Photography by Andrew Eccles
Styling by Annabelle Harron
Hair by Marissa Marino
Makeup by Brett Freedman
Photographed at Casa Cody, the oldest hotel in Palm Springs
When Anna Camp bought her house in the Twin Palms neighborhood of Palm Springs in 2020, she was stepping out of a long-term relationship, seeking a change of pace and a place to renew. She’d spent time in the desert before, bewitched by the surrounding mountains and swaddling heat — and she was ready to make the region her home.
“It was the second house that I saw in the neighborhood,” she says, “and I just was like, ‘Oh my god, this is my Zen sanctuary.’ ”
Camp — who stars in the action comedy Bride Hard, in theaters June 20, and the fifth and final season of the Netflix thriller You, released in April — devoted herself to making the house her own. She installed an outdoor bathtub, twined bougainvillea over it in a decorative arch, and took up gardening. She also found herself connecting with the community’s culture of inclusivity.
Norma Kamali dress and gloves; Versace sunglasses.
“I love how wonderful and accepting [it is],” she says, her blond hair pulled back in a loose ponytail. “You feel like you can be whoever you want to be.”
That sentiment mirrors the sense of freedom that led Camp to acting in the first place. Over the course of her nearly 20-year career, beginning in theater before branching into film and television, she’s gravitated toward characters with polished exteriors belying a darker interiority — parts like Sarah Newlin, the murderous pastor’s wife on True Blood (2009–2014), and Jane Hollander, the good girl turned activist in Good Girls Revolt (2015–2016).
“Growing up in the South, I was expected to be a certain way, dress a certain way. I had to go to cotillion class … all of this restrained behavior,” she says. “It’s been a real drive for me to see what makes that type of woman, then tear it apart.”
During that period, a role in Lillian Hellman’s The Children’s Hour cemented her love of the craft. For the first time, she felt the lines flowing through her, as if on their own, as if she’d totally disappeared into character.
Video by James Aitken
“There are moments when you’re acting … when it all clicks in this really magical way,” she says. “In every role I’ve ever gotten, I think I’ve been chasing that feeling — the first time that I really let go.”
After earning her undergraduate degree at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, Camp moved to New York City, where she found an apartment in Washington Heights with four roommates and a job as a receptionist at a dentist’s office.
Within a year, she secured her equity card. Soon after, she booked a role that would change the course of her early career — in Sean Cunningham’s 2005 off-Broadway musical, God Hates the Irish: The Ballad of Armless Johnny, staged at Rattlestick Playwrights Theater in the West Village.
Charo Ruiz top and skirt; Autore Pearls earrings; Oliver Peoples sunglasses, available at The Shops on El Paseo in Palm Desert; Vans shoes.
Director Mike Nichols caught one of the performances and offered Camp her first Broadway role in The Country Girl, opposite Morgan Freeman and Frances McDormand. Playwright Theresa Rebeck did the same, quickly casting her as Clea in The Scene, at Second Stage Theater.
As Clea, Camp peeled back the layers of a character whose sunny, socialite exterior masks something far more complicated underneath.
“[Clea] appears to be this shallow, power-hungry, fame-hungry socialite in New York City,” Camp says. “The deeper you get to know her, [you start to realize] she’s the smartest person in the play.”
Critics took notice. Writing for The New York Times, Charles Isherwood praised Camp as a “talented young actress” whose “wholesome beauty [is] a perfect decoy for her character’s sly manipulations … a delightfully awful caricature of the night-crawling young women rampaging through bars and restaurants in little black dresses.”
The review marked a shift — not just professionally, but internally.
“It was the first time where I was like, ‘OK, maybe I’ve got something here,’ ” Camp shares.
Bucherer necklace with fancy yellow and white pear-cut diamonds, available at Leeds & Son | Bucherer in Palm Desert; Significant Other strapless dress.
Though she could have auditioned via video, Camp flew to Los Angeles to read in person for Pitch Perfect (2012), a musical comedy about a college a cappella group. It was a quick trip. By the time her return flight touched down in New York, she had the part: Aubrey, the group’s anxious, Type A leader. The major success of Pitch Perfect — which became a trilogy — opened doors but also nudged Camp toward a particular kind of role, the prim perfectionist.
Her resume expanded with film and television credits, including The Mindy Project, The Good Wife, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, and Jerry and Marge Go Large. Over time, she craved a departure from familiar, formulaic characters, yearning to try on parts that would push her to greater emotional depths.
She dyed her hair darker and began seeking out smaller, independent projects. In Here Awhile (2019), she portrayed a terminally ill woman who decides to end her life under Oregon’s Death With Dignity Act. In From Black (2023), she played a grief-stricken mother lured into a desperate ritual to recover her deceased child.
“They’re my favorite roles that I’ve gotten to play because they challenged me, and I got to tap into a side of myself that I really don’t get to [tap into] often,” she says.
This year, Camp appears in two major projects.
In April, she returned to the small screen in Netflix’s You as identical twins ensnared in the web of a serial killer, played by Penn Badgley. Scenes often required her to switch between the two characters in the same day — a welcome challenge.
“Anna might have had the most difficult task this season out of anybody, and she did an incredible job,” Badgley says. “She [plays the twins] not only with dramatic gravity, but [with] the necessary amount of levity as well.”
She also reunited with her longtime friend and Pitch Perfect co-star Rebel Wilson for Bride Hard, a summer action comedy about a wedding weekend gone spectacularly wrong.
Trina Turk crochet top and pant, from the Poolside Gossip collection.
“It’s very natural to play her best friend, because we’ve had all those years of knowing each other,” Wilson says. “She’s just the most real-deal, brilliant actress. … She’s always down for a laugh on set and trying a joke.”
With two decades of experience behind her, Camp is balancing studio projects with the deeper work she wants to see in the world.
“We’ve come a long way, but still, when I get scripts sometimes, it’s for the wife of the male lead, the sister of the male lead,” Camp says. “There’s just not much there for those female characters to do.”
Through her production company, she’s developing films that buck those tired molds. One, The Third Door, is a dark family thriller Camp describes as “like Succession, but in the wilderness.” Another, Heather Tisdale Got Canceled, is a comedy about a powerful Hollywood agent who gets blacklisted and must return to her hometown to sell mattresses. The projects center around complex, imperfect women, Camp says — in other words, women who are simply human.
Dolce & Gabbana top and skirt; Larroudé heels; Bucherer ring with 4.51-carat cushion-cut spinel.
Dolce & Gabbana top and skirt; Saint Laurent shoes; Bucherer necklace with fancy yellow and white pear-cut diamonds; Bucherer ring with 4.51-carat cushion-cut spinel.
“We’re people who have all sorts of emotional range and depth and struggles and flaws,” she emphasizes. “We do not have to be perfect.”
In the midst of all that movement, Palm Springs provides a welcome stillness.
Camp embraces life as a local. She keeps a running list of favorite haunts, from Bar Cecil — where her name is engraved on a plaque at the bar for ordering 10 $50 martinis — to dinner at Sandfish or Del Rey at the Villa Royale, and karaoke at Quadz in the Arenas District.
“The food scene is just wonderful,” she says. “And I’m a huge vintage clothing gal. There’s just something about going out to the desert and finding things that you would never find anywhere else.” She counts Market Market and Melody Note Vintage among her favorite spots to shop.
“Palm Springs has truly become my sanctuary,” she affirms — a place where she can dig deep, dream big, and just be. “That’s my home.”
