This was a very big summer for Emily Rudd. Not only was it announced that she joined the cast of the Amazon series, Hunters, for Season 2 and was set to star in HBO Max’s Moonshot alongside Cole Sprouse and Lana Condor, but her star also soared courtesy of the popularity of Netflix’s Fear Street trilogy.
Rudd first appears in the second film of the series, Fear Street 1978. Cindy Berman is a Shadyside resident determined to leave the troubled town behind despite the fact that her sister Ziggy (Sadie Sink) is convinced there’s nothing they can do -- all Shadysiders are doomed. The reality of their situation comes into focus for Cindy during the summer of 1978 at Camp Nightwing when the Shadyside campers and counselors are targeted by an ax-wielding killer.
Given my confidence that Fear Street is bound to become a genre classic and my sky high hopes we’ll be watching Rudd’s work for years to come, having her on an episode of Collider Ladies Night was an absolute must. Fear Street is officially Rudd’s breakout performance, but she’s kept quite busy since making the move to LA, beginning with a slew of music video credits. While retracing her steps to Fear Street, Rudd explained how she wound up getting her start in that sector of the industry:
“That was something that I actually happened to fall into. A music video was my first acting project out here in LA and at the time, I was working two jobs and I had to work the next day and it was an overnight shoot. I think I got paid $100 maybe for 12 hours of work overnight. And I was almost not gonna do it and then my family was like, ‘You literally went to LA to act. Just do it! You can sleep when you’re dead!’ And so I did it, and from that, the director really loved me and he’s used me for a bunch of other ones, the casting director for that used me for a bunch of other ones, and so it kind of became my thing. I just sort of fell into it for a good year where I was just doing music videos and it was a fun way to keep doing what I loved and make money. It ended up being a lot of fun. It wasn’t anything I expected, but I really enjoyed it.”
As Rudd said herself during our conversation, “exposure is exposure” and “experience is experience,” so it should come as no surprise that those music videos served as a valuable stepping stone to the film and television projects she’d go on to book.
“I didn’t come from a film and television background. I grew up in a very small town in half Minnesota, half Wisconsin, and I just did theater. And so I didn’t really have any experience in front of the camera and so that was a really wonderful way to sort of dip my toes in, get comfortable, understand how things work on sets so that when I actually got the bigger opportunities, the film and television opportunities, I was like, ‘Okay, I’m not completely out of my depth here.’”
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Rudd experienced that early learning curve via music videos, but honing ones craft never ends. In Fear Street 1978, Cindy experiences quite the transformation over the course of the film, and it demands Rudd take the determination Cindy has at the start of the movie to get out of Shadyside and redirect it towards saving the people she loves. The work Rudd delivers oozes with assuredness, but sometimes that confidence comes via collaboration. During our chat, Rudd brought up an example of one particular scene where a note from director Leigh Janiak made all the difference:
“The first thing that comes to mind is the scene after Alice breaks her ankle and I’m sort of unloading and being honest for the first time. I think I was reading it in a way that was a little bitter. Not necessarily towards at people, but towards myself and my own choices. And Leigh was able to bring out a softness at the end of that monologue when I talk about my sister, when I talk about sweet Tommy, and it made it less of a ‘I can’t believe I’ve done this’ the entire time’ to ‘I can’t believe I’ve done this but my heart aches for what I’ve maybe done to the people that I love,’ or what they are to me and what I haven’t acknowledged.”
How exactly did Janiak help Rudd get there? With this note:
“[Leigh] was like, ‘Feel you mean it. You mean all of these things. Ziggy was right this whole time and you know it. You’re feeling it for the first time. You’re feeling that you’re allowing yourself to connect with that sisterly bond again. And Tommy was sweet. You genuinely love these people so sink into that.’ And I think they used that take after she gave me that note.”
Looking for more from Rudd on her Fear Street experience, what it was like working on some of her earliest TV gigs and more? Be sure to watch her episode of Collider Ladies Night at the top of this article or listen to the full conversation uncut using the podcast embed below:
KEEP READING: Olivia Scott Welch Discusses Lessons Learned Making 'Fear Street' and Her Hopes the Cast Will Continue Working Together
