How Dove Cameron Found the Balance Between Sexy and Sweet in ‘Schmigadoon!’

Schmigadoon! Episode 3 “Cross that Bridge” deals with the fallout of Dr. Josh Skinner (Keegan-Michael Key)’s “picnic” with Schmigadoon sweetheart Betsy (Dove Cameron) last week. Even before the New York City physician could wiggle out of an increasingly troubling situation, Betsy’s shotgun-wielding father had cornered the man into proposing to his underage daughter. So far the Apple TV+ show has treated Schmigadoon!‘s world of 1940s and ’50s musical as charming, if a little backwards. With Betsy’s storyline, the show has a trickier balancing act. How to depict a young teen’s burgeoning sexuality with the innocence it deserves while still nodding to the predatory gazes of that time period.

The solution is tied to Dove Cameron’s brilliant performance. Betsy is so absolutely besotted with Josh that it never occurs to her that anything she’s doing is wrong.

“The innocence came, I think, because she really is very enamored by Keegan’s character. And she really has this idea of who [this man] is going to be to her, and there’s a whole fullness to that,” Cameron told Decider. “She’s like, ‘My love,’ and she’s like, ‘This is it!’ Her understanding of love is very one dimensional.”

Schmigadoon! is a love letter to Broadway musicals, but it’s also a rumination on the nature of love. When Josh and his long-time girlfriend Melissa (Cecily Strong) find themselves trapped in Schmigadoon, they are flustered to learn the reason they can’t leave is because they need to find “true love.” So what is true love in the warped world of Schmigadoon? Well, it’s obviously not what Josh and Betsy have, despite the girl’s hopes and dreams.

“The funny thing is, it was creepy, but because of the framing of the whole piece of Schmigadoon, you understand that it’s got that Sound of Music Liesl [thing] going on to it,” Keegan-Michael Key said. “It’s a love letter to musicals. There’s going to be some huge disparity between an older man and a younger woman. But Dove was actually wonderful and very good at helping me, keeping me at ease about it.”

“Working with Keegan was unbelievable. He’s just the nicest, most incredible, warm. He’s everybody’s friend and the attentiveness that he has as a performer with you is so rare. We became very fraternal,” Cameron said, stressing that “there was this safety to be able to play.”

“Nothing was ever uncomfortable where it could go very uncomfortable,” she said with a laugh.

The strange thing about Cameron’s character, Betsy, is that in lesser hands, she could have been not only uncomfortable to watch, but intensely unlikable. However, as with much of Schmigadoon!, Betsy walks a tightrope between old-timey sincerity and satire delivered with a sexy wink.

“Yeah, finding that balance was interesting, because I find that I lean towards earnestness in general as a performer. It’s quite hard for me to pair it back,” Cameron said. “And so it was actually more for me, working with director Barry [Sonnenfeld] about interjecting the sexuality.”

And Betsy’s cherry red lips and cinched gingham dress helped Cameron with that. “I definitely think that the costuming for me helped with the inherent sexuality of the character. I mean, they just cinched her for the gods and she had her cleavage up to her ears. It was like, ‘the higher the cleavage, the closer to God.’ It was amazing,” she said with a a laugh. “So it’s like if you’re gonna go for it, you got to go for it and they really let us go there [laughs].”

Schmigadoon! Episode 3 “Cross That Bridge” is now streaming on Apple TV+

Where to stream Schmigadoon!