Special Report · Film year 2026

Detention (2026)

· 42 min

Special Guest
Emma Cameron
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Artwork for Detention (2026)
Detention (2026)
Special Report · The Projection Booth
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42 min
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What if detention were group therapy? Detention (2026), a quirky teen comedy from Washington State's Bainbridge Island, swaps the usual punishment for something harder: a room of kids made to talk about what is really happening behind closed doors. Writer-director Emma Cameron, who co-directed with her husband Mark Cameron and also plays the sleep-deprived Dr. Messerschmitt, joins Mike after the film's Pasadena International Film Festival screening and a summer theatrical run, just as it arrives on Amazon Prime and Apple TV. She traces the idea to The Breakfast Club (1985) and a job on a school mental-health commercial, explains why she cast 90 percent of the film in Washington, how she recast a major role two weeks before shooting, and how two nights of magic-hour light captured the final scene at the water's edge.

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Transcript

A transcript supplied by The Projection Booth.

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Mike: So that British accent in Detention is not a put-on.

Emma Cameron: No. That's funny though. Did you think maybe it was?

Mike: I did think maybe it was. I was like, I don't know why she would choose that for this particular character, but okay, it's a choice.

Emma Cameron: Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, I mean, Brits, we make good villains as well. And there's something, I was thinking about that, why did the Brits get cast as villains? And I think there's something to do with authority, with Americans, sort of feeling like that… they're a bit authoritative in the way they speak. But, anyway, yeah, I thought that went along with the character quite nicely.

Mike: Do you do an American accent often?

Emma Cameron: Yeah, I've been here 23 years. I used to teach dialect coaching at, Lee Strasberg in Hollywood, so… But I like to warm up in whatever accent I'm doing, so I'll, like, do a little improv to myself for about 15 minutes. Where I'm talking in character, and then I'll sort of go off into the lines, but yeah, I can't just suddenly… If I suddenly switch it, then there'll be certain vowel sounds that'll come out, and I'll be like, that's not right. Oh, yeah.

Mike: You've done a lot of bit of a lot of bit over the years, acting, production design, I even saw catering as one of your credits on IMDb, I mean… How did you decide that you wanted to get into this crazy life?

Emma Cameron: Right, well, it all started with ballet back in the day when I was young, and so I love being on stage, and I was really interested in ballet, so I went to, I convinced my parents to send me to a boarding school, at the age of. 13, and yeah, to do ballet. And then that kind of morphed into musical theater, which then morphed into straight acting, going to drama school in London, and then moving out to LA to pursue acting at the age of 23. And that morphed into writing content and producing. Yeah, so producing, writing, starting a production company. Where we would do short-form entertainment for commercials like Nike, Jaguar, a whole bunch of different low-budget commercials, big-budget commercials, all sorts of music videos.

I was always… I love… My love is acting, and my… And… But was, that was my real love, and still is a part of me. But I think… Just creating. I love it when I'm producing something and I'm working with a great director. I love that dynamic. You know, I'll sit… I'll feel, happy, just even, you know, when I was a PA, even when I was a stand-in, I don't care really what it is, I'm always learning from people around me. And there's always some… Genius, or some great, artist, whether it's a cinematographer, or a director, or another actor, I can… Stand near, and learn lessons, and have fun, and support them, you know? Support what they're doing.

So, it's all fun to me, just being a part of the industry, and sort of being a part of creating something is very cool, especially when. That thing you're creating, other people really believe in it, and you can spark. You can see that their. They're bringing something more. They're bringing… They're not just phoning it in, because I've definitely been on movie sets where people… Where it's just a job. But, yeah.

Mike: It looks like you worked with a Mark Cameron on detention. I'm assuming husband, but maybe brother?

Emma Cameron: Yes. Yes. Yeah. Husband. Yep.

Mike: How did you two meet?

