Double the Anna, Double the Camp

Anna Camp is used to people thinking she's uptight. Or prissy. Someone who has absolutely zero chill.

It's not her fault—it's just that the actress disappears so fully into the characters she plays that it's hard to see where she ends and the Type-A blondes you love to hate (and then maybe love again?!) begin.

"I'm attracted to characters like that because it’s a challenge for me to make these people relatable, to make audiences care about them,” she says via Zoom, dressed in a casual tee, her dogs snoozing behind her. “I'm not afraid of being unlikable.”

And care they do, especially about Camp’s memorable characters like rigid a capella leader Aubrey Posen in the Pitch Perfect franchise and religious zealot Sarah Newlin in HBO’s True Blood, both of which have inspired troves of fan fiction.

Despite her on-screen personas that hint at sugary evil, Camp, 42, is good-natured and warm, eager to crack jokes with her cast and crew. “I drop my ego at the door,” Camp says with a wide (not at all evil) grin from her home in Los Angeles. “I just want to have fun.”

Mission accomplished on the fifth and final season of You, which premiered on Netflix last week. (Warning: spoilers ahead.) Camp joined the serial killer drama (that also satirizes serial killer dramas) in not one but two roles that highlight her canny ability to switch seamlessly from a high-strung conniving girlboss into a meek, unempowered pill-popper. That’s because Camp played twins: merciless Reagan, who fights for control of her family company (“she’s an absolute monster, a self-assured, egotistical bitch”) and flighty Maddie, a timid publicist who harbors a deep secret (“she has literally zero self-confidence”).

What ensues is a bloody and mind-boggling mess that finds Maddie accidentally trapped in Joe Goldberg’s (Penn Badgley) notorious basement-murder cage. During those scenes, Camp made it a goal to get Badgley to laugh. “It can be very dramatic and melodramatic at times, and I always wanted to twist it on its head and give it a little bit of humor,” she says. “It almost started to be a little bit of a buddy comedy.”

But all jokes go out the window when Reagan gets tossed in the cage, too, and Joe convinces meek Maddie to murder her asshole sister.

In another actor’s hands, a twin swapping storyline in a serial killer series could easily fall into over-the-top, no-way-in-hell-is-that-real territory. But Camp plays each sister with deep empathy and zingy humor; after Reagan dies, Maddie’s arc gives the season an emotional spine outside of Joe’s kill-or-be-killed storyline. “Anna has been particularly adept at playing wicked and powerful, which are two qualities Reagan has in spades,” showrunners Michael Foley and Justin Lo wrote in an email. “But Anna also has a much softer side, and we were so excited to see her bring that vulnerability to Maddie, all mixed in with her razor-sharp comedic instincts.”

Camp had been a fan of You since 2018 when the first season premiered on Lifetime. “I loved the premise and was just like, Who is this guy, and why do I still want to keep watching this person do all of these horrible things?” So when Camp heard the producers were interested in bringing her in for the fifth and final season, “I was like, Yes, whatever they want,” she says. And when she found out they had her in mind to play twins, she was all in. “It’s a bucket list item,” Camp says, citing Anne Heche’s good-versus-evil twins in Another World as inspiration. “You get to stretch your wings in a way that’s a huge challenge, especially to have scenes with myself.” It didn’t hurt that once she saw the scripts for season five, she realized the twins’s storyline would be “very Shakespearean, in a Richard III kind of way.” (Read: Maddie and Reagan are so very screwed.)

It was a full circle moment when she realized You would film in New York at Long Island City’s Silver Cup Studios, the location of her first ever on-screen role: an Olive Garden commercial. “I was a waitress delivering endless salad and breadsticks.” Though, when the spot aired, her head was cut off.

The city was a familiar stomping ground for Camp, who lived there for seven years at the beginning of her career. So when she began developing different processes to get into character as each sister, she knew where to start: at a crystal shop in Brooklyn, where she picked out unique crystals for both characters. “I would bring them with me to set and hold the crystal that represented Maddie or Reagan while we were shooting the scenes.” She’d also curated different playlists for each sister (these included ”What Doesn’t Kill Me” by Kacey Musgraves for Maddie and “Bad Guy” by Billie Eilish for Reagan).

