‘Pitch Perfect’ Star Anna Camp Talks ‘Messy’ Role In ‘A Little Prayer’ At Sundance Premiere

Pitch Perfect’s Anna Camp took on a serious role in the new family drama A Little Prayer, which premiered at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah.

Writer-director Angus MacLachlan’s latest film has already been bought by Sony Pictures Classics after the performances were highly acclaimed.

The story follows a family in Winston Salem, North Carolina who deal with the mundane crises of normal life. The patriarch of the family, Bill (David Strathairn) grows concerned about his two grown children – David (Will Pullen), who Bill worries is unfaithful to his wife, and Patti (Camp), who arrives unannounced after leaving her addict husband. Viewers see interesting relationships unfold between Bill and his children, as well as his wife Venida (Celia Weston) and their daughter-in-law Tammy (Jane Levy).

Camp talked to uInterview founder Erik Meers about her role as Patti at the Sundance premiere.

“It’s a story about family and about love and about heartbreak and about being brave and truthful,” she said. “It also addresses a woman’s right to choose which is also incredibly powerful and I hope sparks a lot of conversation here at the festival.”

She added that she plays a “hurricane of a character.”

“She’s a bit of a mess,” she continued. “She’s a mom. She’s doing the best that she can. I don’t know if being a mother is her top thing that she’s good at. But she loves her daughter so much and she really at the end of the day will do anything for her. But yeah, the movie kind of showcases what it means to be a mom and be a parent, and Patti has got her own way of doing that.”

Camp continued to talk about her initial thoughts on the character when she read the script.

“I was so excited because it was something very different from what I’ve played before,” she said. “And [Angus] said ‘what if Patti never wore her shoes?’ And I was like, ‘Ok I see where we’re going this.’ She’s one of those girls who just drives, gets in the car and doesn’t have her flip-flops on, it’s like a mess, there’s McDonald’s wrappers everywhere… it was freeing. I find playing messy, complex characters like that and kind of wild cards very very freeing because oftentimes I’m typecast as the Type A, straight and narrow type of girl.”