Emma Cameron: Oh, well, so I moved to LA when I was 23, and then when I was 24 and a half, I met Mark, and we got married when I was 27. We met at what was Film Independent had an office down on Robertson in West LA. And I was helping cast a feature film, and he was helping his friends cast a commercial at the time. We were just in the same building, yeah, we met, and, he's definitely the opposite of me. In every way possible. There are… we're so opposite in, he's a Northern California surfer, blonde, And he's also… just his upbringing, very, hippie, liberal, upbringing. And his… he went to film school. He's also very artistic visually, so it's… he can draw anything.

He just says… he does a sketch, and it's amazing. So he can do his own storyboards, he can… he's very, very visual, cinematographer. He's done all positions of camera department on set. He's done all the positions in the lighting department. And it's interesting, I sort of thought about all the fact that he could… he's done half the positions on a movie set in the last 30 years, and I've done the other half. So between us, we're sort of a, you know, a movie crew. Down to even his editing. He edited for 10 years, and he's edited, He was in the Editor's Guild, so he's really an interesting cat, and I really enjoy working with him, because…

It's like you're tapping into somebody who has all these skills that are literally… you know, the opposite of who you are, and so there is conflict sometimes. It's sort of, you know… but ultimately, it's… I like a bit of conflict. It means, you know, there's always, you know, when you're working on a movie for 3 years, we worked on Detention for 3 and a half years coming up to today. There's gonna be… when you've got passionate artists, you hope that those, people are gonna fight for what they believe in. I'm. And so, yeah, it's about being passionate, fighting for what you believe in, and ultimately. It's taking a step back and sort of thinking about. Who's saying what to and do they have a point?

And sort of seeing stuff a little bit from other people's point of view as well, and seeing if this is really… gonna add to the art and the feeling behind the movie. I was very lucky to have that with my editors. And, composer. There's a lot of people who we got on really well, but they were willing to say… to sort of… to fight me on stuff. You know, in a… I say fight is a, you know, negative, but, you know… they're willing to say, listen, please, hear me out here, I really feel passionately about this, please, you know, and just really try to get their opinion across, was very… I really appreciated that.

Mike: You have to help me out here, because in 2011, at least according to IMDb, you made three shorts all in the same year. Is that true?

Emma Cameron: Yeah, that sounds about right. Yeah.

Mike: You wrote and directed or co-directed one of them, Fashionista. Can you talk about what those were about, and kind of what themes you're pursuing with those?

Emma Cameron: So I love comedy, and they all had a definite comedic. They started off as just a comedy scene, a comedy sketch, and they sort of turned into a little bit of a beginning-middle-end short film. And they were all experiences I had had. So, Fashionista was from my days at Elise Walker, which Elise Walker actually burnt down the flagship store in the Palisades. That was a really beautiful store, and it was such… Fun… Actually, they've rebuilt it now. It looks amazing. But… So that was a real glimpse into the fashion world. And it's very, you know, it's consumer, but it's also high fashion as well, mixed in there.

And, you know, there are a lot of celebrities and a lot of very wealthy people going in to shop at that store, and I was working there, and, you know, and I just felt like I really wasn't… You know, I was… I didn't know all the designers, and I would wear what I thought was sort of cool, or… And the girls in the shop would be like, Emma, what are you wearing today? Let's sort this out. Let's redress and when the customers would ask me a question, I would answer it honestly, and some people would cringe at what I was saying, like, oh, no, no, don't say that.

But, you know, and so there was, you know, the fashion world is easy to make fun of, for sure. There's, but it's, but at the same time, it's also, it's almost like art, like I'm, this store was almost like walking into a museum, when you walk around, so it was quite beautiful and inspiring as well, but anyway, that was fun, that was my little comedy sketch, Fashionista, and then the other one was, Disney, oh my gosh, okay, so I'm not sure if I'm not really allowed to say it, because I signed a contract saying I wouldn't. I would never say anything bad, but I worked for, drumroll, I worked for EuroDisney in Paris.

