Extra Factor
With
Camila Mendes
Her very first role, as the headstrong Veronica Lodge in cult Netflix drama Riverdale, made CAMILA MENDES one to watch right out of the gate. As she prepares to say goodbye to the show, the actor talks to MARTHA HAYES about stepping out of her comfort zone, playing the fame game her own way, and why her latest movie, Do Revenge, spoke to her on a deeper level
Camila Mendes is describing the artwork hanging in the guest bathroom of her home in Silverlake, Los Angeles. It’s a kitsch portrait of her Riverdale alter-ego Veronica Lodge, and it makes Mendes chuckle to think of the piercing character staring down on anyone who enters. When filming of the seventh and final season of the cult supernatural teen horror wraps next year, the actor plans to take a second painting (of Veronica walking three lions) from the set as a keepsake. “That’s going in the same room,” says Mendes, looking effortlessly cool in a bright green sweater, cream pants and black Prada loafers. “I want that bathroom to be so extra.”
The irony, of course, is that the 28-year-old, affectionately known as Cami, is so busy shooting the show that she’s hardly ever home long enough to think about décor. Since Riverdale began in 2017, Mendes has been based in Vancouver for 10 months of each year. When we meet in LA, she is in town for just 48 hours – for her PORTER cover shoot and an event – before she has to jump on a plane back for filming.
“I understand that this industry is so FICKLE. Fame is FLEETING. You can be successful, but you’re only as GOOD as your last thing”
The past year has been, in Mendes’ own words, “wild and non-stop”. While anyone else might view the ending of the hit series – which made the Brazilian-American actor a global star, with 27.2 million Instagram followers to her name – as the opportunity for a well-deserved break, Mendes is doing quite the opposite. She has already filmed two major new projects, which she is executive-producing as well as starring in. But more on those later.
2022 has been about “putting all the pieces in place” and “gearing up for the next chapter”, she says – and such determination not to rest on her laurels is understandable when you consider that Riverdale was Mendes’ first acting job out of college. “I don’t keep myself busy because I don’t like being idle; I keep myself busy because I have anxiety about my career,” she admits.
“I’ve always been in that frame of mind. I understand that this industry is so fickle. Fame is fleeting. You can be successful, but you’re only as good as your last thing.”
If her last ‘thing’ is anything to go by, Mendes has nothing to be anxious about. Do Revenge, the smart and witty high-school movie she squeezed in between seasons of Riverdale last year, dropped on Netflix in September to rave reviews and Mean Girls comparisons.
Mendes initially had her reservations about taking on the project – “I was thinking, am I maybe past the point where I should be playing high-school roles?” – but soon discovered it to be so much more than a teen drama. There’s toxic masculinity, magic mushrooms and 1990s nostalgia (hello, Sarah Michelle Gellar) for a start; however, it was the role itself that proved particularly compelling.
“The idea of REVENGE is something I’ve been so interested in. I can RELATE to the feeling of wanting to get back at those who have HURT you”
Mendes’ character, Drea, is the most popular girl in school – until an intimate video is leaked online and she teams up with another classmate (played by Maya Hawke) to exact revenge on the perpetrators. “Characters like Drea don’t come around often. And they especially don’t come around often for Latinas,” considers Mendes. “So I was like, I’ve really got to take advantage of this opportunity. I would hate myself if I had passed on it.”
“I’ve also never played a character with so much depth and range. I felt like I did not have opportunities before then to really, like, act,” she says in a theatrical whisper. “That’s not to say Riverdale hasn’t given me opportunities to do that, but Do Revenge broadened the audience a little bit.
“It felt nice to play an unlikeable character, and the idea of revenge is something I’ve been so interested in. I can relate to the feeling of wanting to get back at those who have hurt you.”
“After the project wrapped, I ended up experiencing something that brought me closer to the story,” she shares. “It was something that left me in a lot of pain. The film is so relatable – not just for me, but for anybody… Anybody knows what that feeling is like to be driven by anger and resentment, and how that eats away at your soul over time, to the point that you have to find a way to release it.”
