Anna Kendrick says ‘Pitch Perfect’ is nothing compared to ‘The Last Five Years’

TORONTO – About 20 takes into shooting the weepy and warbly opening scene of the musical film “The Last Five Years,” Anna Kendrick realized it wasn’t going to be a cakewalk.

“Obviously I sang in ‘Pitch Perfect,’ but it barely even counts as a musical in comparison to this,” the actress said in an interview at last September’s Toronto International Film Festival.

“This music is challenging and relentless, both vocally and emotionally. I basically just had to think about taking care of my voice all day, every day.”

And how did she cope?

“Lots of coconut water and Prevacid,” said the Oscar- and Tony-nominated star, who also sings in the recently released “Into the Woods” and the upcoming “Pitch Perfect 2.”

“I was like: ‘This is like a full-time job. It’s like taking care of a dog or something.’”

Opening Friday on demand and in Toronto, Edmonton and Calgary, “The Last Five Years” stars Kendrick as a struggling actress desperate to reconnect with her novelist husband (Jeremy Jordan) as his career takes off.

Audiences see the last half-decade of their relationship through two different viewpoints: Cathy’s perspective is told in reverse order, from the end of their marriage to the beginning, while Jamie’s begins at the start of their courtship.

The sharp comedy-drama was written and directed by Richard LaGravenese and based on the hit off-Broadway musical by Jason Robert Brown.

Kendrick said it was her first time doing a sung-through film and she “felt really envious of Jeremy,” a musical theatre star, “and of how well he knows his instrument.”

“But to even say that I was envious is reductive because he’s worked incredibly hard for his entire life to be that good and that controlled, so it’s like saying I’m envious of a lifetime of work,” added Kendrick.

“It’s like saying you’re envious of Bruce Lee or something.”

Kendrick admitted there were days when she wasn’t able to sing exactly as she wanted and she gained a new appreciation for musical theatre stars who perform eight shows a week.

“It was always about finding the balance between what was important vocally and what was more important emotionally,” she said.

“When there would be an emotional take that we were really happy with, sacrificing a little bit of tone quality or something like that was, ‘This is fine, I’m not Mariah Carey, it’s OK.’”

Kendrick said they had a low budget and had to shoot some of her scenes in a real apartment.

“We weren’t ‘Les Mis.’ We didn’t have a studio or anything.”

When LaGravenese noticed audio issues in post-production, he sometimes let it slide rather than getting Kendrick to go through the gruelling process of re-recording.

“There’s a point in the movie where you hear a little click as the camera is sort of sliding across the floorboard,” she said.

“Richard showed it to me and asked me to sing the line again and I was like, ‘I can’t. Please don’t make me re-do that,’ and Richard was like, ‘That’s totally fine.’”