And I was Mary Poppins and, a whole bunch of other characters, Pluto, Rafiki from The Lion King, I was a whole bunch of characters. And I was also a dancer as well, so I danced in the parade. I had such a lot of fun, but it was… A crazy experience. I… When I first got there. I went into character and parade, and I saw, like, the white rabbit who had… His head was off.

So you see the guy, he was this good-looking Spanish guy, and he had his head under his arm, and he's screaming in French at this other guy, who was goofy, and had his head under his arm, and they were just shouting at each other, you know, and I was like, oh my gosh, this is hilarious. And it was just… It was the drama, but the fun, and, you know, dancers, and… All these characters, it yeah, we had a…

It was a great summer, but there was a lot of ridiculous things that happened, and yeah, and so the Disney is the little YouTube, comedy sketch that I did, that sort of turned into a bit of a short film, but yeah, that was sort of inspired by my… The hilarious time at working at EuroDisney. Yeah, that was that.

Mike: You.

Emma Cameron: You.

Mike: Said that you've been working on Detention for three and a half years, but when did the idea come to you? How long ago was that?

Emma Cameron: Probably 5, 6 years. I moved to Bainbridge Island, just before COVID, a year before COVID, and then I always wanted to make a movie on the island, it's very beautiful, Pacific Northwest is very inspiring here. And so, I kept driving past the high school and thinking about… Just from a producer's point of view, going, alright, if, you know, if we were to do this, and we weren't to get the funding we wanted, or we weren't to raise all the money, like, what's sort of a really easy way of making a movie with regard to low budget?

And so I started thinking about the John Hughes movie, The Breakfast Club, I was really interested in teenagers and sort of the differences between teens today teenagers back in the 80s, and sort of, do we still have those stereotypes? Do we still have those today? Or… Are they slightly different? What do they look like? What's cool? What's not cool? And what are the nuances and the differences? So I was sort of interested in that. I had some acting students that would tell me about what was going on at the high school. And I also was working on a commercial at the time where I was casting and writing, producing a commercial for a social emotional learning in schools, that…

Is social-emotional, it's SEL, it's sort of, a little bit like therapy, or sort of, helping students navigate emotional stuff, and it's a good thing. But yeah, so I was creating these, this, some content for a company, and I really just got interested in learning all about mental health. Teens. And really, what does it look like? What does that landscape look like right now? And that's what the seed that was really the seed that kind of brought the film, you know, the start of the film, at least. But obviously, in my movie, it's very different from The Breakfast Club, as because it's a completely different movie.

It's, although that sort of started as a seed and an influence, it, you see more of the backstory of the characters, and the characters are completely different anyway. There's not the… Five Stereotypes, and so… And obviously it's, sort of a quirky comedy with this whole idea of therapy instead of detention, so… But, yeah, that was how it all began.

Mike: And they leave the library quite a bit.

Emma Cameron: Yeah, yeah, I did. I got cabin fever when I was writing. I felt like I got to get out of this library, halfway through the script. I'm like, they've got to get out, you know, so, and also because I'm feeling like, wow, I'm on. Bainbridge Island, I'm in this beautiful Pacific Northwest, area, and so I really felt like, oh, it'd be great to capture some of that in the movie. That was also one of the pulls. Also, for me, I love to see a little bit more of characters' backstory. I'm really interested in people's home life. And what happens behind closed doors. So, having a bit more of a glimpse into their life was really fun.

Mike: And tell me about your casting, because these actors are fantastic.

Emma Cameron: Oh, yeah, yeah. So, that was one of the most fun parts of making the film. That was about 7 months of casting. So, I… felt like I saw everyone in Washington State. That's what it… I was… at the beginning, I thought, I'm gonna get everyone from Washington State. I'm not going to New York, I'm not going to LA, I'm gonna see everyone, and I'm gonna find these gems. And I did, I really watched all these tapes, hundreds and hundreds of tapes, and I went to all the agencies in Seattle, And in the end, we actually cast 90% of our cast and crew are from Washington State, so mostly Seattle, some on Bainbridge. And then 10% from LA. So I did have a couple from LA.

