Linda Cardellini reflects on her pivot toward full-scale horror in the upcoming series Crystal Lake, a prequel to the legendary Friday the 13th franchise, where she stars as original villain Pamela Voorhees. Known for her acclaimed roles in Freaks and Geeks, ER, Mad Men, and her recent Emmy-winning turn in DTF St Louis, Cardellini faced gruesome practical effects right from the start, including a scene where an embedded human tooth had to be painfully extracted from her knuckle. According to ‘T he first time I had the tooth in my hand,”, Linda Cardellini, “I thought, ‘Oh my God, this is what I’m doing. Though, Freaks and Geeks slowly became a classic of the high school TV genre. “That it had a life afterwards was a shock – and that it still has a life is amazing.”, through DVDs and word of mouth.
While mainstream audiences often associate the franchise with hockey-masked killer Jason, devoted fans remember that Pam drove the vengeance in the original 1980 film. Cardellini notes that Jason did not receive his iconic mask until the third installment, praising showrunner Brad Caleb Kane for his deep fandom and meticulous approach. Kane penned the role specifically for her after watching her performance in the Netflix thriller Dead to Me, catching the actor entirely by surprise. According to but aficionados will know that Pam, Jason’s mother, is the villain of the first movie. “He didn’t even have the mask until the third movie,”, Cardellini, who has clearly done her homework. “Pam is the original killer, in vengeance of his death.” (There is some massaging of previous storylines in Crystal Lake, such as moving Jason’s drowning from the 1950s to the early 70s, but since the franchise is flexible. Enough to have sent Jason into space at one point, a bit of timeline tweaking feels fair game.). After seeing her in Netflix thriller Dead to Me, which came as a surprise. “My biggest question was, ‘How did I become the person at the front of your mind for this?’” she laughs, kane wrote the part specifically for her. But hopefully it’s an opportunity to see more of something that didn’t really get its own avenue.”, did they feel any pressure in taking Friday the 13th on? “It’s daunting. I think it is part of the allure when you’re young. Because you know that in a few hours, you will have a resolution, i can imagine there’s something about the experience of it that is very present – and it’s a controlled fear. Recently, Cardellini was backstage at a screening of the show at New York Comic Con. “There was some gasping and yelling and cheers – and afterwards, a laugh. A fond, witty look at teenage rebellion, burned bright and fast and was promptly cancelled by NBC in 2000, before its first season had finished airing, the early 80s-set series. She also gets to leave him, triggering an obsession. “It unfolded like a surprise for me,” she says, not only does her character go on to remind Don of a sex worker from his youth. It rocket-launched the careers of Seth Rogen, Jason Segel and Busy Philipps, as well as Cardellini. Once we weren’t going to make any more, just didn’t seem possible, the idea that it would live on. I think it was the first two scripts I got – I had one line. DTF St Louis is a singular series: Carol is married to American Sign Language interpreter Floyd, but is having an affair with his best friend Clark, a TV weatherman who rides a weird bike and likes to pretend to be a robot during sex.
Reflecting on her earliest cinematic memories growing up in the 1980s and 90s, Cardellini recalls watching classic slasher films on rented VHS tapes as forbidden adolescent treats. She admits she genuinely appreciates jump scares and intense gore, which proved essential on the Crystal Lake set due to the massive volume of practical blood used throughout production. A dedicated week was carved out simply to film a single bloody sequence, while fake blood routinely dyed her lighter hair pink during filming. As Cardellini did (she is 51), will remember sleepovers with rented VHS tapes and a lot of screaming whenever Freddy Krueger, Michael Myers or Jason Voorhees appeared on screen. “It was forbidden fruit, almost,” she says. “You weren’t supposed to be able to watch it, but you would, anyone who grew up in the 1980s and 90s. One vivid sequence involves an astronomical amount of blood. “We reserved a whole week for that,” she says, which is highly unusual for TV, as it tends to move quickly. Not least because Cardellini’s hair in the show is lighter, and they soon found that the fake blood stained it pink, it had to be precisely planned and choreographed. Then you laughed out loud, they made you afraid. Cardellini grew up in California and started acting in the mid-1990s.
Remarkably, brutal effects like a character’s face being torn off were executed live on set using prosthetics and fishing wire rather than computer-generated imagery. Cardellini describes the visceral moment as one of her absolute favorite highlights, comparing the horrifying spectacle to a blood opera. The series arrives amid a wider resurgence of mainstream horror, a phenomenon Cardellini attributes to the controlled, digestible nature of cinematic fear that ultimately resolves itself safely. It seems off-limits and rebellious.”.
Long before her horror debut, Cardellini broke out in Paul Feig and Judd Apatow’s acclaimed 1999 teen comedy Freaks and Geeks as Lindsay Weir, a short-lived series that later attained legendary status on home video.
She later joined the sixth season of Mad Men as Sylvia Rosen, navigating strict secrecy orchestrated by creator Matt Weiner before ultimately leaving a lasting mark on Don Draper.
Culminating her extensive television career, her September Emmy win for DTF St Louis marked a profound milestone after years of acclaimed television performances.
