Killer Camp Season 2 interview with Camp Counselor Bobby and EP Ben Wilson

Killer Camp Season 2 has officially premiered. A new game is underway! After the show’s first season wrapped, The CW commissioned a second season, so this time around it’s a CW original, meaning more episodes and more campmates!

1428 Elm chatted with Bobby Mair, a stand-up comedian in real life but plays Camp Counselor Bobby in both seasons of Killer Camp. Ben Wilson, one of the show’s creators and executive producers, also joined our chat. We discussed what fans should expect from the new season, the making of those terrifying campfire stories, and whether Killer Camp could continue for several more iterations!

Killer Camp Season 2 interview with Camp Counselor Bobby and EP Ben Wilson

1428 ELM: What’s it like seeing this show sort of gain a new life on The CW versus when the first season started on ITV?

BEN WILSON: We’re so thrilled to have the show back on the air again and on The CW is such an exciting opportunity. The first [season] went out last year, which we made for the U.K., and The CW picked it up. They showed the U.K. version, but [Season 2] is The CW’s version.

We feel like we learned a lot from the first year. It’s an exciting opportunity to get to do it again and take all the stuff we wanted to do the first time we get to do this time. We get more episodes, more campmates, and I hope Bobby will agree, but more hilarious, over-the-top, brutal deaths. It’s everything from the first season ramped up to 11.

BOBBY MAIR: We have a mostly American cast this year. That’s been great. I think on-camera, they’re a bit more willing to embarrass themselves. I would say it’s written like an American horror movie with the quintessential jocks, cheerleaders, and nerds.

BEN: In the first year, we allocated these stereotypical roles to everyone, partly to differentiate everyone and make it clear who everyone was from the off. But this year, we have real jocks, real cheerleaders, and that was exciting. I’m an Americana obsessive, American horror movies and high school movies, so it was amazing getting to work with the real thing this year.

1428 ELM: Those tropes are a significant aspect of the classic slasher films, so it’s fun to see them included. 

BEN: Right, and we sort of play against and play with them. It’s a nice shorthand getting to know these people pretty quickly, and those expectations might not be fulfilled how they think they will be or might be completely what they think they will be. It’s nice to play with people’s expectations.

1428 ELM: This season wastes no time jumping into things with a couple of bold kills in the premiere. How fun was it to bring back the campfire and tell those “scary stories” at the end?

BOBBY: In terms of the campfire stories, I would say a lot of that is Ben and the team. Then they give them to me, and I make sure it’s in my voice and maybe add a couple of jokes. It’s definitely their vision.

BEN: I think Bobby is underselling his role in those. It’s absolutely vital. He does far more than that. Obviously it is a big team effort, but from the first time we met Bobby, or I met him, I think we got him to read one of those stories in the audition, and he nailed it. I don’t know if you’d agree Bobby, but it’s almost like your stand-up, or parts of your stand-up, an intense performance.

What he does onstage makes him so great at these bombastic, over-the-top stories. They’re so much fun to write and also for Bobby to tell. And seeing the campmate’s faces as he lays into them and tells the story, making them jump and squirm and squeal, and sometimes laugh, it’s every single emotion bared. It’s always a highlight watching him perform those.

BOBBY: I would also say, without giving anything away in the second season, in the first season, there are moments early on when I’m telling those stories, and people are actually sobbing and crying. I felt a twinge of guilt the first time they cried. Then the second time they cried I realized, oh, they’re just going to cry, and I’m going to scream in their face while they cry because it’s a horror movie! And they’re okay. We have lots of checks to make sure everyone is okay off-camera. But the cast gets really into the game.

BEN: And they don’t know who’s coming back throughout the whole season. They’ve got skin in the game. They’ve got a vested interest. They want their friend to come back or their enemy to not come back. Their emotions are at play.

On filming them, Bobby tells the story during the main week, and then we shoot all the murder sequences after, during a week of night shoots. And that’s every filmmaker’s dream, shooting four nights of gory deaths with brilliant practical special effects and an amazing Lithuanian effects team. It puts me in mind of Evil Dead 2 making of [featurettes]. It’s all really practical.

We embrace that ’80s aesthetic in everything. It gives it a visceral—not homemade because we do want it to look good—and tangible quality toward the blood and the guts, which I think is sometimes missing from modern horror movies. You miss seeing the old-school effects.

1428 ELM: I imagine that doing a show like this, you get asked a lot if you have any favorite horror movies, specifically slashers, but since Killer Camp Season 2 is technically the “sequel” season, do you have a favorite horror movie sequel? I know you just said Evil Dead 2, Ben, but are there any others?

BEN: Evil Dead 2, oddly I probably watched it when I was too young, and it stayed with me. I think what Sam Raimi brought to it, and Bruce Campbell is the comedy and humor, mixing humor and horror. They are such close bedfellows. That’s all our goal, and that’s what Bobby brings to the show in spades, is making it funny.

BOBBY: I like scaring people, but I don’t really like being scared. With that said, when I was like five years old, I think I saw the second Friday the 13th movie, and that left a lasting impression of fear. So when I see Bruce in that mask, I find it chilling and terrifying. So I would say the second Friday the 13th, because it really left an impression on my soul.

And now, getting to be a part of the people scaring and killing, rather than being afraid I’m going to be killed feels great. I feel like I’m on the winning side now.

1428 ELM: Do you think this show could keep going for several more seasons?

BOBBY: Yes.

BEN: [Laughs] A quick answer.

BOBBY: Yes, definitely. The farther along we go, I have ideas for murders for another season, and I’m sure Ben has way more than I do. At its base level, this is a show about human dynamics, it’s a murder mystery, and you can do a murder mystery over and over again. I think there is scope for Seasons 3, 4, and 5.

BEN: Like the best horror movie series, we can keep going. Ideally, we won’t end up in space. We’ve got so many more murders, more stories, more twists, more killers, fewer killers, I think we can keep it going.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

New episodes of Killer Camp Season 2 air Sunday nights on The CW.