From executive producersLena Dunhamand Jenni Konner, and based on the British series of the same name that was created byJulia Davis, the HBO comedy seriesCampingfollows the obsessively organized and controlling Kathryn (Jennifer Garner), who puts together what she thinks will be a delightful camping trip to celebrate her husband Walt’s (David Tennant) 45thbirthday. Pretty quickly after arriving, this group’s bonds become tested, and the heightened emotions and tension that arise at the Brown Bear Lake campsite threaten to ruin the weekend. The series also starsJuliette Lewis,Ione Skye,Brett Gelman,Janicza Bravo,Arturo Del PuertoandChris Sullivan.
At the L.A. press day for the series, Collider got the opportunity to sit down with co-stars Brett Gelman and Arturo Del Puerto, who talked about what drew them to this material, how much fun they had making the show, how well the cast got along, the biggest challenges of this shoot, and whether they’re fans of camping themselves.
Collider: It seems like you guys must have had a ton of fun making this show.
BRETT GELMAN: We had a lot of fun.
ARTURO DEL PUERTO: We had a tremendous amount.
GELMAN: The cast was a very familial situation, but in a good way.
Was it one of those experiences where you had to remind yourself that you’re actually also working and that you need to not just goof off?
GELMAN: No. The getting along with each other was happening, but it was also a tool for us to connect with the material. I believe in socializing being an important part of the acting process and that what you’re doing, you’re carrying into what’s happening on screen. We had to do that, in order to sell that we had been friends for so long too. Luckily, we liked each other.
DEL PUERTO: We’re supposed to be friends since college – George, Walt and Miguel.
GELMAN: Yeah, so we had to majorly sell that and, in our real lives, I don’t think you would ever believe that us three went to college together. No three people could be less likely to have gone to college together, but we really bonded. The whole group did. It was also important to be able to joke around. That allowed us to feel safe to lean into that tension and discomfort that the characters are feeling. That way, you can be like, “You can go there, and I’m here for you.”
What was the appeal of this project, for you? Was it getting to work with this cast, or was it specifically the script?
DEL PUERTO: It was the group of people – HBO, Lena [Dunham], Jenni [Konner], Jen [Garner] and the actors. Everything about the project just seemed exciting and I want to dive into it, as soon as possible.
GELMAN: Ditto. I’d always wanted to work with Lena and Jenni, and to be on a show on HBO. It’s so great.
Did you find that your sense of comedy lined up with theirs?
GELMAN: I think it lined up very well. It was more in the dramedy arena, so I thought it really lined up a lot. I wasn’t writing the show, so it’s your job, as an actor, to meld with the voice of the writer and not judge it, but serve it.
Working with such strong personalities, how did you find your place among this cast?
DEL PUERTO: It was easy to find my place among the acting cast because we really all liked each other. We do have very, very different and very, very strong personalities, but that’s one of the things that made it more interesting. We’re all so different, but at the same time, we were all able to connect with each other, on a very, very deep and very generous level. It wasn’t easy to bring it to life sometimes because we were in such heightened situations, but we were all so comfortable with each other that we were able to jump into those situations and still feel that you were in a safe space, creative space.
GELMAN: I don’t think anything is easy. I don’t like people who say that anything is easy. I think they’re assholes and I think they’re lying to themselves. You can feel confidence some days, but that immediately can leave you in the next moment. It’s always a matter of your ass being on the line, in terms of whether it’s gonna be good or bad, and a lot of the time, you don’t know.
DEL PUERTO: You’ve gotta trust the people behind the camera and you’ve gotta trust your fellow actors. There was a lot of trust involved, and trust is not easy. I don’t even trust my shadow sometimes, and I’ve got a gigantic shadow.
GELMAN: It’s really weird, it’s a very over-sized shadow. We joked around a lot and did a lot of bits. It was a very pro-bit set.
What was it like to work with Juliette Lewis?
DEL PUERTO: It was really fun. I learned a lot. It was an amazing experience. She brought a lot of great ideas, and we connected really great. My character and her character have a very interesting dynamic, in the sense that we love each other, and then she gives me a little tough treatment and I have to regain her love again. My character is going through this phase of, “I’m being emasculated, but at the same time, I’m having so much sex.” It’s a real paradox there. But, it was really fun to work with her. We had a lot of fun shooting together. We bounced ideas off of each other. It was a great experience.
GELMAN: She’s the truth of the show, in a lot of ways. She’s the catalyst for all of the characters facing themselves. They might have been able to exist in this boring, automatic way, on this camping trip, but with her being added to it, it completely off-sets all of that. And for me, specifically, I never got over the fact that I was on set with her because she is one of my favorite actors, of all time. It was amazing to get to watch her work. I think that she has such a profound sense of craft, and then also has this danger and spontaneity to her. The way in which she’s able to put all of that together into a character is very special, and not many people can do that. She’s like my James Dean. She’s not that much older than me, but we were both very young when she became famous. I watched her inCape FearandNatural Born Killers, so hearing that she was a part of the show, and the getting to be on set and then become friends with her, was a real treat.
