'Woman of the Hour': What happened to Cheryl Bradshaw after 'The Dating Game'? (2025)

We've all dipped out of dates which don't seem that promising, but few are luckier to have made that call than Cheryl Bradshaw.

Bradshaw's story is at the center of Netflix's buzzy true-crime thriller Woman of the Hour. Anna Kendrick stars (and makes her directorial debut) as Bradshaw, an aspiring actress in Los Angeles circa 1978 who begrudgingly agrees to appear on The Dating Game in order to find love and boost her career profile. The show tasks Bradshaw with choosing from three eligible bachelors, one of whom is young photographer Rodney Alcala, who just so happens to be a serial killer with a penchant for photographing his victims. The film, which Entertainment Weekly covered in our Fall Movie Preview, is a lightly fictionalized account of an astonishing footnote in one of the most gruesome true crime cases of the 20th century.

While many are familiar with Alcala's appalling crimes, Kendrick wanted to refocus the story on Bradshaw and her run-in with the murderer. "I'm really not interested in why he is the way he is," she told Today of Alcala. "I don't find him interesting or worthy of exploration."

Bradshaw, however, posed a more interesting subject. "Her story became central in teasing out the thematic elements of the pervasive gender issues that were rooted in that era and persist today," Kendrick said in the film's press notes.

So what actually happened to Cheryl Bradshaw after she encountered a serial killer on national television? Read on to learn about the real actress who inspired Anna Kendrick's character in the new thriller — and how factual the film's depiction of her actually is.

Was Cheryl Bradshaw a real person?

Yes, Cheryl Bradshaw was an aspiring actress who lived in Los Angeles and appeared on the Sept. 13, 1978, episode of The Dating Game, where she was tasked with choosing one of three eligible bachelors to take her on a date. She chose bachelor number one — Rodney Alcala, who, unbeknownst to her, was a serial killer at the height of his murder spree and had already served prison time for sexually assaulting an 8-year-old girl.

In addition to changing the spelling of Bradshaw's name to Sheryl, Kendrick took a few other creative liberties with the real actress' life. "Sheryl is the most fictionalized piece of the movie," Kendrick explained in Netflix's press notes. "There’s very little publicinformation about the real person, so our Sheryl’s life before The DatingGame is basically an imagined version of a woman in the 1970s."

The actual episode of The Dating Game in which Bradshaw appeared can no longer be viewed in its entirety, which allowed Kendrick and her crew to craft the "fantasy version of what we all wish we could have said at a pivotal moment," according to the press notes. "I loved getting to play out this fantasy of her breaking freeand getting a little bit of power back during the taping of the show,” Kendrick said. “Because maybe for the first time in Sheryl's life, maybe she's not making herself small."

Did Cheryl Bradshaw go on a date with Rodney after winning The Dating Game?

Bradshaw followed her gut and did not go on a date with Alcala. For some context, The Dating Game functioned similarly to Love Is Blind in that the bachelorette and bachelors were separated by a wall, and therefore had to make their choice based on verbal demeanor as opposed to physical appearance. The actual show, in the '70s tradition, was also laden with lascivious sexual innuendo. Despite Alcala being introduced as a "successful photographer who got his start when his father found him in the darkroom at the age of 13, fully developed," and later calling himself a banana and imploring Bradshaw to "peel" him live on the real show, she was charmed by his answers.

But once she met Alcala face to face, Bradshaw knew something was off. As a prize, the show gave the couple free tennis lessons and a trip to Magic Mountain, but she rebuffed Alcala when he suggested they meet the next day. "I started to feel ill. He was acting really creepy," Bradshaw said in a 2012 interview with The Sunday Telegraph, per Newsweek. "I didn't want to see him again." When she got home that night, Bradshaw telephoned the show's producer, Ellen Metzger, and told her there was no way she’d be seeing bachelor number one ever again.

Metzger remembered the call vividly, as she and several other people on The Dating Game’s set had been unsettled by Alcala's behavior. "She said, 'Ellen, I can't go out with this guy,'" Metzger told 20/20. "'There's weird vibes that are coming off of him. He's very strange. I am not comfortable. Is that going to be a problem [for the show]?' And of course, I said, 'No.'"

Even Metzger’s husband, Dating Game executive producer Mike Metzger, admitted to not wanting Alcala on his show in the first place. "No darn way was this guy going to be on my show,” Mike told 20/20 of his thoughts during the audition process, “because I thought he had a strange personality. He had a mystique about him that I found uncomfortable." Yet somehow, Alcala ended up on the panel.

While Bradshaw and Alcala never saw one another after the taping, Woman of the Hour’s third act imagines a post-show encounter between Alcala and Bradshaw that did not take place in real life.

What happened to Cheryl Bradshaw after The Dating Game?

Bradshaw remained largely out of the public eye after her brush with infamy. In a 2012 interview with The Sunday Telegraph, via Rolling Stone, she reflected on the ordeal and admitted that she went on The Dating Game in an earnest attempt to find her one true love. A postscript at the end of Woman of the Hour informs the audience that Bradshaw "left California to live a private life and raise a family."

Kendrick told Today that Bradshaw passed away before production on Woman of the Hour began, so she was sadly unable to speak to the woman she portrays. Kendrick admitted that there were "so many things" she wanted to ask Bradshaw while directing the film. But one question kept recurring to the Oscar nominee: "I would ask her what it felt like for her to trust herself," Kendrick said.

Part of Bradshaw's mystique was what drew Kendrick to the project. So much is known about Alcala and his victims, but little is known about the woman who outwitted him before he had a chance to entrap her. "I love the fact that it isn't as simple as, 'Oh, she asserts herself and everything works out great,'" Kendrick told EW. "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?"

But Kendrick was careful to note that Alcala's other victims were in no way at fault for not sensing the danger Bradshaw did. "I think that it's tricky because I do want it to give the message that one should listen to one's gut. But at the same time, sometimes it's not as simple as that," she told Today.

"I think there was a point where one of the producers was asking if there should be some really clever way that [Bradshaw] outsmarts or outwits Rodney, and that's why she survives," Kendrick said of the film's fictionalized conclusion. "And I was like, 'I think that that would do a disservice to the other women who were no less intelligent than her, and that sometimes it's a combination of trusting your gut, but sometimes it's too late for that."

Woman of the Hour is now streaming on Netflix.