Work Text:
YOU’RE ON, MS. ROBERTS
For the Queen of Horror, the Entire World is Her Stage
By Jasmine Lee, entertainment editor for Bitch Magazine
Minutes after I sit down, as I’m fiddling with my recorder and notebook, Camille Roberts whirls into the cafe. There’s no other word to describe her flurry of activity and mass of bouncy curls except for “whirls.” She’s all smiles and relaxed cool-girl vibes, and she’s dressed in the kind of getup I’d have killed to pull off: slouchy city sweatpants, a wonderfully soft-looking off-the-shoulder sweater, and patent-leather Doc Martens. At 33-years-old, she’s as slim as ever, looking the kind of taut and glowing that only years of yoga can achieve.
“Have you been waiting long?” She asks anxiously, folding up her glamorous cat-eye sunglasses and tucking them into her bucket bag. When I affirm the negative, she breaks into her famous megawatt smile and lets out an exaggerated sigh of relief. “Great, great. What are you going to get to eat? I’m starving and this place makes a terrific steak salad.” She promptly orders this, dressing on the side, steak medium rare, along with an iced tea; I get the same.
While we wait for our food, I do my best to quell my excitement. I’m sitting with the queen of horror herself, a method actress who reinvigorated her career after a series of middling made-for-TV dramas and spectacularly awful period pieces. At the age of 21, she was able to parlay her larger-than-life personality into the “Final Girl” character trope, and ever since, she’s dominated the horror movie genre.
Her personal life is no less charming. She’s currently involved with James Diamond, one of the former members of the boy band Big Time Rush, a winsome and staggeringly sexy foursome that has a great rags-to-riches backstory. Diamond, along with the rest of the boys – blond, blue-eyed Kendall Knight, hyperactive, soulful Carlos Garcia, and earnest, intellectual Logan Mitchell – were discovered by Roque Records’ Gustavo Rocque and Kelly Wainwright at the tender age of sixteen during a nationwide talent search. (Yes, the same lady of Knight & Wainwright, Inc., who presently represents Camille.) They were swept up from the hockey rinks of rural Minnesota and dropped into the bloodthirsty world of boy bands.
Now, Diamond is firmly ensconced within the world of musical theater, currently headlining Thoroughly Modern Millie as the gorgeous, rapscallion Jimmy Smith; Knight owns a smattering of hockey rinks as well as his own little league for boys and girls ages 7 to 17, and is married to Mitchell, who sits on the board of directors at Mercy Hospital; and Garcia manages his time between coordinating and choreographing film stunts, and finding time to snuggle with his darling new boyfriend, Finn Covington, the famously pansexual movie star, their meet cute literally straight from a pop song.
Actually, I amend my statement – Camille isn’t just dating Diamond, she’s engaged to him. I stare at the glittering piece of jewelry sitting pretty on her ring finger, a veritable iceberg that definitely hadn’t been in any of last week’s pap photos. When I ask her breathlessly when she got engaged, she looks a bit startled before admitting: “two days ago.” She extends her hand out in front of her, tilting it side to side, in blatant admiration. “I keep forgetting this is new.”
I prod for details. She laughs cheerfully and runs her right hand through her hair.
“It was so great. All the BTR boys were there. Finn too. And Jo.” That is, Jo Taylor, the one-two-punch of blockbuster action star and indie movie darling. She’s reportedly been Camille’s best friend since they were teenagers living together at the exclusive Palm Woods, hotel for aspiring child and teenage stars. “James and I had both been so busy these past few months that we hadn’t been able to celebrate our anniversary together. It’ll be five years and, let me think, six or seven months. And him flying to New York every other weekend made things difficult as well. So he promised that we’d have a small get-together with all our friends when we got back from our respective shoots.
“I should’ve expected this,” she interjects wryly. “James is all about the big gestures, and anytime he has the chance to turn on the charm, he takes it. This summer, I’ve been obsessed with our backyard and patio.” For good reason: their sprawling glass house had been featured in last winter’s Architectural Digest. “I’ve been hosting as many barbecues and bonfires as I was physically able to – one of the perks of both working and living in LA. And I’d always been wanting to do a bonfire on the beach thing, I’d been talking about planning one since, like, the end of March. My girlfriends and I had kind of had one a month and a half ago, but that was more getting day-drunk on wine on my couch and forgetting to actually go to the beach.
“Anyway, so James got everyone together at Carlos’ place – he and Finn have this gorgeous place in Santa Monica – and we have this great night of dancing and eating. After the sun goes down, with the fire burning high and bright, and everyone just giddy, flushed with wine, James tells Caspar to bring out his guitar. Caspar starts playing “American Dream” by MKTO, which, I swear to God, is James’ favorite only because it’s the song we first kissed to.”
