Sandra Guldberg Kampp Interview: Bloody Tennis Gets Weird

In our Sandra Guldberg Kampp interview, the Bloody Tennis star joins The Fear Review during Fantastic Fest 2026 to talk about playing Sophie as the film gets increasingly strange, physical and downright disgusting. With the film arriving on Shudder September 25, we talked about the gradual change in Sophie, the tennis training behind the role, the American accent that completely fooled me and one scene involving a leech that Sandra was not exactly excited to film.

If you haven’t seen the film yet, check out our spoiler-light Bloody Tennis review. We also spoke with director Nikias Chryssos about the movie’s escalating brutality, sound design and yes, that cat scene.

Keeping Sophie Grounded While Bloody Tennis Goes Off the Rails

One of the things that works about Sophie is that she never starts behaving like she suddenly realizes she’s in a crazy horror movie. The world around her gets more extreme, but Sandra keeps her grounded in something recognizable. She told us that gradual escalation was part of what made the character work: Sophie keeps accepting the reality around her until questioning it no longer makes sense.

That same commitment carried into the physical side of the role. Sandra trained for roughly two months before filming, working on tennis several days a week while also trying to get into the disciplined mindset of an athlete. She even kept training during production until the shooting schedule finally made that impossible.

Tennis Training, an American Accent and a Very Unpleasant Leech

The training produced at least one compliment on Sandra’s forehand, although it also produced an accidental shot to the first AD’s head. The American accent presented a different challenge. Sandra is Danish, something I didn’t know while watching the film, and she admitted she was worried viewers would hear through the accent. Without a dialect coach on set, she eventually had to prioritize the performance and hope she got away with it.

Then there were the leeches. When I asked if anything in the script immediately made her wonder how they were actually going to film it, Sandra didn’t hesitate. The leech-eating scene was the problem. The leech she puts in her mouth wasn’t real, but according to Sandra, that didn’t make the experience particularly pleasant. Having real leeches around the set didn’t help either.

Sandra Guldberg Kampp Interview: Watch the Full Conversation

Read our full conversation below. The interview has been lightly edited for clarity while preserving the substance and personality of the conversation.

The Fear Review: I got to see the film last night, and I gotta say, your toe was stressing me out the whole movie. It’s so weird that so much happens in that movie, but that was the part that just had me wincing most of the time.

Sandra Guldberg Kampp: Yeah, I mean, it probably would if it was real. A lot of people didn’t like the peeling of the skin and the sniffing scene as well. There’s something that creates such a visceral reaction to that.

The Fear Review: Sophie’s transformation is really gradual in the movie. She starts out kind of unsure of herself, and by the end she’s capable of things that maybe would have seemed impossible for her at the beginning. How did you decide where Sophie was at each stage without letting us see the transformation too early?

Sandra: A lot of that is me leaning on Nikias and having him remind me where we are in the story. But I think it’s about it being so gradual that it kind of makes it a bit easier in a way. For me, I had to just focus on the scenes. Everything’s in there, and that’s totally thanks to Nikias as well. But there is a certain point that you have to figure out in the script. Where is the shift for her? When is she going more fierce into the rest of the film?

The Fear Review: Was there a point in the movie where you felt like that was the switch?

Sandra: I think, to be honest, a little bit when Bena is telling her, “I don’t care about you. This is a game. I just want to win.” I think for her that’s kind of the last straw. Now nothing matters anymore. If you can’t even have a human relation to anybody here, then I might as well do the same. I might as well just fight everybody.

The Fear Review: The movie gets increasingly strange and pretty extreme, but you never seem to play Sophie like she suddenly realizes she’s in a crazy horror movie. Was keeping her grounded as everything around her escalated difficult?

Sandra: To be honest, no. That’s the way you would do it maybe in real life. It’s so surreal that you’re like, “Wait a minute, what’s going on here?” Until you can’t keep questioning it because everybody else is accepting the reality of this place, so you have to do the same.

I did really like that about the script. Her as a character, at least, is not super unrealistic. It’s very grounded in reality and very human, which I think makes the film even more bizarre to watch because you can actually relate to this character. Of course, until the end where everything’s totally mad. But because it happens so gradually, hopefully you don’t really realize what’s happening until you’re like, “Wait. What’s going on?”

Sandra: I’m sorry, I don’t know if that answered your question at all.

The Fear Review: No, it did. It absolutely did.

The Fear Review: There are scenes where Sophie looks completely exhausted and physically beaten down, and the environment really adds to that. How physical was the role, and how much tennis training did you do before shooting?

Sandra: I did around two months before we started shooting, a few days a week. It wasn’t too much, but I was training a lot on the side to get ready for that and also get into a very disciplined mindset like you would as an athlete.

Part of her being exhausted was because I was still trying to keep my training up while shooting every day, which at some point I just had to stop doing because I didn’t have time in the day to do any of that. But it really helped to focus and be so disciplined about all of that to create a character that is so extremely obsessed with it.

The Fear Review: Did you get good? Were you able to play?

Sandra: I was able to make some shots. I did hit the first AD in the head one time. That was also weird. There was a picture of her with an ice pack on her head, so I do apologize for that. But I did hit some shots. We had some of the doubles and one of their trainers out there, and he complimented my forehand, which I was very proud of. But it’s an incredibly difficult sport, so two months is nothing.

The Fear Review: I’ve only played it a couple of times and I didn’t last very long at all. Ping pong’s my thing. We’ll do that.

Sandra: Yeah, I totally get that.

The Fear Review: You’re Danish playing an American, and I actually didn’t know that while I was watching the movie. How much work went into your American accent, and was maintaining it during such a physical performance an extra challenge?

Sandra: It definitely was. I was trying to get the line out of the film where I tell where I’m from because I was like, “I’m not perfect at all, and everybody’s going to know that I’m not American.” I really didn’t feel confident having that line in there, but we did put it in there anyway.

I think Nikias’ explanation for it was that she’s in Europe somewhere, so she’s so far away from home. That’s another nice layer of isolation for her. I did have a dialect coach beforehand, and unfortunately we didn’t have her on set, so I was left alone with it and just trying to remember all the things that she told me and the things that we worked on.

When you’re on set, you kind of want to prioritize your performance rather than the accent and just hope you get away with it. I watched the film one time, and I hate watching myself. It’s incredibly weird doing so. But I’m happy to hear that at least you couldn’t tell that I was Danish.

The Fear Review: One last question. There’s a lot Sophie has to react to in this movie that’s pretty disgusting. Was there anything you read in the script and immediately thought, “How are we actually going to film this?”

Sandra: Leech-eating scene. I was concerned, to say the least. And the eating of the heart. That part I was like, “That’s probably going to be fine.” But even eating something that looks like a leech is just going to be absolutely horrendous and disgusting, and it really was.

I would not recommend it to anybody. Also, just having these real leeches around on set was not it for me. I don’t know what it is about leeches that are so gross, but definitely.

The Fear Review: That scene, I did rewind because I was trying to think, “She didn’t actually put that leech in her mouth, right?”

Sandra: I’m happy that you thought it the first time watching it because I can definitely tell that it’s a fake leech that I’m eating, but it didn’t make it better. Of course it’s better than a real leech, but the consistency of the fake ones that I had to eat was really off-putting, to say the least.

The Fear Review: Maybe that did really help.

Sandra: It did, it did. Also, having to throw it up again was a joy, just getting it out of my mouth.

More Bloody Tennis

Bloody Tennis arrives on Shudder September 25. Read our full spoiler-light review and our interview with director Nikias Chryssos for more from the film.