Anna Camp and Nikki Hahn are a mother and daughter whose secrets threaten their idyllic town Hysteria!. Camp found her breakout roles in HBO’s back-to-back hits true blood And these Pitch perfect Movies, since they starred in everything from the Netflix comedy Desperados to Prime Video’s short-lived, but well-received, period drama Good Girls Revolt. Hahn, on the other hand, has steadily made a name for himself in recent years after a variety of guest television appearances, with more recent roles including Disney Channel’s well-received. Adventures in babysitting Remake and recurring role on American Housewife.
Camp and Hahn star in Hysteria! As Tracy and Faith Whitehead, a devout Christian and her daughter living in a quiet town in Michigan in the 80s. Despite her best efforts to keep her daughter on a tight leash, Faith’s relationship with varsity quarterback Ryan Hudson sees her kidnapped by a group of mysterious figures before eventually fighting for her escape. Returning home, Faith finds Tracy more dedicated to raising concerns about the seeming rise of Satanism in their town, while also refusing to acknowledge that her daughter has been kidnapped, leaving Faith to turn to her former childhood friend, Jordy, for support. .
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Along with Lager and Han, the ensemble Hysteria! throw incl KrampusEmjay Anthony, Fear StreetS Chiara Aurelia, Secret headquartersCasey Curtis, Evil Dead Veterinarian Bruce Campbell, Modern familys Julie Bowen, iconic voice actor Nolan North and Garret Dillahunt. Melding a meaningful character drama with absurdly entertaining horror-comedy elements, the show proves to be a winning addition to Peacock’s library in time for the Halloween season.
Before the premiere of the show, Screen Rant Interviewed Anna Camp and Nikki Hahn to discuss Hysteria!How the former plays antagonistic characters by avoiding bringing her own judgment on them to her performance, the latter delights in balancing the more traumatic moments of Faith’s story with the lighter ones, and how the two went about finding their mother-daughter dynamic. .
stock look tracy like “Doing everything from the bottom of her heart”
“It’s really a freeing thing to get to this place as an actor…”
Screen Rant: I’m really excited to chat about Hysteria!I’m six episodes in, and I’m absolutely hooked. Anna, I would like to start with you. Tracy is a character that can easily be someone that audiences root against, or that they think is a little unusual. What is it like for you, from the performance side, really trying to keep yourself as grounded as possible, even in the somewhat absurd world of the show?
Anna Camp: Great question. I love Tracy, I love playing her so much. I always approach a role that can be considered the antagonist or the “villain”, not having any judgment on them. I think Tracy is doing everything from the bottom of her heart. She thinks she is doing the right thing. She’s always doing it out of a lot of love. She wants to protect her daughter, and I’ve never approached a character going, “Oh, I hope the audience likes me, I really hope they don’t hate me.”
No, the woman is committed, she is authentically herself. She can be a bit strange, she’s quite an extremist, but she doesn’t make any apologies for it, which is something I find liberating as an actor to play. I can’t go hoping they don’t like me or hate me, I just don’t care. I’m just Tracy, you know what I mean? [Chuckles] It’s a really freeing thing to get to that place as an actor where you’re like, “I know what I’m doing to serve the story. I know what part my character is, how it fits into the plot,” and everything, but Then to go through and find places to make you empathetic and sympathetic.
Because I think she starts like she has low self-esteem. At the beginning of the series, no one comes to her church groups. She has one friend. She is really alone, she knows that society looks down on her. I think she’s a little weird, and she has a sense of humor about it too. So, it’s always a challenge, and I make the effort to really make you very well-rounded. So, hopefully that happened, we’ll see.
Hahn found faith’s story of high school drama”Really fun to explore”
“…[they] Kind of brought a lighter sense in the midst of these super dark situations.”
Nikki, I will turn to you next. Faith is a character that’s really been through the ringer from the beginning, even in high school, trying to rekindle friendships with people like Jordy, but also trying to figure out who she is and who she wants to be in the world. What is it like to navigate all these different elements in a show like Hysteria, where most shows can only have one of these kinds of elements for a character?