Yeah. But they… I mean, you know, with, Ricky was the ginger-haired boy who plays Corey. He… I saw him in an audition, and the very first audition I saw actually was a tape that he'd sent in. He had a mustache, and he looked older with a mustache, like, a lot older. And he was doing a play at the time, and that's why he had that mustache. So I looked at him, I thought, oh, you definitely don't, couldn't play 18, but I really loved him. I thought, wow, he's so great. I just want to bring him in for a callback because he's amazing. And like. Maybe he's got a line… maybe there's a character in the coffee shop, or maybe there's another character that I can…

I don't know, I just like this guy, I want to bring him in. Maybe the next film we do, he's in it, I. So I brought him in for the callback. And he had shaved, and he definitely looked like he could pull off 18. I was alright. Now, I'm so glad I did that, because, yeah, it's… he was awesome. And then Bianca Mariani, she plays Eden, and she… I saw her in the role, and immediately was… couldn't get her out of my head. She just came in, and she just was… the character, and she's very grounded. Bianca has this kind of earth… Earthy weight to her, in terms of… when she's in a…

I see her dynamics in the friend group when the four of them are hanging out in between takes. And she's not quiet, but she's just very down-to-earth and grounded. And like. Calming. She's a very sort of calming, pleasant, you know, in that dynamic of the four. It was very nice to have… to work with her. And then Anna, well, and Ian, so Ian's the blonde who played Nash, and Ian, Peterson, he's from LA, and he just made me laugh. The audition, he added in ad-libs mess things up and, but he is just funny.

Like he, you know, you just, he, there's so many times in that audition where I was laughing out loud, which is weird for me because I don't, you have to be really funny to make me laugh. But I just thought, oh gosh, he's going to be so much fun to work with. And I really wanted that dynamic between the boys. To. Feel like it was these boys knew each other since they were young, their best friend sort of almost brotherly, making fun of each other relationship. We really needed that. We needed to sell that. That was so important to the movie that I needed to get that casting right. I needed to get the boys right.

Or else I wouldn't have had the movie I wanted. And Ian definitely brought that, and the two of them together, just, like, bouncing off each other was awesome. And Anna, who is Mary Beth. Came to us… in a It was very stressful. I have to breathe just thinking about it, because, like, reliving it. But as I said, it took 7 months to cast, and I already had cast a Mary Beth, who I loved, and was a great actress, from LA. And it… the back and forth with the agent manager. During that time. When you're a low budget, you don't have time to go back and forth with an agent or a manager.

You're like, dude, like, I love this person, but, like, I'm wearing 5 hats right now. I have to go and rent a truck, okay? And then, I have to go and get… make sure the grip and lighting are… stuff that we're getting for cheap is coming… is being driven up at the right time, and you know, you've got a million things you're doing. And so, for an agent… to go back and forth, it was almost like… I don't know if it was a casting director told me, who was giving me some advice. She said to me, it's because she thinks… they think they have leverage, because. You're two weeks out from filming, and you don't have a signed contract.

And so, when that happens, they think, oh, you're not gonna recast in two weeks, that would be crazy. Or… but she said, but you know what? She's like, you're lucky, Emma, she gave you two weeks to recast. Like, sometimes these people, if you don't have a signed contract. You know, two days before, they ask production for an extra $10,000 for their client, because they're like, what? You're gonna go recast? I don't think so. That taught me a lot. And I thought to myself, well, she thought, you know, maybe she's gonna give us all these things, and maybe we can go back and forth I thought, no, I won't be bullied. I'm not going to be bullied. I was very clear.