Camp came up with specific physical details for the twins, too, deciding Reagan was left-handed, while Maddie was right-handed, and completely transformed her demeanor based on who she was playing. “As Reagan, her posture was stiff,” wrote Foley and Lo. “Her neck and face were tight. Her voice was lower and tense. As Maddie, Anna’s physicality was looser. Her voice was warmer and more relaxed.” The crew lit Reagan “beautifully,” Camp adds, to highlight her strength and confidence, while Maddie “was lit with all my flaws.”

These subtle differences are no more obvious than in episode four, when Maddie and Reagan find themselves having the fight to end all fights. As the two versions of Camp bicker, it’s hard to believe you’re watching the same actor portray both Maddie’s devastation and Reagan’s callousness.

“To craft two different people and to play the opposite from the other side, it’s such a dance that really stretched me creatively in a way I don’t think I’ve been stretched in a very long time,” Camp says. “I thought Maddie would be the easier twin to play, but when I would go on set as Reagan, I would be all dressed up in black with tight hair and it felt natural,” Camp says. “I felt safe because she has a lot of armor, a lot of confidence.”

Later, in episode five, Camp ascended to a new level of twin-acting in a pivotal scene where Maddie must impersonate Reagan having a conversation with Maddie as to not tip anyone off to Reagan’s death. (Still following?) What results is a brilliant and explosive emotional breakdown that serves as a catalyst for the rest of the season. It was by far the hardest scene Camp had to perform and to make it work, the crew built two identical rooms, so the sets were completely mirrored for each twin. Camp worked with her body double, Sarah Helbringer, to ensure Maddie’s collapse would feel believable. “That’s my main goal,” Camp says. “To make this story believable in these really heightened circumstances.”

A surprising bonus of filming You was getting close with the other cast members, especially Charlotte Ritchie, who plays Kate Lockwood, Helbringer, and season 5 newcomers Madeline Brewer (The Handmaid’s Tale) and Natasha Behnam (The Girls on the Bus). They would meet up at the natural wine bar Have & Meyer or hole up in Camp’s Williamsburg loft to watch music videos on a giant projector. “We bonded while shooting this show about misogyny and what it means to be in a toxic relationship. We became a very special family of women.” Since filming wrapped, the group chat has been going strong. “I asked Charlotte, will you sit next to me at the premiere?” Camp says. “And she was like, you can sit on me.”

Camp credits some of that open connection to Badgley, who she says was adamant about making the You set feel safe for its cast members, many of whom are female and act in violent or sexual scenes. “He was always very open to discussing what these scenes meant, what we were shooting them for,” Camp says, especially the scenes he had with Brewer, who plays Joe’s new obsession. “I always felt like we were doing something not salacious, not scandalous, that there was a point to every scene and every moment. He is very aware of the fact that so many people watch You and he has such a responsibility to navigate what they’re saying with this show. He really set the tone to make sure we all felt comfortable. I can only imagine what it would be like with a different person who doesn’t think in those types of ways.”

Intimacy coordinators were also available on set, Camp says: “I’m all for it. I’m just very thankful that’s an option now because on True Blood we did not have that.”

Later this year, Camp will appear in wedding comedy Bride Hard alongside Rebel Wilson and Sherry Cola. She’s also just finished filming Scream 7, in which she plays best friend and neighbor to Sydney (Neve Campbell) in the iconic slasher franchise. She’s sworn to secrecy when it comes to all things Scream, but when pressed, she teases, “All I can say is that it’s one of the most jaw-dropping, surprising, and literally bloody Screams you’re going to see. When I read the script, my jaw was on the floor times a million.”

But this week, Camp is eager to see how You fans react to the final chapter in Joe Goldberg’s story, wrapping up five seasons of gory horror and laugh-out-loud antics with the most satisfying ending a longtime viewer could hope for.

It’s exactly the kind of work that Camp wants to be part of. “I love balancing that line between absolutely scary and absolutely hysterical.”

Photographer Ruben Chamorro | Stylist Cassy Meier | Hair Stylist Li Murillo for Exclusive Artists | Makeup Artist Camille Thompson | Line Producer Kyran Marshall | Location Thompson Central Park New York, by Hyatt