Anna Kendrick Reveals How Twilight Co-Stars Survived Peak Fan Frenzy
Twilight was one of those pop-culture avalanches that flattened everything in its path, and Anna Kendrick had a front-row seat... from the sidewalk.
In a new chat, Kendrick talks about watching her co-stars get swallowed by fan frenzy while she mostly coasted past it, and honestly, the way she describes those hotel lockdowns gave me secondhand anxiety.
Watching the storm without standing in it
On a recent Call Her Daddy episode, the Oscar nominee said she kind of forgets she was even in the Twilight movies. Not because she wasn't there (she was, as human high-schooler Jessica Stanley), but because she felt like a bystander to the franchise's tidal wave of attention. She says she had a clear view of the chaos without being in the eye of it, and the details are wild: if you played a supernatural character, even if you had one line, you basically couldn't leave your hotel room. Fans were relentless, and a chunk of the noise was hyper-specific nitpicking, like policing whether an actor's eye color matched the book.
How intense did it get? Here's the snapshot
- Kristen Stewart has talked about her first paparazzi moment being her getting caught smoking a bowl. That's a baptism by flashbulb.
- Taylor Lautner remembers a fan screening that went completely insane. Not excited. Insane.
- Robert Pattinson, in 2025 (the first book's 20th anniversary), said it's still "mind-blowing" that the films have die-hard fans all these years later.
- Kendrick's first-movie shoot memories? She once compared it to a "hostage situation" because the weather was so brutal. Cold, wet, miserable, and somehow still career-defining.
Why Kendrick didn't get mobbed
Kendrick wasn't part of the vampire-werewolf melodrama machinery in the story, and that turned out to be a shield. She was mostly comedic relief, popping in to deliver lightly chaotic teen commentary, then ducking back out before the supernatural fireworks. So while her co-stars holed up to avoid crowds, she got to just show up, crack the jokes, and go home. In her words, that gig was pretty awesome.
"What are you guys talking about? You guys are fucking acting weird? OK, everybody's really serious. Bye."
She makes it clear: she didn't have to run the gauntlet. No hiding, no room-service lockdowns, no fans parsing her iris color on forums. Meanwhile, the folks with fangs or fur were fielding scrutiny from people who knew the books cover-to-cover and weren't shy about it.
The part that stuck
Despite the rain, the pressure swirling around her co-stars, and the whole circus, Kendrick's grateful for the job and what it did for her career. And it tracks: Jessica Stanley's quippy human energy is still one of the franchise's most fondly remembered doses of levity. The twist is how different the experience could be inside the same movie, depending on whether you had supernatural eyeliner on. Some actors couldn't step foot outside their rooms; Kendrick got to keep it breezy. Not a bad way to ride a phenomenon.