Camp Crystal Lake Awaits | Inside the Upcoming Series
Set eight years before the events of the original 1980 film, Crystal Lake follows single mother Pam Voorhees who has been unable to shake her grief after her young, sickly son Jason tragically drowned in the town lake almost a year before. When two strangers arrive at Pam's door digging into her past, a disturbing chain of events is set into motion, leaving the townspeople of Crystal Lake wondering: just who is Pam Voorhees?
I was fortunate to be invited to a virtual press conference for upcoming Peacock original series last week. Myself and several others were able to ask creator, writer, showrunner & executive producer Brad Caleb Kane & series leading star Linda Cardellini a few questions about the upcoming series, and it sounds like we're in for one hell of a ride!
From jaw dropping practical special effects, memeable moments, gore galore, Disney Princes, fan service and insane kills, here's what we learnt.* *please note each person is named next to their question. Not everyone gave their company/brand name.
Panel Moderator: Linda, to play the character of Pamela, how much preparation did you have to go through both emotionally and physically?
Linda Cardellini: "Well, Brad and I talked about it early on and, we were always kind of in conversation about her. And I of course watched the movies again, especially the ones with Betsy Palmer, you know, in the beginning, and watched her performance. And took note of the hairdo and the sweater, and we debated the hair for a long time, but then we realised that there was a long runway until the first movie, from this series to that movie, so we had we time to get to that haircut.
But you know, I watched that, and the beautiful thing about it is, is Betsy Palmer’s performance is just undeniable and unforgettable and totally singular, so you can’t do what she did. But the idea that you can create a character that gets to where she is in that first movie was fun for me.
And that is just sort of fertile, unexplored ground that Brad had all these incredible ideas about and, it’s really couched in this grief that she feels and this love that she feels, so it was important to us to sort of find that love and this, you know, the way that Jason, you meet him, is this incredibly vulnerable, sweet child. And, sort of the injustices she feels as, you know, mothering this person who’s not really getting a fair chance at the world and the world’s not being very kind to him, and then that gets progressively worse. And with her grief comes rage, and with that rage comes these sort of actions that are misguided at times and somehow understandable still, and that whole trajectory was a lot of fun to play."
Panel Moderator: Brad, you know, when audiences already know where a story is ultimately heading and you’re creating this prequel series, how do you make the journey feel a little more unpredictable? Did that allow you to play with the viewers’ expectations of what we thought we knew?
Brad Kane: "Well, I think even though we, you know, we know the story of Pamela Voorhees from the first movie, her life is pretty unexplored. So there’s a light- a lot of life that you live before the events of that first movie that take you to the place where you’re going to, you know, where you’re going to avenge your son over and over and over again after, you know, he’s been gone for so long. So you sort of
want to take the journey of how did a character get to that place? How did she get to the place where we know her in that first movie? She’s obviously, you know, somebody who’s gone through a lot and, we all have questions. As a fan, I had questions, and that’s kind of what you want the show to be, the journey."
Vitor Moreno: We met Pamela Voorhees as a killer, Crystal Lake introduces
her, as a mother before she becomes this killer. So I wanted to know, what did you want the audience to understand about her without necessarily asking the audience to forgive what she does later?
Linda Cardellini: "The key, I think, to Pam is that everything is about Jason. And everything she does is for him. And, you know, I think if you know, the closeness that they have when he is young is the thing that she takes with her until that first movie, you know?
So that is really important to establish and I think it’s fun as a fan to see Jason when he was younger, when he isn’t what he is yet. And I think sort of in meeting his mother, you’re sort of understanding the making of the monster—her and him."
Luciano Garaldo: My question is for Brad, and it’s a little bit outside the box. How do you go from a 'Disney Prince' to 'King of Horror', dealing with amazing franchises?
Brad Kane: "How do you go from that? Well, it’s interesting, because I had never set out to become a Disney prince or to sing on Broadway or any of the stuff that I did in my earlier career, and careers obviously have really long twists and turns, to get to this point that I’m at now. But you know, my mom Sherry was a torch singer at the Copacabana in New York City in the 1960s. You know, if you’ve seen Goodfellas, you know, you sort of know what that place is and what it’s like, and she was one of the singers there at that time. And then she, you know, this is a very
honest answer, but you asked an out-of-the-box question.
She married my father, who was a doctor in upstate New York and she was a woman of a certain time period in America, and that’s relevant to our show, really, here. And she was told to put her career on hold and raise a child and 'This is what you do at a certain time.' And she really tucked down all of that, ambition and all of that life to have me and my sister and to raise us. But it never went away - it was still there and it was building and building and building, and obviously, she didn’t
become Pam Voorhees, but there’s a lot of my own life in the show and n
building the character that we build in the show.