Nikki Hahn: Yeah, I thought it was really fun to explore. Obviously, there are so many traumatic and intense situations that faith goes through. But in those lighter moments, where she’s navigating high school dances and friendships and relationships, there’s an interesting thought of like, “How would someone who’s experiencing these things for the first time react?” She’s kind of getting her legs, her first steps, in adolescence, so whether she dances awkwardly at prom, I thought those were really fun ideas to experiment with, and kind of brought a lighter sense in the midst of these super dark situations.
Tracy and Faith’s views on evil are very different from one another
“… It’s interesting, it’s really complicated.”
So much of this show is predicated solely on belief versus sight, as far as evil goes. Obviously, we see some of it from other characters’ perspectives, but I’m curious, how much do you feel your characters believe they’re actually facing evil versus how much you think they are?
Anna Camp: Good question. I think Tracy’s thoughts shift about evil throughout the first season, and you’ll get to see it in the final episodes. You will know exactly what I mean by this, but she definitely believes in the devil. She saw the devil when she was younger. She is fully committed to there is a good and there is an evil, there is a right, there is a wrong. But at the end of the season, you see – man, it’s so hard to put into words, because I don’t want to spoil anything – she starts to use, of course, people’s fears against them and for her own benefit. But it’s complicated, because she still believes in good and evil, but she starts to really use it to affect someone else in the show. So it’s interesting, it’s really complicated.
Nikki Hahn: Yeah, I think Faith has kind of gathered her own understanding of normalcy that Tracy can see as evil versus what is actually evil. So, I think there is a difference where Tracy may think what Faith is doing is sinning or evil, but I think Faith knows deep down that it is normal. Everyone behaves like this. It’s nothing rebellious, really. It’s just navigating high school and having a boyfriend. Nothing wrong with that, you know? So I think she’s kind of splitting the difference between the two.
Camp & Hahn Had “The most incredible relationship“While filming the show
“…I love Nikki, not as a daughter, but as a friend, really…”
I see I’m almost out of time, so I also really wanted to ask you both, what was it like to develop the parent-daughter dynamic between the two of you, as it’s very much at the heart of both of your character stories?
Anna Camp: Oh my God, I love Nikki, not as a daughter, but as a friend, really, we have the most incredible relationship off camera. We walked around, making jokes and singing and were such a shock. It’s so fun. We are the exact opposite when we get on set, it’s a completely different relationship. But I think that’s why it’s so good, because we’ve developed a safety between the two of us, and this common dialogue that we have.
Therefore, when we get to set, I feel confident with you that I can really reach the levels of anger and aggression, because I trust you to take it on and not take it personally. I’m not one of those actors that’s like, “I’m not going to talk to you ever on set, so I can create a dynamic.” I like to create a very safe environment, so we can play, and we can fail, and we can try things together. Nikki is so emotionally present and plays like that that I don’t think anyone else could have played Faith ever. I feel so lucky to have you as my daughter.
Nikki Hahn: Thank you, Anna is such an amazing scene partner. There could be no other Tracy ever. I think what was really cool about the way we work together is that we didn’t necessarily rehearse beforehand, so when I see what Anna is going to do with the scene, I experience it for the first time on camera when we’re filming. So, obviously, it’s a different reaction every time, so I think that really brought up moments that you can’t necessarily plan for.
About Hysteria!
When a beloved varsity quarterback disappears during the “Satanic Panic” of the late 1980s, a struggling high school heavy metal band from Outkas realizes they can capitalize on the town’s sudden interest in the occult by building a reputation as a Satanic metal band. , until a strange series of murders, kidnappings and reported “supernatural activity” triggers a leather-studded witch hunt that leads directly back to them.
Stay tuned for our others Hysteria! Interview with:
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Bruce Campbell
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Emjay Anthony, Chiara Aurelia & Kezii Curtis
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Michael Scott Kane & David A. Goodman
Source: Screen Rant Plus