Fall of the House of Usher Actress Kate Siegel Talks About the Backstory She Came Up With for Her Character Camille
The Fall of the House of Usher premiered earlier this year in October on Netflix. The miniseries is directed by Mike Flanagan, who is known for his body of work in the horror genre like The Haunting of Hill House, The Haunting of Bly Manor, Hush, and Midnight Mass, to name a few.
Actress Kate Siegel who plays Camille Usher in the series recently spoke to Collider about her character. Though she appears in only 3 out of the 8 episodes of the show, her character arc is highly interesting, unique, and intriguing. Siegel revealed that there was a lot more to the character than what we got to see in the show, where the actress had to come up with her own backstory for Camille. She added that though she came up with the little details on her own, the character is such that the ending just brings it all together, in the most sensible way.
Siegel says that she believed that “Camille and her family were Roma, and Roderick Usher came across them one time near Spain and slept with my mom.” She shifted to first person while talking about Camille, and went on to say: “I grew up in that way. I was a little bit of a con artist kid and doing all of that, and then I found out when I was 18 that my dad was Roderick Usher, and he asked me to come be with him.”
Seigel imagined the mother to have reacted with something like, “‘18 years ago, I slept with the devil. If you are going to this man… you are making the choice to go be with the devil and I wash my hands of you,’ and, ‘What will happen to you?’”, to the idea of Camille moving in with her father. However, it ultimately boils it down to the fact that at the age of 18, Camille was “enticed by the money.” Siegel added, “I was just this wild kid, so I left. And that’s sort of why when the monkey is about to rip my face off, I get it, because I was like, ‘This was inevitable.’”
As for the death sequence, where Camille gets her face ripped off by a monkey, Siegel says that she got the ending that her character deserves. “It’s such a weird structure, so that ‘fuck it, I got mine,’ has to be absolutely angelic almost, like true acceptance and a true understanding that she got the information she needed about her sister and that her sister was messing with those chimps, and she was right, and that was it, but this has to happen and there’s no other way.”
Based on the works of Edgar Allan Poe, this Netflix miniseries has been very well received in the time that it’s been out. IGN’s Amelia Emberwing rated the show a 10 out of 10 in their review, writing that “There’s not a moment where The Fall of the House of Usher doesn’t shine”.
Continue Reading: The Fall of the House of Usher: Biggest WTF Questions and Ending Explained