I don’t know sort of what the twists and turns are that got me from that to becoming the writer today, other than to say I was a child of the early ’80s when all the slasher movies came out week after week. I saw them all in theaters. I was a showbiz kid and I was, you know, singing and dancing and doing all that stuff you would expect, but that’s- that wasn’t who I was.
I was the kid who was collecting Fangoria magazines and Starlog and Cinefantastique, and I was the kid with the putty and the spirit gum. I can’t tell you how many times I went to grammar school with a bloody pencil stuck through my hand. So, I was that kid.
So, even though I was doing these other things and eventually became a Disney prince, I was also going to film school and learning how to do all this stuff and practicing writing, and it all led me to this place. And Friday the 13th was pretty much what dragged me into the wider world of film and my love of cinema and my love of TV, and then here we are. Bit of a roundabout way to get to the answer."
Linda Cardellini: "Also, how cool is it, though, that he is Aladdin?!"
Brad Kane: "Yeah. But, you know, we’re in a whole new world right now, so we can’t talk about the past."
Scott Orlin: You mentioned the word rage before and it’s kind of fascinating, because as a culture we’re kind of conditioned - we’re allowed to be upset, we’re allowed to be angry, but you walk up to a red line and you don’t cross it, or you shouldn’t cross it. Your character crosses it.
And I’m wondering, if you were going through these situations, and even though it was all fake and pretend, what did you understand about anger? What did you understand about hitting somebody and stabbing somebody, whenever it was that your character kind of had to go through, because you could just stop and walk off set, but the mentality, the emotional connection to that rage.
Linda Cardellini: "The rage is so important and I think it’s so undiscovered and it was one of the things that I really loved about the character. There was a
moment on set after the first kill that I have where it’s been such a long, arduous kill that his body is there and I just hit it. And they set a rig up when every time I hit that it would splash me, and there was a camera below. And they let the take go really, really long.
And so for a good amount of time, probably the longest amount of time, I sort of punched a bag over and over and over again, and I was screaming and yelling and crying, and had a physical exhaustion along with the physical exertion that I had never done on screen before, as a character before, maybe even in my life before And there was something that just happened, almost like probably how scream therapy feels for people, but there was something that just happened where your body just starts to release things.
And it just released emotion and physicality and, you know, all of these things that you could see- it connected me for a moment with her connecting with that rage must have felt so good to her to get that out, and I think that feeling, not that I had any real rage at that time, it just was the actual physicality of going through that, that feeling connected to the story, just informed me for the rest of the show.
I could see where you could addicted to that sort of adrenaline release, and
maybe that’s what happens to her, that- where she feels like she’s in control of something or she’s letting something out or she’s finally able to be her true self or she’s finally getting back at people for all the things that they did to her. So that was a really interesting moment that was totally unexpected for me."
Brad Kane: "And having been manipulated and gaslit and having gone through everything that Pamela goes through in her past, you can only suppress that rage for so long. In a person, in a populace. So yeah, it felt very natural that that would come out, based on what you knew about the character."
Catherine Medina: Brad, you said that Pam actually awakens, to her true nature and enjoys the thrill of the kill. That’s very different from a woman that finally refuses to be dismissed. I want to know, where’s the line for you between
reclaiming power and actually enjoying what she becomes, and who did you think pushes her across that line first, the world around her or Pam herself?
Brad Kane: "I guess my first answer, my first two-word answer would be - 'why choose?' I think you can be mad at the circumstances of your life and suppress all this rage over a lifetime, and then let it out and it feels good to finally let it out. But you know, maybe if you dig a little bit deeper, maybe it wasn’t your true nature to begin with, but maybe it feels so good to finally not hold all that inside you. And that you realise, well, you know, I can’t go back to the person that I was.
So, it’s less about that she’s that person or was always that person and always suppressing that rage of her true nature, rather than, she transformed. And the things that were done to her, the things that she went through - you know, by herself, with Jason - the things that she had to put up with, the manipulation, it transforms you and it changes you. Also, you know, there’s a lot of backstory there, in the second half of the season- don’t want to get into spoiler territory, but there are other aspects, you know, that help transform her from who she might have been or that might turn on certain things that might’ve been latent inside of her.
So, you know, I think you can read it as, you know, this is her, getting revenge, getting it out, societally, and I think you can read it as, either this was her true nature or she’s awakening to the possibilities of what she can be and how powerful she can be. But I think there are- there’s more than one way to read it, you know?"
Camp Crystal Lake Awaits | Inside the Upcoming Series
Matt Demers: I feel like fan service can be kind of a dirty little terms sometimes. But I feel like in a show like this, it’s kind of important to give some stuff to the OG fans. How important was it to, you know, tip your hat to the fans of this franchise?
Brad Kane: "Well, it was hugely important, and I am the original OG fan. I mean, I saw all these movies in theater on first release with giant crowds and a thin layer of smoke over the audience, the blue light cutting through the smoke, you know. Fans yelling at the screen, jumping out of the screen, telling people onscreen what to do. So, it was important to me to also convey that feeling to the at-home audience with a little bit of fan service and some stuff that they may have never seen at the movies.