I copied the actress on it, because I thought, you know, the actress is young. But she needs to know… what her representation is doing, and if she's cool with it, that's fine, but I'm… I don't feel right about it, and I'm not gonna be bullied, so… I said, peace out, two weeks before, and then I had to recast. Mary Beth. Which was obviously a major character in the movie. And Ricky, who's a Seattle actor, the Ginger Ricky, he… I called him, I said, look, you know, you've… he does back-to-back productions, you know, musicals, he does a lot of… he works with a lot of actors. I said, if this is sort of what I'm looking for with Mary Beth, do you know anyone?

And he sent me 3. Three actresses, and I… and Anna Mulia got the role, I'm so grateful that she played Mary Beth. It's so… she's so wonderful. She just did a beautiful job. What do you think? You saw it, did…

Mike: She's fantastic. And I was going to say that's probably one of the most challenging roles of the entire film. So to be able to jump in there two weeks beforehand or probably less is crazy.

Emma Cameron: Yeah, she, I always say that Anna has an old soul. There's something about her that is. I don't know, it's just I can't put my finger on it, but she's very intelligent, she's an interesting girl, and… She did a great audition, and she kind of just… You know, she's, she has a lot of. Similar life experiences, and a similar, hardships and challenges in her life that she, I felt, could draw from. That, I was really… there were a lot of, similarities, honestly. Yeah, we were lucky that she was able to be vulnerable and to… Tap into her own life and her own past and to generously. Bring that to the character. But she definitely has an element to her of… another world. You know.

Mike: With this being a low-budget production, I'm sure you don't have all the time in the world to do rehearsals, so how do you get these characters to… feel like they've been friends for so many years.

Emma Cameron: Oh my gosh, that was… Yeah, we okay, so we had five days for rehearsals, actually, which was great. But Ian was on another movie, and we… and so he couldn't come to the five days. He came to one day of rehearsal. And so I was actually extremely stressed. I was I thought how exactly what you just said, how the hell is this going to happen where they're just going to suddenly be best friends and have that chemistry? I picked up Ian on from the ferry, so we got into Bainbridge on the ferry. I picked him up, and I drove him…

he was staying in a little hotel just off the island, and before I drove him to the hotel, I said, hey, Ian, do you want to just pop by the actor's house? Because the other actors were all in a house together. And he… I said, you might… do you want to just pop by and say hi to people? He said, yeah, yeah, all right. So, we popped by the house, and I said, do you want to… do you want to hang out, and I'll go buy everyone dinner? He said, yeah, great. So, Ian said, and… He, they chatted it up. I went off to go get my favorite Vietnamese, takeaway, which is so good, such a good Vietnamese place on Bainbridge.

Anyway, a side note, and I came back with this yummy, takeout food, and they were all just chatting it up and laughing and yay, and I was like, oh my gosh, okay, phew, they're getting on, this is great. I gave them the food, and then I left. He said, oh, don't worry, Ricky's gonna drive me to the hotel, it's all good, you can go, don't worry about it. I'm like, great. So then the next day, it's just like they know each other, you know, they're just chatting it out, they just became, the four of them, inseparable. They became instant friends, they're even friends to this day, they have a group chat, they support each other, they go to…

Ian flies up from LA to Seattle to see Ricky in a play, and they're all just… supporting each other, and just very tight, very good friends, so I just lucked out. I just couldn't even believe it.

Mike: That's incredible. I know you've already had challenges before the cameras even roll, but what's your biggest challenge to solve while you're actually making the film?