And how does she release it? “Therapy,” she says, with a wry laugh. “I think the only way to overcome those feelings is to accept them and allow yourself to feel them. What got in my way was trying to act like I wasn’t angry. People look at anger through a negative lens. Violence is unhealthy, but anger is healthy. Anger is just pent-up energy, so I do a lot of circuit training to expel the energy that it brings.”
As you would expect for someone who has spent her formative years in the public eye, Mendes is a little cautious in what she shares of herself. She was just 21 and still a student at NYU Tisch School of the Arts when she landed the role of Veronica in Riverdale. She is warmly silly, too, showing me pictures of her Maltipoo rescue dog, Truffle, and joking that she plans to shave her head after Riverdale because she’s had to keep it in the same style for so long.
Born in Virginia and raised in Florida, Mendes, the youngest daughter of a business executive and a flight attendant, welcomed the stability her first job guaranteed, having moved around a lot as a child. “Riverdale is where I feel grounded and chill; it’s like a comfort blanket – it’s my safety net,” she says. “It’s where I feel at home. It’s gonna be weird to not have that anchoring anymore.”
But, with a move into producing and two new releases on the horizon, there is little time for nostalgia, only gratitude that the Riverdale years have shown Mendes what she is capable of. “I feel like I’ve developed more of a critical brain,” she says. “The more you know [about the filmmaking process], the more frustrating it is when you don’t have control, when you don’t have a say.”
“If I woke up tomorrow and all my followers were GONE, I’m sure it would drive me insane. It would threaten my CAREER, which is crazy. We’re expected to be so much MORE than actors now”
As an executive producer, Mendes has teamed up with fellow Tisch alumni Rachel Matthews for Upgraded, “a Devil Wears Prada-esque romcom set in the art-auctioning world”, and musician Rudy Mancuso for his directorial debut, Música, about a Brazilian-American man with synesthesia.
The latter proved to be a particularly profound experience. “I was like, I can’t just be the female romantic lead; let me be the female voice of this project. I could cry thinking about it; it meant so much to me. I’ll never forget that experience and I don’t know when I’m going to get it again,” she says, referencing the lack of opportunities in the industry for the Latinx community.
“[Even] characters in movies that are written to be Latin are never Brazilian; they are always from a different country. We have a whole audience here desperate to see themselves represented on screen; why aren’t we taking advantage of that?”
A few days after we meet, Mendes shares a ‘life update’ on Instagram, appearing to confirm that she and Mancuso are more than just co-stars. It’s a cryptic but telling post from someone torn between wanting to keep her personal life private and still engaging with her millions of followers. Because, while fame is something she can certainly take or leave (“I would much rather live a life that was totally anonymous… I think fame is incredibly distracting”), when it comes to social media, it’s more complicated for a star on Mendes’ ascent.
“It feels like everyone’s competing for attention and there’s this real fear that, if you’re not relevant, if you’re not being talked about for something, then you’ll be forgotten and you won’t get work,” she explains, thoughtfully and candidly. “That’s the only value fame adds to my life. Is this somehow directly relating to me booking a job? Because if it is, then I do care about it.”
“If I woke up tomorrow and all my followers were gone, I’m sure it would drive me insane; I’d probably go into a full spiral. That’s the unhealthy thing about it. It would threaten my career and my livelihood, which is crazy. We’re expected to be so much more than actors now. We are content creators. We are influencers. It’s like you’ve got to be everything.”
“What I hate about social media,” she adds, clearly still pondering the conundrum, “is that it forces you to have a brand. I’m like, I don’t want to have a brand. But here I am, having a brand!”
A blacked-out SUV arrives to take Mendes back to the airport, and she heads off to finish filming the first chapter of her career – before continuing with the next. She might not have it all figured out yet, but one thing feels certain: Brand Mendes is definitely going places.
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