Anna Van Patten isn’t the first of her clan to appear on a hit TV show. She comes from a Hollywood lineage dating back more than half a century, to the days when her uncle played the hilarious father Tom Bradford on ABC’s relentlessly wholesome family drama. Eight is enough.
The difference of course is that unlike Anna who just made it trance For the first time on May 3, Dick Van Patten never had to work the pole at a desert strip club called the Silver Slipper. The closest he ever got to transgression was looking at his newspaper for a disapproving look when one of his TV daughters came home after curfew.
“I’ve never actually watched an episode of Eight is enough“I mean, I’ve seen little clips,” Van Patten, 27, admits. I know it’s embarrassing.”
There’s a good chance you’ve seen Anna before, maybe even in full episodes. Last year, she shared screen time with her older sister Grace on Hulu’s The twisted tale of Amanda Knoxwhere Grace played the main character and Anna played – appropriately enough – her younger sister. Before that, she had a recurring role gossip girl, Part in the 2022 horror movie Al-Haiba Mastered And sometimes she made one-off appearances on shows like Law & Order SVU and FBI: Most Wanted.
Appearance on tranceHowever, he is the type that definitely gets noticed. She plays Kitty, the new Silver Slipper stripper whose harrowing encounter with a trio of customers in the dance room adds another dimension of discomfort to the show’s unusually provocative plot.
A few days before the episode dropped, TIt’s The Hollywood Reporter I sat down with Van Patten to ask her about filming that difficult scene, what it was like growing up with Grace — and with her father, famed TV director Tim Van Patten — and what she learned about life from “Uncle Dickie” (“He would take me to the racetrack…”).
for you trance Debut – There’s some rough stuff in there. How difficult is photography?
I’m lucky I’ve never been in kitty mode before, but yeah, it’s been tough. It’s sad and dark, but it serves a purpose in the larger story. Fortunately, there were a lot of people who supported me through it. There was an intimacy coordinator, and I was surrounded by the crew and actors, and everyone was very sensitive. So, I felt like I could go into a dark place and put myself in Kitty’s shoes. Then I came home, took a shower and washed it.
Did you do a lot of preparation for the part? How did you learn to pole dance?
I’ve never been to a strip club in my life. But I always wanted to try pole dancing, so when I got the call back, I started taking pole dancing lessons. I think I kind of showed the part through those lessons. And then, when I heard I got the role, I was in Budapest, so I went to a club there and tried to ask the girls questions. There was a language barrier, but I got a lot of inspiration.
Last year, I worked with your sister Grace On The twisted tale of Amanda Knox. How easy is it to play your sister’s character’s sister?
We are completely different types of sisters [than the Knox siblings]. We had a big fight scene where I had to scream at Grace and it felt surreal to shoot because Grace is really tough, and our real-life fighting style is very different. I mean, when we were growing up, we got into fist fights.
Who will win?
I started doing this after I got taller. But Grace has a very strong upper body. I have a strong lower body. So, it really depended.
Of course, you’re both daughters of Tim Van Patten, who doesn’t get enough credit for inventing modern prestige drama. Take out more The soprano Episodes from everyone else. He did game of thrones The pilot and a bunch of other episodes. The wire, Rome, Boardwalk Empire. Did you spend most of your childhood on the television stage?
The visiting groups were my favorite thing. He would bring us and say: “Go explore, do whatever you want.” And we would go to these sets from ancient Rome or the 1920s and just kind of play. Even just watching movies with my parents is very educational. He gets very excited when we show old film and says, “This was shot this way and that was shot this way.” It’s very fun.
Have you ever acted in anything that your father directed?
I auditioned for my dad’s shows – I even auditioned for a part Boardwalk Empire. But I wasn’t cut out for it. But my dad helps me with my audition tapes all the time. He will be very excited about the camera angles and movements. He’d be like, “Look directly into the lens,” and I’d say, “No, they tell you not to do that!”
Wait, you were rejected for parts by your father?
I didn’t have to audition for it, but I almost got in game of thrones pilot. There was a dead girl hanging from a tree and I wanted to be like her so badly. I was going to play it, but at the last minute my dad thought it might be too annoying for him and my 10-year-old son, so I couldn’t do it. I’m still angry about that. He tried to make it up to me by letting me tidy up [the placement] All dismembered body parts found in the forest after the White Walkers obtained them.
Your father started out as an actor, and before becoming a director, he played a basketball player in high school White shadow. Do you see a similar career path in your future?
I did some orientation classes in college [at the New School in Greenwich Village]. And it’s always in the back of my mind when I’m on set and interacting with different directors, imagining how they do it. It is definitely a dream for the future. But now I don’t know what story I want to tell.
Let’s talk a little about your famous uncle – your father’s older half-brother, Dick Van Patten. He died in 2015, and you were about 15 years old. Did you get to know him well at all?
I wish I had spent more time with him. There are such New York Fan Pattens [Anna grew up in New York] and Los Angeles Van Pattens. But we were vacationing on the West Coast, and I would see him then. Being around Uncle Dickie was the best. Some of my favorite memories are going to the race track with him.
Dick Van Patten taught you how to bet on colts?
He certainly did. I remember picking horses based on their color and names, which I thought was best. And then we will meet the knights. He was treated like royalty at the racetrack. It was so much fun. Larger than life.
Are there more like you at home? Or are you the youngest Van Patten with Hollywood ambitions?
I have a sister who’s 14, and she’s kind of going through this right now — “Do I want to be an actress, or do I want to play basketball?” We pay basketball. We tell her, “Go to the WNBA first and then think about becoming an actress.”