I must have let out a little bleat of contentment because she just nods and pats my knee. “Your face says it all. Yep, James Diamond is a big ol’ romantic. Then he gets down on one knee, takes this deep breath, and just starts crying. He waves the ring box in the air, and I think he’s proposing telepathically to me by this point. So Kendall does what he does best and just swoops in to help out his best friend, and proposes to me by proxy.” Camille fondly pets her ring. “James is ridiculous and forever dramatic, but now he’s mine forever, and I love that.” She looks up and grins. “But enough about James. Let’s talk about blood and murder and how I prepare for screaming scenes – that’s what we’re really here for, right?”
I can’t help but snicker, but grab my pen and poise it over my notebook accordingly. “Nice segue.”
She sticks her tongue out at me and smiles. “I just want to make sure you get a great sound-byte.”
You would have had to live under a rock to not recognize some, if not all of, Camille’s filmography. To wit, some of the highlights: her first foray into horror/thriller was as a plague victim in the surprise hit, politically bent zombie movie Patient Zero. She didn’t revisit the genre for another two and a half years, but she came swinging back into gory action in the wonderfully campy production of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, infusing the role of Charlotte Lucas with a backbone that didn’t particularly exist in the novel. She finally proved her leading lady chops thanks to the American remake of Japanese horror film Audition. Her ascent into the Final Girl archetype manifested with Fountain of Youth, a vignette film that reinterpreted fairy tales, her nameless, Rapunzel-type character emerging victorious. Then came the pulpy remake of the 1983 Sleepaway Camp, which decidedly validated her status, to fans of horror movies, as burgeoning dominator of the genre.
“No, no, I don’t think I’m being type-casted,” Camille adamantly shakes her head. “For one, the only thing that stays the same between all my characters is that we all look the same. Second, the word “typecasting” has all these unfortunate connotations of settling for a role, or for being railroaded into a career that you’re unhappy with. And I love my job. I love coming into the studio and expecting to work my ass off. I love constantly producing work that appeals to everyone.”
Her proven blockbuster track record demonstrates just how much movie-goers favorably respond to leading female actors. Notably, should both Camille and Jo Taylor simultaneously premiere movies, the internet explodes in a frothing display of excitement and glee. They purposely schedule their talk show appearances together, and they’re known to pop up in each other’s interview segments and flood their social media accounts with effusive praise of the other. These two ladies epitomize female friendship in the industry; tellingly, they were dubbed the successors to the Poehler-Fey duo.
Camille really doesn’t like the assumption that Hollywood tears apart female relationships, that the competition for a minimal number of female roles prevents women from forming lasting bonds with each other. Conspicuously, one of her most remarkable friendships is with socialite Mercedes Griffin, who is notorious for her callous, brash attitude, and flippant disregard for anyone other than herself. However, Camille has nothing but warm words to say about Mercedes and vice versa, and their Twitter exchanges are a terrific collection of a volley of quips, teasing, inside jokes, and mutual admiration. Additionally, Camille personally introduced Mercedes to her longtime partner, Caspar, another former resident of the Palm Woods.
Likewise, her relationship with her managers, Kelly and Katie, screams of women-getting-shit-done, and is firmly rooted in that enviable happy medium between “close friends” and “professionally productive group of people.” In fact, Camille was one of the trio of investors who were responsible for getting wunderkind Katie Knight’s startup Knight Industries – the predecessor to Wainwright & Knight, Inc. – off the ground. Naturally, both Camille and Jo signed their contracts with Katie even before Knight Industries’ headquarters broke ground. Kelly joined the company, and brought along all her entertainment contacts, in the midst of BTR’s slow dispersal, and boom. The birth of the industry’s best-managed, most-coveted, turns-everything-into-gold partnership.
Camille was notorious for her intense method acting when she was a teenager. It used to be a common thread of discussion whenever the BTR boys made their teenager-aged magazine rounds, their first introduction to Camille: on their first day at the Palm Woods, she stormed up to Kendall outside the Palm Woods pool, dressed to the nines in a frilly purple dress, and slapped him across the face. At the time, she had been preparing for an audition for the third installment of Cinderella Story.
She has now transitioned to less high-profile approach to immersive preparation. She can oftentimes be seen haunting public libraries, museums, and universities anytime she takes on a true crime role, or roaming the streets of Los Angeles to chat with locals, performance artists, and tourists, drawing upon that wealth of real-life inspiration. She’s become a bit of an internet sensation, regularly trending on twitter with the hashtag #CamilleSighting. Fans of hers excitedly upload pictures and videos of their brief interaction with or sighting of the actress, which are then retweeted and shared a million times over within seconds.
