This week, The CW will debut the horror whodunnit competition series Killer Camp, one of four alternative acquisitions added to its summer lineup. The premise: a group of campers make their way to Camp Pleasant for what they hope will be a fun-filled summer. What they don’t know, however, is that the game they’re playing has deadly consequences.
PopWire had the opportunity to speak with Steph Harris and Bobby Mair Killer Camp‘s Executive Producer and host, respectively, about the show and why everyone involved was so excited.
As camp counselor and host of the 5-part limited series, Mair tells us his excitement was due to the love of the horror genre. At the early age of just 5-years-old, Bobby found a VHS tape, popped it in, and watched it. It was one of the first films he’s ever watched. That film: “Friday the 13th.”
“It was the most scared I’ve ever been, but nobody stopped me from watching it,” he says. “I’ve always loved horror movies.” Mair points out that Camp‘s murderer, who carries out the killer’s actions in the show, almost looks like “Friday’s” machete-wielding serial killer. “So it was really cool to kind of feel like I was in a horror movie and getting to orchestrate a daily murder. It was amazing.”
The show at its core is almost similar to Survivor, and as a massive fan of the series, that added another element that was fun for Mair to play with. “I loved Survivor growing up,” he says. “I’ve watched it for probably ten years. During the lockdown, I went back started watching Survivor again.
“Killer Camp is like Survivor except you get to just get to kill the people that are annoying,” Mair says with a laugh. “That’s what’s amazing about it — the release, the visceral release that you get. That’s really fun.”
Finding campers to eventually “kill off” was not an easy feat. Creator and Executive Producer Steph Harris explains that not only were they looking for people who fit the role and/or had the look of the different types of people you’d expect to see in a horror movie (jock, cheerleader, nerd, etc.), everyone who made it onto the show had to pass a psych test to make sure they were robust enough to take the part.
“The casting team did an incredible job at getting a brilliant cast and then due-diligence to be carried out so that they won’t freak out [when scary stuff happens] and that they were actually going to stay and play, which actually they all did. They were all game on.” When cameras began rolling in Lithuania, the contestants “knew there was going to be a twist, but they had no idea what was going to play out.”
Originally aired in the UK, Killer Camp hit television screens as a week-long Halloween special event. Making its way across the pond as an acquisition for The CW, the series will span five weeks, and while the blood and gore will remain intact, thankfully, there have been some slight “sanitizing” made for the American audience.
“The important factor is that in the UK, it was [televised] after 9pm, whereas on The CW, it’s 8pm,” Harris says. “It was really just obviously the language that sometimes we use. There are certain words obviously, that we would need to bleep. We have girls in bikinis and we had to tone some of that down just for the [early time-slot] audience. It’s not in any way edited; it’s more of beeping and blurring.”
Aside from the twists and turns to come this season, host Bobby Mair shares what he can’t wait for viewers to see. “I’m most excited for the audience to see, I would say, who the killer is. Without giving anything away, I just really look forward to people’s reactions to that.”
Killer Camp premieres Thursday, July 16 at 8pm on The CW.
