Actress Anna Kendrick recently appeared on a podcast in which she revealed she had created embryos with an ex-boyfriend before their relationship unexpectedly ended.
Appearing on Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard, Kendrick spoke about a “toxic” relationship with an unnamed ex-boyfriend. “I was with someone — this was somebody I lived with, for all intents and purposes — my husband. We had embryos together, this was my person,’” she said. “I remember telling my brother, when things had first kind of gone down, ‘I’m living with a stranger. Like, I don’t know what’s happening.’ It wasn’t just the ‘Oh, I’m losing a relationship.’ It was that I believed that if we broke up or, you know, if he left basically, it was a confirmation that it’s because I’m impossible, I’m lucky that he’s even tolerating my bulls***.”
She further added that therapy did not work, and the relationship ultimately ended after she caught him being unfaithful.
“There was an inherent thing of me being so rejectable that this person who loved me very deeply for six years, it suddenly occurred to him, how awful I was or something,” she said. “The shame, that lingers much longer.”
Kendrick didn’t give more information about the children she and her ex created — whether they have been left frozen indefinitely or were destroyed. But she’s not the first celebrity to have such an experience. Sofia Vergara and ex Nick Loeb had a very public battle over the fate of the embryonic children they created together; Loeb wanted to keep them, while Vergara successfully fought to have them destroyed.
The children were treated as commodified property, but human embryos are scientifically unique, living human beings. Each embryo has his or her own unique DNA from the moment of fertilization, with genetics, eye color, hair color, gender, and more traits already fully determined.
