Anna Camp Filmed Her “10-Page” Exorcism Monologue In ‘Hysteria’ With “45 Minutes Notice”

Anna Camp delivered a powerful performance in Peacock ‘s new horror/thriller series Hysteria , particularly when her character Tracy Whitehead conducted an exorcism on Julie Bowen ‘s Linda Campbell in the season finale. According to creator, executive producer, and writer Matthew Scott Kane, Camp filmed the entire 10-page monologue with only 45 minutes notice.

Warning: this article contains spoilers for Hysteria Season 1. Read at your own risk.

Hysteria takes place in a fictional small town in Michigan in the 1980s. When the local high school quarterback Ryan Hudson goes missing after a steamy evening with his classmate Faith Whitehead and is later found dead, mass panic falls upon the parents, who believe his death was the result of some sort of Satanic ritual. Meanwhile, teenage outcasts Dylan Campbell ( Emjay Anthony ), Jordy ( Chiara Aurelia ), and Spud ( Kezii Curtis ) capitalize on the moment by pretending to be Satanists in a fake cult to promote their aspiring heavy metal band.

While the town immediately casts blame on the young “Satanists,” the truth is that Tracy had her daughter Faith kidnapped by a man known as “The Reverend” in hopes of reprogramming her ungodly behavior — the same way her parents had rid the Devil from her as a teenager. When Ryan died of an asthma attack during the abduction, Tracy did everything she could to cover up their roles in his death — with The Reverend threatening Faith’s life if she couldn’t solicit a confession from someone else.

Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Hysteria!’ on Peacock, A Horror-Thriller-Comedy Where A Town Thinks Its Teens Are Turning Into Satanists

That’s when Linda, Dylan’s mom, came into play. Ever since Ryan’s death, Linda had been experiencing real supernatural activity, which ultimately resulted in her demonic possession. Tracy took this opportunity to gather the town in their church, where she performed a public exorcism on Linda with the hopes of getting her to falsely confess that her son was the one who murdered Ryan.

The exorcism scene was the cherry on top of this spooky series, with Camp’s passionate performance and Bowen’s terrifying state of being keeping me on the edge of my seat for the entirety of the episode. We chatted with Camp and Kane all about the gripping scene when they stopped by DECIDER’s studio ahead of the show’s release.

“When we first shot Anna’s monologue in the church, she did that on about 45 minutes notice,” Kane revealed. “She did not know we were shooting that that day. And she walked on the set and knocked it out of the park and was just incredible right away, after 45 minutes, it’s a 10-page scene.”

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Camp, for her part, remembered needing to memorize “a lot of lines.” While the monologue was interwoven with other scenes in the final cut, she had to, at times, film it all in one take.

“I remember asking the director at the time, Jordan [Vogt-Roberts], ‘Are we going to separate this up, obviously, in chunks?’ And he was like, ‘Yeah, we will. But there will be days where we’re going to have to shoot it like a play,'” she recalled. “Like, I’m going to do all of it in one take in front of the entire cast.”

As far as how she feels about Tracy’s role as one of the show’s main antagonists, Camp told us that she would not consider her character to be a villain.

“I’ve played villains. I’ve been fortunate enough to play them because they’re so, to me, very complex and challenging and they’re like a puzzle that I have to figure out why they are the way that they are,” Camp said. “And so I approached [Tracy] as she’s doing everything from the kindness of her heart and she really cares about her daughter and she’ll do anything that she can to protect her from the world.”

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Unlike past roles, however, Camp got to shoot a prequel episode in Hysteria (Episode 5, “Mother”), which explained Tracy’s troublesome background.

“The great thing, though, about this show is that you get to have a flashback episode where you see what made her the way that she is, which I don’t always get when I play villains. You don’t see that part,” the actress said. “So, yeah, I wouldn’t put her on the list [of villains], but I know as a viewer, you would.”

David A. Goodman, who also wrote and executive produced Hysteria, said much of Tracy’s character was “affected” by Camp’s performance.

“As we started to shoot, we actually went back and reshot some stuff in the pilot,” he said. “Along those lines, too, there’s gravitas to her, to her character. It’s not a cartoon villain there. There’s reality there. And that’s something. It’s a great combination of the writing and the actor.”

For actor Bruce Campbell , who played Chief Dandridge in Hysteria, Camp was his “favorite character to interact with in the show.”

“Whenever I have scenes with her character, I go, ‘This is cool,'” he told DECIDER. “Because she is a bit impenetrable as a character and as a chief of police, I felt it was my responsibility to get under those packs of lies. So it’s always fun. Those are challenging, fun scenes.”

Hysteria! is currently streaming on Peacock.

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