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Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problemsFix Now →Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitchesFind Drivers →Willa Fitzgerald’s career has moved from teen horror to sports drama, crime action and medical drama. She is best known for playing Emma Duval in Scream, Coach Colette French in Dare Me and Roscoe Conklin in Reacher. Here are the stories and career turns that give those roles more context.
She started acting through a school competition called Forensics
Fitzgerald has said she began “Forensics”—a competitive acting activity—in fifth grade. In her first event, she reached the finals. An adult compared the experience to the Oscars, and she cried. The anecdote, recounted in a Biography.com profile drawing on her interview with W Magazine, offers an early glimpse of how seriously she took performance.
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As she put it: “I started doing this thing called Forensics, which is a kind of competitive acting—different teams from different schools compete.”
She studied psychology at Yale before choosing theater
Fitzgerald studied psychology at Yale for three years, acted in several plays each semester and wrote a thesis before switching to theater studies. She graduated in 2013. She later explained the decision this way: “I realized that I didn’t want to be writing research papers—becoming an actor felt undeniable.”
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Her psychology background is not necessarily a blueprint for every role. In an interview with Vulkan Magazine, she said the close analytical work she did in theater studies has had a more direct influence on her approach to acting than psychology coursework.
Her early credits led from politics to teen horror
Alpha House and Royal Pains
Fitzgerald’s first major onscreen credit was Lola Laffer in the political comedy Alpha House (2013). The following year, she played recurring character Emma Miller on Royal Pains. She described that part as her first experience working on a medical television show.
Scream made her a lead
Beginning in 2015, Fitzgerald played Emma Duval, the lead character in MTV’s Scream. The series ran for three seasons. It marked a major shift from early supporting television parts to a prominent role in a teen-horror story.
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- Movie Title: Reacher: Season Two
Later work crossed genres and formats
Her selected credits include a film appearance in The Goldfinch (2019), after television roles that included House of Cards and Younger; Coach Colette French in the sports drama Dare Me; Roscoe Conklin in Reacher; and appearances in The Fall of the House of Usher. This is a selection, not a complete filmography.
She was drawn to the darkness in Dare Me
In Dare Me, Fitzgerald played Coach Colette French, a character with a troubling side beneath her authority. In a 2020 interview with CBS Los Angeles, she said she was drawn to the character because there was still so much to discover in the script. “I love a character with some pretty essential darkness,” she said. The CBS interview prints the character’s name as “Collette” in Fitzgerald’s quotation; the credited character is Colette French.
She played Roscoe Conklin in the first season of Reacher
Fitzgerald portrayed police officer Roscoe Conklin in the first season of Reacher (2022). She said she loved the role and the opportunity to help establish the television adaptation’s world: “I love playing that character, and I loved getting the chance to help initiate the Reacher television universe.”
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Raccoon videos helped her understand the killer in Strange Darling
In the 2024 film Strange Darling, Fitzgerald played a serial killer known as “the Lady.” Rather than describing a formal physical-training regimen, she said she watched online videos of raccoons reacting when provoked, looking for a way to understand the character’s survival-driven explosiveness.
“I didn’t train at all physically, but a big part of understanding the Lady came from watching a lot of weird YouTube videos about raccoons,” she told W Magazine, as quoted by Biography.com.
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Fitzgerald played Dr. Danielle “Danny” Simms in Netflix’s medical drama Pulse (2025). Danny is a third-year medical resident unexpectedly promoted to chief resident in a Miami emergency room. The character has also reported her ex-partner for sexual harassment, adding a personal conflict to the workplace pressure.
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- Reacher
- Season Three
She makes art outside of acting
Fitzgerald has said she has worked with ceramics for several years and is starting to explore sculptural forms. She also enjoys hiking and nature, and has taken online courses in history, the environment and social justice. “I’ve worked with ceramics for several years and am just starting to explore more sculptural forms,” she said in the Biography.com profile. “I love to hike and get out in nature.”
She shared a screen story with Dolly Parton
Fitzgerald appeared with Dolly Parton and Colin O’Donoghue in the “J.J. Sneed” episode of Dolly Parton’s Heartstrings. Fitzgerald praised Parton’s ability to connect across social and political differences, describing her as an inspiration grounded in “connection and community and love,” in remarks quoted by Biography.com.
Her career is defined by contrast
Fitzgerald’s roles range from a teen-horror lead to a cheerleading coach, a small-town police officer, a serial killer and a medical resident. That range is part of what makes her career worth following: her characters often occupy very different worlds, while her comments about acting point to a recurring interest in complexity and the parts of a character that remain unexplained.
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