Anna Camp may have played her share of mean girls, but she couldn’t be any farther from the tightly-wound characters she’s often portraying on film and TV. The antithesis of True Blood‘s religious zealot Sarah Newlin and more easygoing than Pitch Perfect‘s perfection-seeking acapella guru Aubrey, Anna is Netflix and chill personified; the kind of person who is so likable that she appeals to just about everyone, even if she’s playing a character viewers are supposed to loathe. (See: Sarah Newlin.)
In her new role on Nat Geo’s two-night special mini-series event about the true story of Thanksgiving, Saints & Strangers, Anna goes against her usual type and plays someone a little more like herself, had she lived in pre-Colonial times. As Dorothy Bradford, the wife to Vincent Kartheiser‘s William Bradford, the second governor of the Plymouth Colony, Anna tried a lot of things for the first time.
“I get to be British and I get to be a very nice woman, which definitely attracted me to it because I’m always playing these crazy, uptight, tightly-wound…”
“Bitches?” I offer.
“You said it!” she said with a laugh. “And it shot in Cape Town, South Africa and I’ve never been and I was a huge fan of Mad Men, one of my favorite shows of all time. Pete Campbell, my favorite character of all time.” Working with the actor who played Pete Campbell was part of the appeal.
But what’s great about Dorothy is she’s not a quiet, complacent wife to the leader of the 66-day journey on the Mayflower.
“What I really liked about Dorothy was that she questioned her husband; she questioned her faith,” Anna said. “She wasn’t just blindly doing whatever she was told to do, and that’s why I feel she’s such a strong character because I don’t think at that time you would question your husband, especially one of the leaders of the voyage. So she’s definitely voicing her own thoughts and fears and I feel like it might be the first time she’s ever done that.”
Dorothy and William leave their son behind in Holland to help start a new life in America where their people can practice their religion freely. But the long days and nights spent on board of a cargo ship not made for human occupants was rough, even for Anna as an actor.
“I knew we were going to be on the Mayflower; I knew we were going to be on a big boat, and I didn’t think it was actually gonna move,” she said. “So the first time we’re sitting there, filming and everything and they’re like ‘Let’s gimbal. Put the boat on the gimbal.’ And I’m like, ‘Oh my god!’ The thing starts to move. I’m trying to act and I turn green. My eyes went yellow. I wasn’t acting, I felt like I was gonna puke. It was wild. And then the rainstorm-the rain machines pelting you in the face, like you can’t fake rain. That was really cold and really wet and those skirts get really heavy. It was worth it. And also you don’t have to act at that time because the cameras are on and you’re like ‘I’m really cold and I really want to get off this boat!'”
Anna also had a lot of downtime to explore Cape Town, which she found “culturally artistic and vibrant and beautiful.” (“I ate a lot of ostrich!”) And what is even more unique about the experience of Saints & Strangers is, unlike most of her work, Anna actually watched it.
“I never watch anything I do. Ever! It’s definitely weird-it’s weird because I’m always very nervous when I watch myself so I think there were times-I mean, people behind me said they saw me slowly sinking down in my seat,” Anna said. “I usually don’t watch because I can’t separate the experience the day of shooting from the actual product. When I did ADR stuff for it, it looked so beautiful and the production value is so wonderful that I thought, ‘I think I might be able to separate myself from this movie.’ I did and I was glad I could do that and I could watch it.”
Anna has only seen the first Pitch Perfect movie once (“a very, very, very early on screening before it was color corrected, before it was all done, and I never saw the second one!”) and only some episodes of True Blood; none of her stint on The Good Wife.
“I had a blast shooting, I really did, but it’s me,” she said. “I hate hearing myself on someone else’s voicemail! Like ‘What is that?’ I get all weirded out. So I’d rather just do it and have that be the experience it was.”
Besides her work in Saints & Strangers, Anna has been keeping busy with a new Amazon pilot that is already receiving major buzz. Good Girls Revolt is the story of women working at a magazine, News of the Week, in the 1960s. Each of them are forced to do research, utilize contacts and essentially do most of the work for their male counterparts, but letting them have the glory with the bylines and front page stories. But as the title suggests, the women are growing tired of the misogyny and ready to band together for justice. Anna’s character, Jane, might need more convincing than the rest, though, as she seems OK with providing her office boyfriend the things he needs to be a star in the newsroom.
“And my character’s not even aware that that’s bad,” Anna said. “She’s lived her life that way and now she’s starting to have doubts and questioning, that’s what the show is, which is the beginning of that revolution.”
Viewers of the new Amazon pilots vote on the ones they want to see make it to series (which is how Transparent became a show), and hopefully we’ll receive the good news for Good Girls Revolt soon, as Anna teased there are some stories “bubbling up” that queer women would definitely appreciate.
“Dana Calvo, she’s the creator, gave [the show bible] to all the actors to see where their characters would be heading so I do know some things that I can’t give away,” Anna said. “But it’s definitely fun, exciting and not exactly what you would think, which is really good, but she goes there. I can say that much. That’s why I want it to get picked up because I want to do all the stuff!”
