Anna Camp: Playing Dorothy Bradford | Saints & Strangers

[Music] Dorothy Bradford is William Bradford's wife, played by Vincent Caryer, and he is one of the first governors of Plymouth Rock. Dorothy's personal journey is an incredibly sad one. She's left her only child behind and the feeling of not being able to comfort her son or not even know—I mean just thinking, you know, you don't have cell phones, you didn't have Skype like I do now with my family who's so far away.

To not have known anything and not even gotten a letter about how your child is doing when it's the most important thing to you in the world can leave someone feeling incredibly hopeless. What if we never see our son again? What if he is dead? How would we know? We wouldn't. Would we not for years? John is fine. I don't know if her husband quite gets to the extent of how much in pain she is.

I think we are the most saintly of the Saints, and so there's not a lot of emoting. He was always trying to calm me down, trying to inspire me, keep me strong. I know it troubles you. God chose these strangers to be our partners in this venture. God in the Merchant Adventurous Company.

No one really knows how alone or how emotional Dorothy is feeling because that's not something that people really did back then. Just in a scene I just shot, feeling like I wanted to tell him that I loved him but I couldn't, and nowhere in the script do I ever say "I love you." So just that struggle of trying to say it to someone just through my eyes was something I felt was incredibly moving and powerful, and I hope people will respond to it.

Dorothy left her homeland to do this journey because they are separists, and it had to have been so terrible for them to have left. Because they did make a very, very horrid journey, and I don't think that anyone knew exactly how bad the conditions would have been when they got onto the Mayflower. But it was all worth it, I think, so I'm glad she did.