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Anna Kendrick Aimed For a Different Role in ‘Into the Woods’

Anna Kendrick plays Cinderella in the upcoming Into the Woods film. Twelve-year-old Lilla Crawford plays Little Red Riding Hood. The movie is based on a popular musical theatre piece by Stephen Sondhe...
Anna Kendrick Aimed For a Different Role in ‘Into the Woods’
Written by Mike Tuttle
  • Anna Kendrick plays Cinderella in the upcoming Into the Woods film. Twelve-year-old Lilla Crawford plays Little Red Riding Hood. The movie is based on a popular musical theatre piece by Stephen Sondheim and is a theatre fan favorite.

    What non-theatre-goers may not know is that the role of Little Red Riding Hood in the musical is usually played by an adult woman.

    “They told me an actual 12-year-old would play Little Red Riding Hood,” Anna Kendrick told ET recently. “In the show it’s a grown woman, so I was like, ‘Put me in! I can do it!'”

    In fact, when Kendrick told Variety that when she first auditioned for the film, she thought that was the part she was going for.

    “They did a workshop in New York and my agent asked me to put myself on tape. First of all, I thought I would be auditioning for Little Red, because normally, that’s played by a grown woman. When he told me I would be auditioning for Cinderella that was a mental adjustment.”

    Anna said that doing the role of Cinderella also meant she had one of the toughest songs in the show.

    “It’s a register I haven’t sung in before,” she said. “I hope I’m not being biased to say I think it’s one of the most challenging songs in the piece.”

    But she also made the surprising confession that she had never seen Into the Woods live before doing the film, but she was certainly familiar with the live version.

    “I don’t know that I have [seen it live],” she said. “I feel like I’ve seen it live because I grew up watching the Bernadette Peters VHS.”

    Kendrick has now done three musicals in a row: Pitch Perfect, The Last Five Years, and Into the Woods. She hopes to take a rest from the format for a bit and do something else.

    “I think musical theater was the first thing that interested me. I always thought of the two of them going hand in hand… Into The Woods and The Last Five Years are two of the greatest pieces of musical theatre ever,” she said, “so obviously it was a dream come true. I think I would enter into something else cautiously.”

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