Anna does hint that there could be more to Jane than her simply being a yes-woman, which is one reason she was enticed into another role that, at the beginning, might seem like another ruthless, uptight blonde.
“I love playing characters where you think they’re one thing when you look at them and slowly, as the show progresses, you start to see there’s a lot of complexity underneath and there could be a lot of darkness,” she said. “And that happens to people that are so buttoned up their whole lives. When they’re getting that permission to revolt-she could burn her bra!”
Television has provided so many more of these juicy opportunities for women like Anna, while film is still struggling to catch up. But that’s one reason why being a part of the uber-successful Pitch Perfect franchise has been so special to her. Female-led both on screen and behind-the-scenes (Kay Cannon wrote both the original and the sequel and Elizabeth Banks directed Pitch Perfect 2), the two films have made over $248 million at the box office and a third film is already in the works.
“The wonderful thing is I meet little girls who recognize me as Aubrey and they’re like ‘You’re my hero-I idolize you,'” Anna said. “Aubrey is a strong character. Especially in the first film where she decides to let go and give over control to another girl and work together. There’s so much competition in the world among women. To see groups of women supporting one another and working together to create something really beautiful, I feel very honored to be a part of something like that.”
Anna counts herself as a Bechloe shipper and says she would love to see co-stars Anna Kendrick and Brittany Snow share even more “moments” in Pitch Perfect 3.
“I like the idea of them together, are you kidding?” she said. “I know that they [embraced] it with the second one. When they were in the tent and close. I think it would be amazing if they were dating. Why not? There should be a fantasy sequence or something where they have to make out. I’m down. Aubrey would be there being like, ‘It’s beautiful.'”
Sadly, Pitch Perfect is still an anomaly in Hollywood. The reality is that all of the interesting parts are written for men and actresses like Anna are cast as “the girl that’s just sleeping with the guy, like Matthew McConahey or whatever and that’s it,” Anna said. “That’s your whole role.”
“There’s always just that one woman role in a movie full of guys, and those movies are so successful, like Fast and the Furious and all those things. And there’s the one or the two women,” Anna said. “Forgive me, I’ve never seen them so I can’t really comment on them, but I feel like it sucks, you know? Because you read the roles the guys got and you go, ‘I want that role! Why can’t I play this role? Why can’t they just change it to a woman?’ It might make the film way more successful because we’ve seen that role done by a man so many times. I can’t believe I’m still talking about it.”
Anna recently shot a small part in an upcoming Woody Allen film set in the 1930s where she plays “an out of work actress who turns into a prostitute.”
“It’s her first day on the job and she’s horrible,” Anna said, noting that she worked alongside Jesse Eisenberg but has no idea what the film is about because Woody Allen is notorious for only giving his actors parts of the script.
“All my scenes were with Jesse, who is lovely, and so immediately I get on the set and I’m like, ‘What’s the movie about?’ Is this a comedy? Is this a drama?” Anna said. She originally met with Woody right out of college and auditioned for a small role in Vicky Cristina Barcelona but didn’t get the gig. But he found humor in the fact that she is from Queens (“Somehow I end up telling him I’m from Queens, and he finds that really funny and is laughing. He can’t believe that I live in Queens, I guess!”) and called her back for the still untitled film.
What is also noteworthy about Anna is how often she praises other performers–women specifically. Throughout our conversation she gives it up for Elizabeth Banks (“Work, work girl! She’s taking over!”), Tig Notaro (“I loved how [her show One Mississippi, another Amazon pilot] can be beautiful and bleak at the same time”) and Christina Ricci (“I love her.”) When I tell her I’m going to see Fun Home the following afternoon, she tells me she cried three times when she went to see the butch lesbian-themed musical. And the movie she’s dying to see right now? Carol.
Needless to say, she’s a huge LGBT ally and is hopeful the stories of queer women will also be part of Hollywood’s progression in the future.
“It’s just apart of everything,” Anna said. “It’s normal, it’s natural. It’s been happening for years and years and years.”
This weekend, Anna is part of another kind of progression in Saints & Strangers, as the miniseries will tell the true story of the pilgrims and the Native Americans. Casting real Native actors who use Western Abenaki, lost language of the tribes, the series does not ask that viewers choose sides, but consider the way in which two very different communities moved past their individual struggles to find a way to co-exist, and share in their knowledge, bounties and gratitude.
“You’re taught in elementary school about the pilgrims and the Indians and the pilgrims are wearing little bonnets and black and white outfits and breaking bread with Indians, all peaceful,” Anna said. “And the script was wonderful, really gritty, really dark-it’s the true story of Thanksgiving. My character is distraught because she leaves her son behind in Holland and it made me think a lot about family and being close to your family, and I take it for granted. I don’t live in the same town as my mother and father do, or even my sister, and I sort of take that for granted that we can text or call or Skype or do whatever. … You want to keep your family close, and I learned a lot from her, I think.”
Saints & Strangers premieres Sunday, November 22 at 9/8c on the National Geographic Channel.
