Anna Camp and Nikki Hahn are a mother and daughter whose secrets risk their idyllic small town inHysteria!. Camp found her breakout roles in the back-to-back hits of HBO’sTrue BloodandthePitch Perfectmovies, having since starred in everything from the Netflix comedyDesperadosto Prime Video’s short-lived, yet well-received, period dramaGood Girls Revolt. Hahn, on the other hand, has been steadily making a name for herself in recent years after a variety of guest TV appearances, with more recent roles including Disney Channel’s well-receivedAdventures in Babysittingremake and recurring role onAmerican Housewife.
Camp and Hahn star inHysteria!as Tracy and Faith Whitehead, a devout Christian and her daughter living in a quiet Michigan town 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. Upon 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 was kidnapped, leaving Faith to turn to her former childhood friend, Jordy, for support.
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Alongside Camp and Hahn, the ensembleHysteria!cast includesKrampus' Emjay Anthony,Fear Street’s Chiara Aurelia,Secret Headquarters' Kezii Curtis,Evil Deadvet Bruce Campbell,Modern Family’s 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.
Prior to the show’s premiere,Screen Rantinterviewed Anna Camp and Nikki Hahn to discussHysteria!, how the former plays antagonistic characters by avoiding bringing her own judgment of them to her performance, the latter’s enjoyment of balacing the more traumatic moments of Faith’s story with the lighter ones, and how the two went about finding their mother-daughter dynamic.
Camp Views Tracy As “Doing Everything From The Bottom Of Her Heart”
“It’s a really freeing thing to get to that place as an actor…”
Screen Rant: I’m really excited to chat aboutHysteria!, I’m six episodes in, and I am absolutely hooked. Anna, I’d love to start with you. Tracy is a character who can easily be someone that audiences root against, or who they deem a little outlandish. What is it like for you, from the performance side, really trying to keep her as grounded as possible, even in this 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 might be considered the adversary or the “villain”, not having any judgment on them. I think Tracy is doing everything from the bottom of her heart. She thinks she’s doing the right thing. She’s always doing it from a place of love. She wants to protect her daughter, and I also never approach a character going, “Oh, I hope the audience likes me, I really hope that they don’t hate me.”
No, this woman is committed, she is authentically herself. She might be a little weird, she’s a total extremist, but she’s not making any apologies for it, which is something that I find liberating as an actor to play. I cannot go in hoping they don’t like me or hate me, I just don’t care. I’m just being 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 service 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 her empathetic and sympathetic.
Because I think she starts out like she has low self-esteem. In the beginning of the series, no one’s coming to her church groups. She has one friend. She’s really self-effacing, she knows that society looks down on her. I think she’s a little weird, and she kind of has humor about that, as well. So, it’s always a challenge, and I make the effort to really make her 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’ll turn to you next. Faith is a character who’s really put through the wringer right from the get-go, 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 this world. What is it like navigating all of these different elements in a show like Hysteria, where most shows might only have one of those kinds of elements for a character?
Nikki Hahn: Yeah, I thought it was really fun to explore. Obviously, there’s 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, it’s kind of an interesting thought of like, “How would somebody who’s experiencing these things for the first time react?” She’s kind of getting her legs, her first steps, into adolescence, so whether she dances awkward at prom, I thought those were really fun ideas to experiment, and kind of brought a lighter sense In the midst of these super dark situations.
Tracy & Faith’s Views On Evil Are Very Different From One Another
“…it’s interesting, it’s really complex.”
So much of this show is predicated just on belief versus sight, as far as the evil goes. Obviously, we do see some of it from other characters' perspectives, but I’m curious, how much do you feel your characters believe they are genuinely facing evil versus how much do you think that they actually are?
Anna Camp: Good question. I think that Tracy’s ideas shift about evil throughout the first season, and you’ll get to see in the final episodes. You’ll know exactly what I mean by that, but she definitely believes in The Devil. She saw The Devil when she was younger. She’s fully committed to there’s a good and there’s an evil, there’s a right, there’s a wrong. But towards the end of the season, you get to see — man, it’s so hard to put into words, because I don’t want to spoil anything — she starts to use, obviously, people’s fears against them and for her own benefit. But it’s complicated, because she still believes in the good and evil, yet she starts to really use it to affect someone else in the show. So it’s interesting, it’s really complex.
Nikki Hahn: Yeah, I think Faith has kind of gathered her own understanding of normality that Tracy may perceive as evil versus what is actually evil. So, I think there’s kind of a difference where Tracy may be thinking what Faith is doing is sinning or evil, but I think Faith knows deep down that it’s normal. Everybody behaves this way. 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 split the difference between those two.
“…I love Nikki, not like a daughter, but like a friend, truly…”
I see I’m almost out of time, so I also did want to ask you both, what was it like developing the parental-daughter dynamic between the two of you, as that is very much the heart of both of your character stories?
Anna Camp: Oh gosh, I love Nikki, not like a daughter, but like a friend, truly, we have the most incredible relationship off camera. We were walking around making jokes and singing and being such goofballs. It’s so fun. We’re exactly the opposite when we get on set, it’s a totally 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 dialog that we have.
So then, when we get to set, I feel safe with her that I can really reach these levels of anger and aggression, because I trust her to take that 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 that way we can play, and we can fail, and we can try things together. Nikki’s so emotionally present and so game that I don’t think anybody else could have played Faith ever. I feel so lucky to have her 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 we didn’t necessarily rehearse beforehand, so seeing what Anna was going to do with the scene, I’m experiencing that for the first time on camera as we’re filming. So, obviously, that elicits a different reaction every time, so I think that really brought out moments that you can’t necessarily plan out.
AboutHysteria!
When a beloved varsity quarterback disappears during the “Satanic Panic” of the late 1980s, a struggling high school heavy metal band of outcasts realize they can capitalize on the town’s sudden interest in the occult by building a reputation as a Satanic metal band, until a bizarre series of murders, kidnappings, and reported “supernatural activity” triggers a leather-studded witch hunt that leads directly back to them.
Hysteria!
Cast
A group of high school outcasts rebrands as a Satanic metal band during the 1980s “Satanic Panic” after a quarterback vanishes. However, a series of violent incidents and paranormal reports lead to a town-wide witch hunt, which eventually points to the band.
