to her friend and co-star for advice and received some no-nonsense words of encouragement.

“I spoke to Brittany Snow on the phone, and she, in a very role-reversal way of our relationship, gave me the most casual pep talk, which was literally in a very flat voice: ‘You’ll get on set, and you’ll know what to do,'” Kendrick recalled in an interview with Entertainment Weekly. “And it was just like, ‘Yeah, okay.’ That’s usually how I find myself talking to her, and I think I was expecting this flowery, long pep talk, and she so cut to the chase that I was like, ‘Okay, damn girl. I’ll just figure it out, I guess.'”

Snow, who previously helmed the 2019 short Milkshake, released her feature directorial debut, Parachute, last year.

In Woman of the Hour, Kendrick plays Cheryl Bradshaw, who was matched with serial murderer and rapist Rodney Alcala during an episode of The Dating Game TV show in 1978.

After being attached to play Cheryl and produce the film for two years, the Up in the Air actress eventually pitched herself as the director.

“I was aware that while I liked the character, I was way more interested in the movie as a whole,” she explained. “And of course, the whole two years, I’m sitting there going, ‘Well, if it were my movie, this is how I’d do it. But it’s not, so it’s not my call.’ I just got so excited about the idea of taking this script that I loved so much and shaping it in the way that I saw it.”

After putting together a “very haphazard” pitch, Kendrick “suddenly” got the job and began “feeling as terrified as I’ve ever been about, frankly, anything”.

Woman of the Hour will premiere on Netflix on 18 October.

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