Olivia Scott Welch on “Fear Street,” Horror Tattoos, and “Panic” Season 2

Fear Street star Olivia Scott Welch has a pretty iconic first childhood memory: visiting a witch museum in Salem, Massachusetts with her family. That moment kicked off a lifetime love of the horror genre for the 23-year-old actor, one that has manifested in multiple horror movie-themed tattoos and spooky creative projects of her own.

In Netflix's new horror trilogy, adapted from R.L. Stine's novels, Olivia technically plays three characters: high school cheerleader Sam in 1994, early American settler Hannah Miller in 1666, plus a zombified Sam in the first and third films. Each of her characters is drawn to the ones played by Kiana Madeira; Sam and Deena are recent exes forced into a wild adventure, while Hannah and Sarah Fier face down demons together in 1666.

Directed by Leigh Janiak, the films take special care to subvert tropes and make people of color and queer people the center of the narrative. And that's part of what makes the trilogy so fun for Olivia, who is an expert in the genre but also someone who loves movies that mean something, that feel inventive and fresh.

Below, Teen Vogue talked to Olivia about her favorite horror references, those iconic tattoos, and why some of Fear Street's scariest moments come from what's really going on the world. (Plus, her starring turn in Amazon's Panic, and her dreams for a potential season 2.)

Teen Vogue: I was talking to Kiana earlier, and she was saying you're a horror super fan. What do you love about the genre? What are some of your favorites?

Olivia Scott Welch: It just literally is something that was always such a big part of my life. My parents are big, big movie fans and they love horror movies and they would show me everything. I remember watching them as a kid and being like, "These are so scary, but they're so fun, and they're so colorful." And also there's women always at the center of them. Then as I've gotten older, I just think they're so creative and thoughtful. They resonate so much inside me. Deep down my first memory ever that I can recall is being at a witch museum in Salem, Massachusetts. I think something inside me is just inherently kind of spooky. It feels so homey to watch a scary movie.

TV: I saw that you have some tattoos based on horror movies.

Olivia: Yes, I do. I have a Shining one. I have a 237 that I stick-and-poked on my own ankle. Then I've got an American Psycho one with McCabe [Sly], who was in 1978 and plays Tommy [and is also in 1666]. We became super close and bonded over American Psycho, would recreate scenes in our 1666 Pilgrim outfits from American Psycho. After we wrapped, we got American Psycho tattoos and mine says, "bone," and his says, "meat," from the crossword puzzle scene.

TV: Love that. Were there any specific characters you were inspired by or channeling with your characters in these movies?

Olivia: Heather Langenkamp, Nancy in Nightmare on Elm Street was one that I felt... she just fits the archetype of what Sam's archetype is, this good girl and this cheerleader, sweet homecoming queen type character. Leigh Janiak, our director, really wanted us to take past horror movies and the stereotypes from them and then subvert them in our movie. She to me felt like the perfect, all-encompassing, sweet good girl character. Then also the main character of Possession, which is a 1981 movie from Poland. It's the way in which she loses her mind in that movie, I pulled for the last half of 1994, where Sam gets possessed.

TV: Yeah, I was going to ask — what was the best part of playing the possessed version of Sam? It seems like it was a lot of grunting, a lot of movement.

Olivia: As an actor playing that, it was so fun… someone in an interview the other day was like, "You technically played three characters in the trilogy. You played Sam and you played Hannah and you played a possessed Sam." And I was like, "Yeah." I was so happy that someone caught on because that's really how we treated it and how I treated it playing her, because I was like, this is a person. She becomes a different entity. Getting to do all the movement and work and all the grunting and breath, it was very... there was a lot of relief in that. I was like, I get why people do breath therapy. It just felt so nice.

TV: What did you think when you first read the script and saw how this story unfolds over these three different time periods?

Olivia: I remember being so blown away. I read them all in one night. They're so well-written and the third one especially, the ways it ties everything up and the things that are unveiled... You've seen the third one, right?

TV: Yes, I have.

Olivia: I didn't want to spoil everything for you, but, yeah. I remember reading where it's... you find out that Nick is the devil and then it cuts and it says, "1994 Part Two," and it cuts back and it's them alone in the woods, and Nick drives up. Leigh and I were talking the other day, we were like, "That's the scariest moment in the trilogy." When you realize that the cop is the bad guy and then these two kids are alone in the woods. I just remember being like, these movies are so incredibly smart. It makes me so excited because I love a smart horror movie.

TV: Yeah, I feel like that's part of the fun of horror movies for me is that they always have so much symbolism and there's always a real world reason why this is happening underneath the wild horror of it.

Olivia: And that's what I liked about these. These movies are so smart in the ways in which they're horror movies and so scary and graphic and cool. But then there's so much that they've put in there. They're just really good movies. I feel like that's what movies should be. They should just be such good movies that they inadvertently say something. There's so much… like the sheriff is the devil.

TV: What was it like getting to play Hannah in 1666 and contrasting that with Sam in 1994?

