Superhost Star Sara Canning on Tackling the Horrors of Influencer Culture

Sara Canning, the The Vampire Diaries actress who also appeared in the wonderfully-campy The Banana Splits Movie, stars alongside Crisis on Infinite Earths actor Osric Chau in Superhost, a movie about a pair of travel YouTubers who put themselves in a dangerous situation to get views. The film, which debuted on Shudder, is now available to buy digitally. Director Brandon Christensen and producer Kurt Hader, who worked with Canning on the 2018 film Z, apparently pitched her on the film, and it wasn’t long before she found herself (along with the rest of the production) shooting in a real old house in the country, during the early days of the pandemic.

According to Canning, it was an easy decision to come on board, not just because she liked the script, but because she found work on Z to be really fun, and thought that working with the same team would provide for a good time on set.

“I knew Brandon Christensen and Kurt Harder from working from working with them on the film Z a few years ago,” Canning told ComicBook. “So when Brandon sent me a draft of Superhost, he said, ‘I think this might be my next thing,’ and I thought it was going to be really fun to work on.”

The project was filmed before the murder of travel blogger Gabby Petito, so while viewers may now see it through that lens, it wasn’t shot with that tragedy in mind. Instead, it was mostly a more general exploration of influencer culture.

“I was interested in how people can really become wrapped up in their online presence,” Canning explained. “It’s a lot of work, and Claire’s focus on that part of her life, let some of the other parts of her life down. There’s work she does maintaining her channel, when she probably could be spending that time with [her partner] Teddy.”

And, yes, Canning is as aware as anybody else that doing a movie set in the world of influencers is fraught. As often as not, they’re pretty terrible, in large part because of people who don’t spend their whole life online, trying to write the habits of people who do. She wasn’t worried about this project, though, because she trusted the writing.

“It is hard to do it right, and I really credit Brandon for that,” Canning said. “It isn’t the same thing; being a YouTuber or an influencer is really a different skill it is than being an actor. I liked that challenge, but those scenes were hard.”

You can buy or rent Superhost on digital, or see it on Shudder, now.