Emma Cameron: Biggest challenge while making the film? I think the idea… well, a couple of things. One is this idea of making our day. So, I was always, at the beginning of the day, a little bit stressed, because I thought, I don't know if we're going to make our day. And if we don't make our day. We've got to come back for another day, and I don't have that in the budget. So it's literally just coming out of our bank account, and that is so stressful. So that was my beginning of my day, was always like, are we gonna make it? Are we gonna make it? And honestly, we did 3 takes per setup, moving on. 3 takes, you know what I mean? And so there wasn't…

we got through stuff very quickly, and the actors were on it. They knew their lines back to front. They were rehearsing in the house. You know, when they were at home, in the house, you know, making dinner and whatnot, they'd be rehearsing their lines, and so they just they knew this back-to-front, this material. And also, they were just chill. They were on… you know, in between takes, they wouldn't leave, they would just hang out there and chat, and so you… we almost had stand-ins, you know, to do the lighting and stuff, and so things just moved really quickly, which was great. But challenges, I suppose, Mark Cameron, my husband and co-director, he was very much hands-on with Peter Soto.

And Peter's our cinematographer, and so the two of them really worked on the shot list in getting things efficiently done, but I think the challenging part for them was the water. And just it being very cold and also just challenges with working with water and the tide, being aware of the tide, where to put the camera. The sandbags and having the special table. They had a table that they rested the camera on, which was about an inch from the water, the surface of the water, to get the camera close to the water. To have that. That angle, at the end of the movie. So… and also just working, you know, outside at magic hour, and going, we have, for the most important.

Most emotional shot scene of the movie. We have 45 minutes. The sun, the top, the clock is ticking, the sun is going down, you know, and so that was a lot. Of stress and pressure. But. Mark and Pete worked seamlessly. On that, and it… we got it in two nights. So we filmed one night, magic hour, and the next night, magic hour, so it's 45 minutes per night. And we got enough footage to make that work, and it really probably one of my favorite scenes of the whole movie.

Mike: Oh, it's a great way to end it's a perfect shot. When did you get to see this with an audience for the first time?

Emma Cameron: Oh my gosh. The May… the big thing was in Hollywood. When we went to the Pasadena International Film Festival, in April, had maybe 200 people in that audience, and I was outside the movie theater, you know, bustling around, making sure everyone was in, and, you know, the… my VIPs had their free tickets, and everyone had been, was in their… at their seats, and I was about to come take my seat, and I walk in, and I realize that, like, all the seats are taken at the back. And in the middle, really. And there was just one seat left, and it was next to this…

very important agent who I had invited, I was like, great, I've got to sit next to the most important person here. I'm like, oh, no. But it was… and I was just so nervous, but hearing the laughter. Just everyone was just laughing a lot. I mean, there was a lot of… I thought it was very quirky comedy, and I thought, oh, I don't know if Americans will… I don't know, it's just sort of this… that kind of quirky, uncomfortable, sometimes, humor that is not Baboom Ching humor. It's not really, you know… So I thought, I don't know if people are gonna really find it that funny, but there was so much energy in that room, and so much laughter, and it was beautiful.

It was really a beautiful experience, lot of adrenaline, and also just a feeling of, wow, people liked this. Like, people cried at the end, and people connected with it. This is kind of… This is crazy. And I'm still in disbelief, to be honest. I've had a whole theatrical run this summer. And Pete, the audience are connecting, but I… It's a strange feeling. Where I always feel like. Oh, well, maybe that's because of this, or maybe that's because it's a theater and it's live, or maybe this, maybe that, I don't know. I can't quite absorb it, that it's really affecting people, so… I don't know what that's about, but I'm also enjoying it as well. I think it's just surreal.

Mike: Well, yeah, to see something that you made and cared for and nursed to health over years and years has got to be quite an amazing experience.

Emma Cameron: Yeah, it's quite an epic… It's quite an epic experience, and walking into a movie theater. And seeing the popcorn, and seeing, you know, the lights. And seeing the audience buying their tickets and all of that is so, wow, it's just, I've been standing at the back of some of the, screenings that we've been having and listening, and, some of the audience members are being very open at the end, especially the older people who don't care as much as with being cool. They'll… like, some older gentlemen from the… who are seniors came out, and they would… been crying. And they told me they'd cried a couple of times. I was like, oh, that's so, you know, that's so lovely.

