Anna Camp has had it with bubbly blondes. “I’ve had to say no to a lot of jobs that are very similar,” she tells me, with the polite firmness of someone who’s smiled through too many brunch scenes. “Which is scary—because as an actor, you want to work. You want to live. But I’m really searching for roles that show different sides of me.”
Enter NEO-DOME—a 15-minute post-collapse thriller set in a dust-blown America where people lie, kill, and cheat just to reach a mysterious utopian dome on the horizon. Camp plays Monica, a woman in heels and a blazer walking down a desert highway like the end of a Cormac McCarthy novel… if it were co-written by the Coen brothers and shot in 112-degree heat. “It was so hot,” she says, laughing. “I’m in this suit, dripping sweat, and we’re shooting in a car with no AC, cameras inches from our faces. A lot of that tension was real. We let the weather do half the work.”
Originally envisioned as a short, NEO-DOME premiered at South by Southwest with bigger plans in mind. “I got the script from the Pfeffer brothers, and I just said—this shouldn’t be just a short. This should be a series.” Camp didn’t just take the lead role—she signed on as a producer, helping to shape the world, the arc, and Monica’s descent into survival-mode badassery.
“She presents one way,” Camp says of her character, “but by the end, you see what’s boiling underneath. She’s a femme fatale in this very dangerous world. I love playing women like that—where there's more than meets the eye.”
The world of NEO-DOME is vague in all the right ways: post-economic collapse, cutthroat systems, spiritual hunger for something—anything—better. “The dome becomes this metaphor for the next step, the ‘I’ll be happy when’ myth,” Camp says. “We’re painting a picture of how people are willing to risk everything for the hope of something better. And yeah, it’s kill-or-be-killed. But that’s kind of what we’ve been taught to do. Especially in America.”
If it sounds heavy, don’t worry. Camp and the Pfeffer brothers were aiming for Mad Max with a splash of Raising Arizona. “There’s definitely some Coen brothers energy,” she says. “The lines are wild. I think I say ‘It’s hotter than a jalapeño’s coochie’ at one point.”
That heightened tone gave Camp a chance to dust off her Southern roots—she’s originally from South Carolina—and lean into a kind of character we don’t often see in sci-fi TV. “It’s really character-driven,” she says. “It’s not all tech and lore. These are real people with real desperation.”
And it marks a turning point for Camp herself, as she shifts from waiting on casting calls to making them. “Instead of sitting by the phone, I’m picking it up. I’m pitching storylines. I’m collaborating. It’s a whole new chapter,” she says. “It’s way more work—but I love it.”
Which explains her latest moves. Following NEO-DOME, Camp will star in Bride Hard with Rebel Wilson (“back to my Pitch Perfect roots, kind of—but with action”) and in Hysteria, a Peacock series set during the 1980s satanic panic. “It’s about teenagers in a metal band,” she says. “And yes, it’s got incredible music.”
When she’s not filming in Georgia, Camp’s often catching shows—like The Lone Bellow, her favorite band. “I love the South. I’m there all the time. I’m actually in Georgia right now—I wrapped a show this morning at 5:30 a.m.”
And while NEO-DOME is still in the shopping stage, the pilot is locked and loaded—and ready for believers. “We’ve had agency interest. Producers are coming to our screening. We’re hoping to find people who want to take this further,” she says. “We’ve got the story. Now we need someone to take the leap with us.”
And if they don’t?
Camp just might build the dome herself.
