Each time I locked the door to my squalid apartment, I grew more fearful that my filthy secret would spill out: I am—at best—a normal human, and this has all been a big misunderstanding. A lot of people were devoting a lot of energy to maintaining the illusion that I was the ready-made ingenue. It made me feel disingenuous and guilty. I was participating in a con.
Sometimes I found it all too funny for words. I’d be at an afternoon tea in the penthouse suite of the Chateau Marmont wearing some boatneck sundress and think, Two years ago I choreographed a fake music video to “Fergalicious” with two drunk strippers in this very room. This is a joke! Other times it was harder to find the humor.
The trickiest parts were the constant assurances that I was having a great time. I’m not an idiot. I knew what was happening was positive, it just got . . . disorienting. I don’t mind hard work—I love a challenge!—but pretending everything is wonderful when it’s not makes me feel mentally ill.
I was expending all this energy, but I wasn’t creating anything, I wasn’t learning anything, and my job became convincing the world that I was off having the adventure of a lifetime. I did it well enough that my own mother bought it. When I stopped answering her calls she got upset with me. She assumed I thought I was too cool to talk to her now. In reality, I couldn’t pick up the phone because I knew the second I heard her voice I’d finally let go and burst into tears.
Once I talked to my mom (and did indeed break down crying), she completely understood why I hadn’t been in touch. That didn’t stop her from guilting me into taking her to the Oscars. When the show was over she looked shell-shocked. “I can’t believe you’ve been doing that for six months. I’m never doing that again.”
The highs and lows were so extreme! Just when I’d reach a tipping point—convinced that I’d become nothing more than a commodity, disgusted with myself for taking this artistic experience, which had been so fulfilling, and packaging it up to be sold in pieces to people who couldn’t care less about me—something amazing would happen. I was trudging up the steps to my apartment when I got an email with the subject line: Dreams Do Come True. I walked through my door and onto my tar-stained carpet and opened it. It was Peter Travers’s review for Rolling Stone. It read: Kendrick is a revelation. I stood on that tar stain and wept.
I was a revelation, but I was still broke. At the end of one New York press tour I asked Paramount if I could stay in a less expensive hotel on the next trip and . . . keep the difference. They said no because “that’s not how it works.” I wanted to know why that wasn’t how it worked, but I could tell I’d already embarrassed myself, so I dropped it. Then I stole a roll of toilet paper out of the bathroom and put it in my suitcase because I knew I wouldn’t have the time or energy to buy any when I got home.
When reporters asked how I was handling my “new fame,” I tried to make a joke of it. “Well, I still go to sleep in the same bed as before this happened.” It always sounded like a platitude. Like “I still put my pants on one leg at a time” or “My friends and family keep me grounded” (yawn). But I literally meant, Nothing has changed. In fact, Mr. Journalist, the insecurity I feel about the Grand Canyon–size gap between my real life and people’s expectations is giving me relentless anxiety, so if we could just cool it, that would be great. I stole a roll of toilet paper this week. You can see how “fame” wouldn’t be going to my head.
If I’d been allowed, even once, to say, “Hey, I’m having kind of a shitty day,” I think I would have been fine. If my dad had been there to give me that look like, “These people are crazy,” I would have been able to handle anything. But admitting that I was lost and overwhelmed felt so ungrateful. Imagine if during final exams, everyone in your life was saying, “Finals are here! This is the best your life is ever going to get!” On top of being exhausted and grumpy, you’d feel guilty about your own, very human emotions. (And probably in crisis because Dear god, what if this IS the best life ever gets?!) This is why we talk about our feelings!