So, anyway, it's been just a joy to watch it with an audience, for sure. Yeah, and just to hear stories, because it's always interesting, like, hearing from the audience, like, who they connected with. Because it's not… it's different for everyone. It's not the same characters, it's… Due to the backstory and the characters, what they're going through, they'll connect with, you know, different characters all the time because of it reminds them of their sister or this reminds, you know, this character reminded them of their dad. And so that's difficult to watch, or you feel for the character more, you know, just differences. But, how about you? What was your, sort of. Connection.

I mean, you mentioned Mary Beth, I think hits home for a lot of people with what she's been through.

Mike: Yeah, absolutely. And there's such a mystery about her as far as why is she dressing like that? Why is she acting like that? So she was the one that really held my interest through the whole thing. Not to say that the other characters didn't. I really appreciated the Eden character as well and all the struggles that she was going through. On with at home. So, yeah, the very, very compelling characters.

Mike: What is next for the film and for you?

Emma Cameron: For the film, we go to Amazon Prime and to Apple TV on October 22nd, a few days' time. And then it's there for a while. I think that we might be possibly on Fandango, possibly other places as well. It's probably gonna go to other platforms, but those are the first platforms to have the movie. Will… I'm writing… I'm almost finished with the next movie, the next script, which isn't a sequel, but has a sort of sequel feel to it. Definitely is in the same… World. It lives in the same world. As detention. And so that's exciting. I'm loving that. I'm loving the writing, and… Visualizing all these fun scenes.

So I'm sort of, still in the world of Detention, because I'm still, you know, promoting it, we just finished our last theatrical screening. Last week. So, yeah. My husband, Mark, is writing, he's writing a sci-fi, and yeah, we don't know what the next movie will be, but it's exciting to have this one out there, you know?

Mike: Yeah. Will there be the continuing adventures of Dr. Messerschmitt?

Emma Cameron: I don't know, maybe. That's funny, yeah. I was thinking a, like a spin-off show with, doing group therapy every week and having different characters. That would be kind of fun, like a TV show or something on that. She's so fun to play. I love, kind of, being a bit of a basket case, and yeah. And, like, sleep deprivation and all that, I'm like, yeah, I can channel this. I can do this, because I definitely can relate to some of Dr. Messerschmitt's, characteristics for sure, just with a sleep deprivation postpartum when I had my baby and, like, all of that stuff that it does to you, but yeah, it was fun also, like, the sort of… making fun of those cliche therapists, so yeah.

Mike: Were you in it because you knew the character so well, or just because you're the cheapest actress to hire?

Emma Cameron: That's a good question. Actually, well, so when I wrote it, I thought, here's a win-win. I love this character. I want to play the character, but I have a business issue. Head on me, and I'm trying to make this movie and sell the movie. So I thought to myself, do you know what? I'm going to make a list of my favorite comedic actresses, and I'm going to reach out to their agents. And send them an offer, one by one, down the list. And if I get… if someone says yes, that's a dream come true, because I'll get to work with my, you know, these legends. And if nobody says yes, it's also a dream come true, because I get to play the character.

So it was a win-win. And yeah, the offer didn't really have enough zeros on the end of it. So, I don't even know if these offers even made it to the clients. But I'm happy with the outcome, so… it worked.

Mike: That's wonderful. Is there a place online for people to keep up with you in the movie?

Emma Cameron: Oh yeah, thanks for asking. So yeah, it's, there's a website, which is DetentionTheMovie.com, and there's an Instagram, which is a little bit more difficult, which is Illuminare Productions, which is my. Production company. So that's Instagram is Illuminare Productions, and then my Facebook is Detention the Movie, but if you just go to DetentiontheMovie.com, you'll see them all there, and you can choose which one you wanna… Follow.

Music credits

  • "Detention" by GusGus (from Attention, 2002)

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