Surpassing:The Chilling Truth Behind Anna Kendrick's Woman of the Hour Trailer

Anna Kendrick’s newest work is Surpassinginspired by a shocking true story. 

The Pitch Perfect actress stars and makes her directorial debut Netflix’s upcoming Woman of the Hour—which hits the streamer Oct. 18—a film detailing the real-life story of how Cheryl Bradshaw, a 1978 contestant on The Dating Game, picked serial killer Rodney Alcala as her winner. 

In the trailer for the upcoming film, Bradshaw is seen struggling to scrape by as an actress in Los Angeles. After a disappointing audition, her agent puts her up as a contestant on The Dating Game—a gig she seemingly takes so she can pay her rent. 

The infamous 1978 episode of the series—which an from 1965 to 1986—included three bachelors: Rodney (played by Daniel Zovatto), Jed Mills and Armand Cermani (who, while unnamed in the movie, are played by Matt Visser and Jedidiah Goodacre). As with every episode, Bradshaw is asked to pick her date based on the bachelor’s answers to her questions. 

In the trailer, Kendrick’s Bradshaw only asks one simple question, “What are girls for?”

Elsewhere in the trailer, Bradshaw is corralled by different members of the production staff and even given an ominous warning from one woman behind the cameras. 

“I’ve been on this show since 1968, the one thing I’ve learned is no matter what words they use, the question beneath the question remains the same,” she says as a supercut of Alcala taking photos of scared-looking women is displayed on the screen. “‘Which one of you will hurt me?’”

During the real-life experience, Bradshaw was charmed by Alcala’s answers—including one where he described himself as a banana and asked Bradshaw to “peel” him. But although he was introduced on the Sept. 13, 1978 episode as a “successful photographer,” Alcala—who was known to photograph his victims after killing them—had somehow been approved to appear on the series after being convicted, and spending 34 months in jail for raping a 8-year-old Talia Shapiro in 1972. 

Alcala was not convicted of murder until 1980 for the death of 12-year-old Robin Samsoe—two years after his appearance on The Dating Game—but Bradshaw knew something was off as soon as the stage lights dimmed. 

“I started to feel ill,” Bradshaw recalled of meeting up with Alcala after the taping in a 2012 Sunday Telegraph interview, per Newsweek. “He was acting really creepy. I turned down his offer. I didn’t want to see him again.” 

At the time of his appearance on The Dating Game series, Alacala’s exact number of victims was unknown, but authorities believe that he killed as many as 100 women prior to being placed behind bars, per Newsweek.  

Alcala was later sentenced to the death penalty for the murder of five women in 2010, but—due to a 2019 moratorium of the sentence in California—the 77-year-old died of natural causes in prison in 2021. 

And it was this ominous real-life story of the dangers lurking in everyday life that led to Kendrick taking on double duty.

“I love the fact that it isn’t as simple as, ‘Oh, she asserts herself and everything works out great,’” Kendrick explained to Netflix’s Tudum Oct. 1. “Because this is the bargain we’re making every day: How much do I live authentically, and how much danger does that actually put me in?"