Danielle Savre – The Perfect Stalker

By: Paige Zinaman

Q) What are the recent projects that you are working on?

Danielle: I just finished a Hallmark and Pixel and Larry Levinson Productions, I just finished that and it’s a romantic comedy, but that won’t be coming out until next year. But I have The Perfect Stalker coming out on Lifetime on December 30^th and I have the second season of Tyler Perry’s “Too Close To Home” coming out, too. So, those are the two big things I have. It was nice to end the year with a romantic comedy since all my roles this year have been dark roles.

Q) What can you tease about the new season of “Too Close To Home” and with your character Anna?

Danielle: There’s going to be a lot of drama with the love triangle between Me, Brody (Brock O’Hurn) and Bonnie (Kelly Sullivan). I think that’s one thing that people are on the edge of their seats about. I go back home to Alabama to find out my sister is with my ex sweetheart. There is a lot of stuff going on with my other sister and get to see the past between the sisters. This season really focuses on the past and what the sisters went through in the past. Also, me and my daughter. They found out in episode eight of Season One that Rebel (Annie Thrash) was my daughter and you get to see who gets shot too in episode one (in Season Two).

Q) How will dynamics shift as this season progresses?

Danielle: We have five new characters this season in the trailer park that you get to see what happened with them in the past as well. The character that plays Octavia (Angela Rigsby) is hilarious so there’s also an element of humor. Tyler [Perry] adds a lot of humor to this season with Angela Rigsby’s character and Robert Craighead who plays the Sheriff. So, that was kind of nice since it is so dark and so drama filled we have a little comedy added with those two characters.

Q) Is there a moment you’re really excited or nervous about that you are looking forward to seeing fan reactions to? 

Danielle: With “Too Close To Home,” I’m always on the edge of my seat. Because we are a family and a team we are always kind of waiting to see how the fans are going to react to the new episode. I think anything in regards to “Too Close To Home” always gives me butterflies in my stomach.

Q) We’ll be seeing you in the Lifetime film The Perfect Stalker. What made you want to be a part of the film?

Danielle: I read the script and it was just really good and it was different. So many films and television shows these days are just repeats or revamps of things of things that have already been done so it was nice to read something where the woman was actually the stalker and not the man. And to play a creepy character is fun. You can be so inhibited so I read it was like I would love to play this character and dive into how crazy she really is. So, playing that was intriguing.

Q) How was Grace originally described to you?

Danielle: I sat down Pierre David the producer and he was kind of like, “I’m doing this project where this woman has HPD (Histrionic Personality Disorder),” and they didn’t have a full finished script. They were going to add changes and I loved the changes they added. He explained HPD to me because I didn’t know about it and that intrigued me a lot because I personally have someone in my life who I felt like who could kind of it, but hasn’t obviously killed any.

Q) What did you find challenging about the role?

Danielle: It was a fun challenge for me. I live in a world of actors where everyone is a little crazy to begin with, but it was interesting that he said all these elements to this disorder. I was like, “Oh my gosh!” I feel like this will be a great challenge to play the role, but I can tap into that because I feel like I know someone with that disorder.

Q) How was working on The Perfect Stalker different than “Too Close To Home”?

Danielle: Well I think anything is different from working with Tyler Perry. We roughly shoot about fifty pages a day and we shoot all eight episodes in eight days. Whereas with The Perfect Stalker, I think it was roughly seventeen days to shoot an entire film and Tyler is shooting eight episodes in eight hour episodes in eight days. That is drastically different from any set that I’ve worked on at least that’s from a technical stand point. But from to just the atmosphere and energy with the cast in The Perfect Stalker, it was really me with one other actor the entire time and we got to work together and workshop the scenes and work through that together. But on “Too Close To Home” it’s a huge family, all nineteen of us got together in this AirBnB that we rented four days before we started filming and ran scenes nonstop and it’s so much fun to dive into it to go to Atlanta and hang out with all these nineteen of us. It’s just a very family – we have a group chat going on with all nineteen of us we all just like each other a lot which is really hard to find in this industry.

Q) Since you are a part of social media, are you looking forward to the instant feedback you’ll get to the movie?

Danielle: Yes. I love it. It’s one of those things that luckily – I remember when I was on “Summerland” when it was the WB back then when people would write comments on things they did like or didn’t like. It was kind of a weird thing to read or to accept you’d always look at the negative or the positives and that was back in the day when people would post on message boards or Myspace. But now it’s so fast and instantaneous that it’s nice to get it and I can take it better. I feel like when I was a kid on “Summerland” when there was anything negative at all even if it was one negative to fifty positive ones the negative comment would stand out. And now that I’ve gotten so used to it in the world we live in, it’s so fun to interact with people and to interact so fast. If I think someone is cracking jokes about how people in “Happy, Alabama walk themselves to jail” and we can laugh at that, too. I think that stuff there to like that or retweet it or comment on something that I find funny, too. It makes it so much of an enjoyable experience because we do take everything personally, as much as we try not to like when someone doesn’t like something we do we take it personally. It’s nice to interact immediately in a very constructive way on social media. I love it. I’m a nervous wreck, but I love it. It’s like a psychological study, I love it.

Q) What do you think it is about The Perfect Stalker that will make it a classic Lifetime movie?

Danielle: Oh, I think because it’s so scandalous. I mean the fact it is different. It is the woman that’s the stalker and not the man. And I think because she is so crazy it’s a lot of fun to watch and I think that’s what it is it’s different and it’s fun. And there’s a lot of death, too. There are people dying in this one. It’s fun and I keep thinking of references like The Hand That Rocks The Cradle and Obsessed with Beyoncé and Ali Larter. It’s very much that vibe. And they are so much fun to watch and we are like, “Oh my God! I can really see a woman going that crazy!” We women always want to support each other, but at the same time we know malicious. It’s juicy and fun. People will love it and they will think my character is absolutely crazy which I can’t wait to hear about.