dpJason Voorhees has always been the face of the “Friday the 13th” horror universe. But if he could speak, the hockey-masked mass murderer likely would not hesitate to give his mother all of the gory.
Pamela Voorhees (Betsy Palmer) was the original killer in the 1980 film, single-handedly knocking off several counselors at Camp Crystal Lake, where Jason drowned. Working as a cook at the camp at the time, she blamed the counselors, who were off having sex instead of watching her son, and launched her murder spree after discovering the camp was reopening 22 years after the accident.
Pamela was decapitated during a showdown with Alice Hardy (Adrienne King), the sole survivor of her rampage. Jason, who supposedly witnessed his mother’s killing, took up the blade, slaughtering his way through several bloody sequels. And although Pamela has less than 15 minutes of screen time in the film, she continues to be celebrated by legions of “Friday the 13th” fans.
As the 50th anniversary of the first film approaches, Pamela is finally getting her turn in the spotlight in “Crystal Lake.” The Peacock prequel stars Linda Cardellini as Pamela, tracing her traumatic journey from grieving mother to serial killer. The opening episode depicts her deep bond with young Jason (Callum Vinson), an outsider who has significant health issues and is bullied by other kids.
Linda Cardellini as Pamela Voorhees in Peacock’s “Crystal Lake,” a prequel to “Friday the 13th.”
(Matt Infante / Peacock)
It’s a lead role the veteran actor is not taking lightly.
“When you’re playing an iconic character in a franchise loved by so many fans, it is daunting,” said Cardellini in an interview over video call. “It’s a lot of responsibility, but it’s also a great responsibility.”
Adding an extra dose of expectation was stepping into Palmer’s shoes. “Betsy Palmer gave this incredibly wild performance, and makes such a strong impression in such a short amount of time,” Cardellini said. “She looks like someone’s mother you might know, and then she becomes so unhinged. It’s a great horror movie performance, and there’s no way you could redo it.”
She added, “I took little glimmers, little pieces of her. I hope that people can see those little moments here and there. The show looks at the making of a monster, but his mother is also a monster.”
Cardellini’s turn in the terrordome comes just weeks after winning a supporting actress Emmy for “DTF St. Louis,” the HBO limited series in which she played Carol Love-Smernitch, a suburban woman and Little League umpire who becomes entangled in a lurid triangle with her husband Floyd Smernitch (David Harbour), an American Sign Language interpreter, and his colleague, weatherman Clark Forrest (Jason Bateman).
Cardellini, whose career has included prominent roles in “Freaks and Geeks, “ER,” “Dead to Me” and other projects, said she was still riding high from the win: “I have the Emmy at my house. I’ve been nominated before, so it came as a big surprise. It was great when it happened.”
Asked whether it was scarier to play Carol or Pamela, Cardellini paused.
“Both have their difficulties, and that makes them fun to play,” she said. “Carol is searching for control, while Pamela is exerting her control. There’s this thing inside her that she can’t control. She’s got rage issues, and she’s also repressed. Most importantly, everything she does is for Jason.”
“There’s a quality Linda has that Pamela Voorhees needed,” said Brad Caleb Kane, the creator of “Crystal Lake.” “She has an effortless likability.”
(Erik Carter/For The Times)
Brad Caleb Kane, who created the series and serves as showrunner, called Pamela “the mother of all slashers. She is the protagonist of the first film, and the whole mythology comes from her. Her performance is indelible and left an impression for all of us who love these movies.”
Casting Cardellini as Pamela “was my only choice,” he said. “There’s a quality Linda has that Pamela Voorhees needed. She has an effortless likability. You see that in all of her performances from ‘Freaks and Geeks’ to ‘Dead to Me.’ I needed that because Pamela Voorhees does a lot of killing, and you have to be able to empathize and sympathize with the character despite all of that bloodletting.”
Cardellini doesn’t have a specific memory of seeing the first “Friday the 13th” movie, “But I do recall seeing them at home with my brothers and having to pretend I wasn’t as scared as I really was. I wanted to look cool in front of the other kids.”
She was a bit taken aback when she was first approached about starring in “Crystal Lake”: “I had never been offered anything like this before. I’ve been offered roles where the character is on the other side of the knife or who is being chased. It’s never been the person who is the chaser.”
But the actor was intrigued by Pamela’s dilemmas, which she characterized as a “crazy mixtape.” “She’s a single mom who is grieving. She’s also in the world, trying to figure out if she should date again or have friends again. She’s lonely and yearning for something. And there are these injustices that have been done to her and her child, which she’s trying to deal with.”
Kane was a key pillar of support as she attempted to connect with the essence of Pamela. “Brad surely was a great resource,” Cardellini said. “I could go to him with a question about the movies, and he would answer specifically about where it was, how it was and what it was. He really is the leader, an encyclopedia of horror movie trivia and information.”
“She’s a single mom who is grieving. She’s also in the world, trying to figure out if she should date again or have friends again,” said Cardellini about Pamela.
(Peacock)
Still, it was not an easy shoot, Cardellini said. “It was so physical. There were times when I thought, ‘This is really getting crazy.’ It was the summer in New Jersey, and we’re in the woods in the middle of the night, definitely not at a resort or a beach,” she recalled. “There really were snakes and ticks and bears. It was fun but also challenging. I would come home and take pictures of the bruises on my legs.”
More uplifting were her warm scenes with Vinson, who was outfitted with an oversize head.
“What a great actor he is,” Cardellini said of the youngster. “He had a lot of really hard things to do, working with a very difficult prosthetic piece. None of that was easy, but he’s such a trouper. It’s so heartbreaking because he’s so sweet. There’s a scene where he has a medical issue, which was a difficult scene to play, even for adults. I just wanted to hold and help him.”
That mother-child dynamic, she said, should allow fans of the franchise to appreciate the “Friday the 13th” formula beyond the expected horror.
“I just really like that we show the sweetness of Jason before all of this other stuff happens. We get to know him as just a child,” Cardellini said. “With Pamela Voorhees, there’s something to be said of playing someone’s story from beginning, middle to end. Hopefully people who care about the character will be excited to see more of her.”