You all have a scene in the beginning where, to let loose, you all run and jump into the water. What was that like to shoot?
DEL PUERTO: It was not the most fun to film. I cut my foot. I slashed my foot with a rock or a piece of glass. I had to get a tetanus shot, the same day, which was not fun, at all.
GELMAN: He said that he wasn’t gonna get a shot, but everyone was like, “No, no, no, you’ve gotta do it. You’ve gotta go get it, okay? Get it. It’ll solve a lot of problems, if there is a problem.”
DEL PUERTO: It was just preventative.
GELMAN: Getting in water, even when you see how much fun we’re having, is never fun.
DEL PUERTO: You don’t know how much bacteria is in that water.
GELMAN: It supposedly was a clean body of water. You could see in it.
DEL PUERTO: We actually shot that the last week of filming.
GELMAN: Yeah, that was one of the last things we shot.
DEL PUERTO: If somebody would have drowned, it would have been like, “Now what are we gonna do? We don’t have that actor for the rest of the season.” You don’t want anyone to die of syphilis, or what do you get with a cut like that? Tetanus?
GELMAN: You get tetanus. Syphilis is different.
DEL PUERTO: You don’t get that on a lake?
GELMAN: I don’t think so, no. You get that from sexual intercourse.
DEL PUERTO: Really? No way!
Because there is so much craziness that all of these people are put through, was there a most challenging scene that you had to shoot?
GELMAN: The ecstasy episode was all of us, out of our minds. We all had to be upset, and that’s not easy to do. It’s exhausting to put yourself through that.
DEL PUERTO: Yeah, it’s exhausting to be upset, all day. I was shooting this scene with Juliette because we have sex in the show, and we were shooting a scene where she’s on top of me, and I suddenly felt something hurting my thigh, like if a needle was pinching me. Every time she moved like that, I was like, “Ow,” and I’d pretended to be having pleasure and fun. And as soon as we was cut, I had a red ant biting on my thigh, just going at it. It was horrible.
GELMAN: That’s awful.
DEL PUERTO: I cut my toe, a red ant bit me, and there was a rattlesnake. We were suffering for the art. It’s what we do. We suffer so much, as actors. That’s what people don’t see. They only see the fun part.
GELMAN: It’s a very hard life.
So, having an experience like this didn’t make you want to go camping, in real life?
GELMAN: No.
DEL PUERTO: Not with Brett, and not with this group of people, that’s for sure. No, I love camping. I love the outdoors. I’m a very outdoorsy guy.
GELMAN: I love the outdoors. I don’t like sleeping in the outdoors, but I love being in the outdoors. I’m too Jewish for that.
DEL PUERTO: There are no tents, no hot shower, and room service.
Would you be okay with unplugging from everything?
DEL PUERTO: I wouldn’t have any problem for five days. I actually sometimes don’t even look at my phone for hours. I’m not really that tied to my phone. But then, we would be back and have 20 missed calls from our agents going, “Where the fuck are you?”
GELMAN: Yeah, I would love to unplug and just be comfortable. Unplugging in the wilderness, and then remaining unplugged by the time I get to the hotel. I guess, if you’re in a hotel, you’re not really unplugging.
DEL PUERTO: You’re not really unplugging because you’ve got access to electricity everywhere.
If we were able to see the blooper reel from this show, what would be the craziest or silliest thing that each of you would be doing on it?
DEL PUERTO: I can’t tell you.
GELMAN: We were pretty silly. There was a lot of video on Instagram of us messing around, and I think that Juliette [Lewis] was the main component of out group effort on Instagram, a lot of the time. Every hour, we would do 10 push-ups and 10 squats, which is not crazy, at all. It’s actually really healthy.
DEL PUERTO: It’s a solidarity thing.
GELMAN: It was like this big soup of fun chaos, all the time, but we were also incredibly focused actors. There weren’t really a ton of bloopers.
DEL PUERTO: It’s true.
GELMAN: Everything always felt very focused, even when we were messing around. We were focused on how we messed around with each other.
DEL PUERTO: I also knew what each of our characters was going through, very specifically, so that was easier for us to just fall into each scene and really get good stuff out of every take. I think that helped.
With a show calledCamping, especially when it’s such a nightmare camping trip, how would you get these people back together again, to do a second season and another camping trip?
DEL PUERTO: Another birthday, maybe.
GELMAN: You never know what people can think up. Thankfully, we don’t have to figure that out, if that is something that gets figured out.
