ONTD

Normally, after I interview a celebrity, I somehow settle on the deluded notion that we could, one day, become best friends. This was not the case with Anna Kendrick.

Not to say that the star wasn't friendly, we just didn't "get" each other. Nevertheless, that didn't stop us from discussing her role in the upcoming big-screen adaptation of the consummate baby guide, "What To Expect When You're Expecting." Here, she plays Rosie, a colloquialism-spewing, food truck proprietor who ends up getting knocked up by her hunky pork-hawking competitor, played by "Gossip Girl's" Chase Crawford. (Swoon!)


Moviefone (awkwardly) chatted with Kendrick about phone grettings, baby bumps, and being relieved to no longer be a part of "Twilight."

Hi! How are you?
[Monotone voice] So good.

Good? Sorry?
Oh, yeah. So good.

“So good”... is that sarcasm? Are you doing tons of interviews?
[Laughs] No, I just say that. I guess I realized that’s my standard greeting when I actually do junkets and I say it to everyone. I go, ‘Oh, I say that a lot.’

Well, let's talk "What to Expect." How was it to shoot?
It was really fun, actually. We just got to shoot, mostly nights, in the warm Atlanta weather, on a food truck -- sometimes with a little baby bump, sometimes without. [It was] pretty great.

So you actually had a prosthetic baby bump?
I did. Because when I flash it and I’m not that far along yet, I kept saying, ‘Can’t I just like, have a big lunch?’ It’ll be great. It’ll be easier for everybody. And I want to have a big lunch. So everybody wins.

And I assume that didn’t happen?
Yeah, they still made me get the prosthetic, which took like three hours to put on and was incredibly uncomfortable. You know, it’s just like it’s hot and sticky and everybody wants to poke you -- all the time.

So you had a little taste of pregnancy, then. Do you have any baby aspirations of your own?
No, no. And everybody keeps asking me, ‘Oh, did making the movie make you want to have babies?’ No, not at all. Like, wearing that prosthetic did not make me want to bring a life into this world.

Well, I imagine you read the book...
I haven’t read the book. That book scares me. It’s going to tell me all the crazy things that are going to happen to me when I have a kid and I don’t even want to know. I like being able to sleep at night.

Is there any book that you’d like to see be made into a movie?
Well, when I was a little bit younger, I read this book called “The Rapture of Canaan” and I thought that would make a cool movie, especially because there’s a teenage girl lead part...if they made it now Hailee Steinfeld would be a great choice. But now I don’t even remember if the book was good. I was just like, ‘Aw, they should make this a movie so I can be in it.”

Your particular role was a more serious story than the others. Was that by choice?
Well, I was going to play Jennifer [Lopez]’s part but I guess she wanted to do that... No, I was just f-cking with you.

Well, in “50/50” you played a serious part, too.
The script as a whole is kind of light and funny so I wasn’t really thinking about how serious my particular storyline was until we were filming and I was like, ‘Ugh, this is another bummer of a scene.’

Yeah. It was super sad. I kept thinking it was like being in a Ben Folds Five video or something.
[Laughs] Oh, my god. Yeah!

OBLIGATORY BEN FOLD'S SONG


Is it weird for you to field all these pregnancy questions?
A little bit, yeah. I kind of knew that it would be coming but I feel like pregnancy and kids, it’s one of those things that once you talk about it, people always [recall that], ‘Oh, you said in 2012 that you are open to having kids’ and that follows you around or something. And it’s one of those weird things where I’m trying to avoid sort of saying anything about it because for me, honestly, I haven’t really thought about it that much.

So you spent a lot of time on the food truck, were you actually working with food?
Yeah, they gave us cooking lessons, I chopped my fingernail off, which was maybe the single most painful experience of my life.

So, this isn’t sarcasm, then? That was real?
No. I chopped my fingernail off, like, half-way up my fingernail. Gone. Like, awful. And you don’t even end up seeing my slicing skills in the movie.

Oh, so there was a sequence where you were like, julienning something?
Yeah. And then they were like, well, actually, if we just shoot it this way, we won’t even see your hand... Yeah, lost a fingernail to the cause but, OK.

That’s awful. Have you ever been hurt on-set before?
Not really, no. I mean, I should have sued them or something, right?

You and Chace Crawford really seemed to get along.
Yeah. Everybody keeps asking us if we knew each other before but, yeah, we just met on set. He’s...obviously an incredibly handsome dude and I just kind of had to get past that little speed bump cause it’s hard for me to look somebody in the face when they’re that attractive.

How does it feel not to be involved in the final ‘Twilight’ movie?
It’s a relief, you know? Because it’s kind of off my shoulders [in terms of] talking about it. Because talking about it I always feel like I say something that gets misconstrued or I offend someone because people are so deeply passionate about that series. So, I’m actually sort of happy to be not talking about it.

"What To Expect When You're Expecting" hits theaters May 18.


Source: Moviefone.com