Olivia: We drop in on Sam and Deena, and they've recently broken up. Kiana and I sat down and we found so much of their character together. We wrote out what made them fall in love and what made them break up, we just mapped them out and tried to round out our characters together, which was a really cool experience. She's a giving and lovely actress, she was such a great partner as an actor and making that story. Then when we got to the 1600s and you see them falling in love for the first time we were like, "This is so sweet," because we haven't gotten to see them like this before. Also it's a thing where when you come back to Sam and Deena, you've seen them fall in love and you see them in the sweetest moments of a relationship, and then you want them to figure it out so much more after the 1600s.

TV: I talked to Kiana about this too, but the plot line in 1666 about the guilt that especially Hannah feels really stuck out to me as a queer person. What was it like portraying that and seeing how difficult that was at the time, but also how difficult it is now to be out? What were you thinking while acting that out?

Olivia: Doing those scenes was so heartbreaking. I grew up in Texas and Texas has got its pros, but it definitely is a place where I've seen that and grown up with that and felt emotions like that. It's devastating and it's really detrimental to your development growing up. It's something that I think is a huge problem. Hannah is like, "Oh, because I am just trying to live my life in the ways that I [want]… to be myself in the world is summoning the devil," in horror movie terms. That is a thing that people feel and that kids feel and teens feel. That's so horrible. Doing those scenes was the most devastating thing in the world because I was like, “Yeah, I've felt like this. You've felt like this.” You know what I mean? It's such a suppressive thing that I think is truly one of the most toxic things that we have in modern American society, and also society as a whole.

TV: There are so many gruesome deaths in these films. Which was the most intense to see or the most memorable after filming all three of them?

Olivia: I think the bread slicer death in '94. It's so funny having seen the movie come out because I would say 50% of the things I've seen on the internet about the movie are just about that bread slicer. I'm like, I knew this would be iconic. When we were filming it, I was like, "Julia [Rehwald], this is going to be iconic to the horror genre." As someone who's seen every horror movie, this one is a top 10 for me. Then I would say the hanging scene is memorable for a different way. I think the 1666 portion of the last movie is one of the most... I sobbed watching that movie. When she dies and when she gets hung, I was crying. I was like, "I filmed this. I was there," but it just hit me so hard. I think that one's memorable in a way where it's like… this was a real thing that happened and it's super messed up.

TV: Thinking of the legacy of these movies as a horror fan, where do you think this will fit in the canon of great horror?

Olivia: I hope that people remember these. When we filmed them, they weren't going to be on Netflix. They were just going to go into theaters. Then through the pandemic, Netflix acquired them. All of us when we were filming were like, "Maybe 100 people will this movie, but we hope that they all love it." That's where we still hope it resides, in that cult classic genre. I think that they're so fresh to the genre and they've got so much to say and also are so cool.

TV: You recently starred in the Amazon show Panic, and it's interesting to parallel Shadyside to the Texas town in Panic. In both you have these teens who are stuck in a world they can't get out of, they have to go to extreme measures to live and succeed. How are you thinking about these two projects in relationship to each other?

Olivia: Watching Fear Street back, there are so many similarities. I think it's funny because like Leigh Janiak hired me for the Panic pilot, and they had done a lot of work on Fear Street already. I think that's just maybe a message that's important to her, and in turn, has become something that I feel very passionate about. The narrative of specific towns and areas in America, you know what I mean? The suppression of youth in those areas. It's been cool because I think it's just made me really aware and also it's something that I always felt like being from Texas. It just woke me up to the actual changes necessary and what putting messages like that out there means.

TV: What would you want to see from a Panic season two if there was one? Would history repeat itself?

Olivia: Oh my gosh. I've thought about this so much because it's so big already that I'm like, where would they even go? I have no idea. Ray [Nicholson] and I have talked and we've been like, "Do you think we would be together? Should we be together in season two?" We don't know! Jess [Sula] and I really want to go do something crazy just the two of us. We really want a bottle episode of Natalie and Heather just being friends.

I truly am not a writer in the sense of stepping into a world that big and being like, here's where we're going next to keep it realistic. I've just come up with funny one-off episodes that I would like to personally direct. Mike [Faist] and Ray really want me to direct an episode where they get lost in the desert, just the two of them. They've pitched it to me three times. I'm like, "If you can get Amazon to approve this, I am so on board."

TV: What kind of projects do you think you would want to do next? You mentioned directing, are there any horror movie projects you would love to work on in the future?

Olivia: I've got two really incredible writing partners. We've written a bunch of movies and I feel very passionately about new and fresh stories, as pretentious and filmy as that sounds. But I love seeing movies that have just come out of someone's brain and aren't based on anything. Having these two writing partners in my life has been such a blessing because we just come up with stuff that's not based on any existing IP. We've got this great spooky movie. We decided the other day that there's three types of scary movies or horror movies: spooky, scary and eerie. Tim Burton is spooky, M. Night Shyamalan is eerie, and The Conjuring is scary. We're saying that this is spooky movie, and it's about a brother and a sister who get into a really wacky situation.

But yeah, I saw Zola last night and that was something that I felt was really inspiring. I was like, "This is such a cool movie." They did whatever they wanted. They told this story with such bravery in the filmmaking and the acting and the storytelling. I just love movies like that.

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Want more from Teen Vogue? Check this out: Fear Street's Kiana Madeira on Queer Stories, R.L. Stine, and “After We Fell”

Originally Appeared on Teen Vogue