“I’m still a method actor, yes,” Camille answers slowly when I ask whether she still considers herself one. “When I was younger, I was definitely more aligned with original Stanislavski, with the Meisner Technique. Now – especially now that I mainly do slashers and all-out gore fests, I follow [Stella] Adler’s school of thought. She’s all about actors using context and circumstance, rather than conjuring up personal memories and experiences, to effectively produce the right kind of emotion and reaction. James definitely prefers me as an Adler method actor than a Mesiner one,” she acknowledges. “And I get less judge-y looks from the cat.”
As she deftly straddles the line between friendliest-actress-in-Hollywood and scarily-intimidating-actor-onscreen, you can’t help but cheer for her. In the industry, audience reception is second only to fan reception – with critical praise coming at a far third – and Camille will be the first to admit that she far prefers being liked than maligned.
She’s weathered a few scandals since her residence at the Palm Woods: teenybopper fans of BTR angrily recoiled when she was seen laughing and hanging out with James, solo, soon after her very public breakup with Logan; her tactile nature was the source for many supposed affairs with her co-stars; and a large majority of singer Lucy Stone’s fans still bitterly blame Camille as the reason Lucy forwent the initial transition from hard rock to dramatic dark rock, instead supposedly settling for her current indie pop-electronic niche.
“It’s going to sound cheesy and incredibly Hollywood,” Camille purses her lips here, as if mentally organizing her notes before delving forward: “but I dealt with all the negative press and overwhelming stress by turning to yoga. Well, yoga in addition to working in scary movies. You have no idea how satisfying it is to wield an axe – even if it’s pretend – or turning up the dial on psychopath,” she adds cheekily.
Indeed, Camille has gone full-on yogi. Her Instagram feed is filled with amazingly edited pictures of her posing on any flat surface available and encouraging others with inspirational mantras. She debuted her own line of surprisingly affordable yoga wear at the age of 27, and she actually moonlights as part-time yoga instructor to Hollywood en-masse. She also starred in a hysterical “Shit Yogis Say” video in collaboration with Lululemon back in 2011.
“Another way I deal with some of the negative energy is by screaming,” she adds serenely.
“Pardon?”
“I have these vocal exercises, to prepare for my roles. I basically just practice screaming and shrieking. It’s a great cardio workout, too,” she laughs. “I’m running around and around, getting into character, flailing my arms, practicing my Tom-Cruise-ing. My neighbors probably think I’m insane. It’s fantastic, though. After about fifteen minutes of that, I just sprawl out on the floor, and I feel like I’ve run a marathon.”
Hopefully, we’ll see the fruits of those efforts in Camille’s most recently wrapped project – to be released late in the fall – is a Misery reboot-slash-prequel. Much like AMC’s Bates Motel explores the development of one of filmic history’s iconic psychotic villains, Cary Fukunaga plans to do the same with the character of Annie Wilkes.
“God, I have such an appreciation for villains who don’t apologize for their nastiness. For lady villains that don’t really seem to have a reason for their insanity and bat-shit crazy, you know?” She raves, “Kathy Bates has always been a hero of mine. She’s built this impressive resume over the years, and now she takes on whatever role she wants. No questions, no qualms. She’s fantastic. The minute I found out that Cary was considering taking on the project, I called up Katie and Kelly and basically nagged them until they got a meeting between him and me,” she laughs. “Just so you know, I look crazy awesome as Annie. I’m starting promotional poster shoots tomorrow, and Kelly just emailed me the setup, and, let me tell you, I’m going to look terrific in them.”
Fittingly, her next upcoming role will be the titular character in the filmic adaptation of Euripides’ tragedy Medea. At this turn in conversation, Camille starts practically vibrating with passion. “Medea’s not a slasher, per se. All the killing happens off screen,” she jokes. Then she turns serious: “It’s an astounding Greek play, though, all about a woman who has been treated horribly, who sacrificed everything for this man-child hero. Jason’s xenophobic and, yeah, Medea was this exotic, magical woman who was responsible for his victory, basically, in his own myth. But now that he’s back home, she’s no good for him. She’s not legitimate.” She’s gesturing with her hands, and at this last sentence, she swats at an imaginary Jason sitting next to her. “Asshole.”
She rests her chin on her upturned wrist. “I am so passionate about Medea. I took a couple classes at Santa Barbara on Classical Mythology, and fell in love. And the best part about playing her? I spent three days with Helen McCrory, days of drinking coffee and talking specs and character motivations. It was the absolute best. She’s flying in next week, actually. Ostensibly, we’re getting together to talk more about our lady boners for Medea. But, really, I think we’re just going to experiment with all the sangria recipes we’ve been emailing each other back and forth.”
Published on September 2.