"When I read this one, I said, 'This is something I really want to do.' I mean, (it's) totally different from anything I've ever done before," said VanCamp.
With her scheming turn in "/*Revenge*/," VanCamp is hoping to leave her good girl image behind.
"After 'Brothers and Sisters,' I kind of went through a little bit of a moment where I just was feeling creatively kind of stunted, I suppose, and I didn't know what I wanted to do. I thought about going to cooking school. I wasn't sure about everything," she said.
But it wasn't long before VanCamp started to miss acting. And when she began to look through scripts, "Revenge" caught her eye.
"(I) kind of really had to fight for the part and go in there and prove to them that I could be dark because people kind of like to put you in a box sometimes and expect you to just always be doing the same kind of characters, and so it's been great," said VanCamp.
The actress credits her director with helping to keep her on the track to that "dark side."
"Phillip Noyce, who directed the pilot, has been such a champion in keeping me on track with the character. He says sometimes, 'That was too youthful and too Canadian,'" she said.
In the show, VanCamp plays Emily Thorne, a young girl who returns to the Hamptons to right the wrongs done to her family 17 years ago.
When she was only 9 years old, Emily Thorne's father was framed for a horrific crime by his friends and coworkers and sentenced to life in prison. She was taken away and never saw her father again.
Now she has returned to Southampton under an assumed identity with one goal - to exact revenge on the people who destroyed her family.
"Initially, in the first bunch of episodes, she's kind of coming in to clean shop. You know, there's a few people that have got to go. But, ultimately, her goal is not to just kill these people and be done with them, her goal is to watch these people suffer," said VanCamp.
"Revenge," also starring Madeleine Stowe, airs Wednesdays at 10 p.m. on ABC7.
View photos of the new series premiering on ABC for the 2011-2012 season.