You know, kills that were more inventive, moments that build up out of character that sort of make you jump off your couch and say, “I can’t believe what I’m looking at on my television right now!” So that was very important to me, and also, I want to give the audience the pleasure that I had seeing these movies for the first time in theaters - you know, visceral thrills.
Obviously with longterm storytelling, you can dive into character, and that’s why people come to television separate from movies. They want to have a longer and more intimate experience with characters. But it’s Friday the 13th - I’m an old school horror guy too. You need the gore, you need the thrills. You know, you want to see scenes recreated from the movies but maybe turned on their head and doing it in a slightly different, context. So I wanted to give the fans everything. I’m a giver."
Paul Salfen: When it’s go time on the set, what do both of you keep in mind that keeps you on the right path, towards this? ’Cause it’s kind of sacred material for people.
Brad Kane: "I’m just gonna say that I keep in mind that I hired the right person (pointing to Linda). I was grateful enough that she was able to do it, and then you just let her cook."
Linda Cardellini: "Brad and I talked about everything, though. I mean, we would just- we would go back and forth about it. And, one of the things I remember when we were meeting about it, I was like, “Brad, I’m really gonna care. I’m gonna ask you questions about everything, we’re gonna talk about it all the time.”
Brad Kane: "I wanted you to."
Linda Cardellini: "So we did, and it was really wonderful. I mean, he’s an incredible resource for all things Friday the 13th too, so. And just that he wrote this wild character that is just so much fun to play, so there are just so many things for me to do in there. And to get into her headspace for me, everything’s about Jason. Even if it looks like she’s doing something for somebody else, even if it looks like she’s helping Grace, it’s for Jason. So the franchise is about him. She is about him. It’s all
about Jason for her. So at the heart of everything she does, even if it looks sort of charitable, it’s really an effort to bring him back to her. She wants to stay connected to him by any means possible."
Paul Salfen: How about for you, Brad? What do you say when it’s go time?
Brad Kane: "I say hopefully we did a lot of the work in the writers’ room, and in the scripts, to give the audience the thrill that we want to give them and the depth of character that we want to give them. And then I leave it up to my actors to bring what they want to bring, to the project. You know, Linda - I can say from my perspective, and I know Linda and I have talked a lot - that we both
approached this with deep respect for the material, with deep respect for the lore and the fans. But we also wanted to expand it, you know, for the grownup fans and for people who love their Friday the 13th and love the visceral thrill that those movies give them, but are ready for maybe a little bit more there, to the characters, thematically, all of it. But, still want that visceral thrill, so, you know I just stand back and I let Linda do her thing.
I mean, honestly, on set, there is very little to tell her. She understood the character in and out. She understood the franchise. She understood what fans wanted. And she did the work with the character and you saw that every day on set. It’s an incredibly demanding role physically, emotionally, obviously everything the character goes through, and she gave it 100 percent every single day. So, there was really nothing for me to do but sit back and let Linda cook."
Linda Cardellini: "Aw, we have a great cast. I mean, it was easy to work with
everybody and our crew was great. I mean, we had long, hard nights in the middle of the woods and everybody was there working really, really hard, so."
Brad Kane: "And everybody cares. Everybody cares about this franchise. Everybody cares about these characters."
Linda Cardellini: "The amount of Friday the 13th merch on the crew, I’ve never seen so much! It was really cool."
Brad Kane: "Which is amazing, because these movies, you can look at them in one way. You can look at them as, you know, simple hack-and-slash movies, but they’ve stuck with us for so long. There’s a reason this franchise, these characters - Jason,, Pamela Voorhees, Tommy Jarvis - all the characters throughout the franchise, why we go back and we revisit them over and over and over again! There’s something more there than just a hack-and-slash, and I think I just wanted to bring what that something more was to the fore in the TV show."
Andre (The Hollywood Reporter & Rolling Stone): Linda, Brad, motherhood can both be an act of love and a loss of identity. I’m interested in the process and the moment, when Pamela’s devotion to Jason begins to consume the woman she once was.
Linda Cardellini: "That’s a great observation. I think that is truly what it is, it is both of those things. She does lose her identity and she does devote herself entirely to him. I think, she loses it so much that she becomes somebody else, which I think is the fun part of her journey, and then you meet, you know, we all know where she ends up in the first movie. So the idea of who was this person before, then how does she lose herself, who is that self first, and then how does she become so misguided?
And for me, it’s really a fun kind of sort of making-the-monster movie, you know? And within seeing her, you see what his- how he was created. The both of them, that whole idea of them being so interconnected, it lasts through the movies. So I think Brad did such a great job of keeping them connected, co-dependent, and just- she wants so badly to be the best caretaker possible, and she is somehow failing and can’t sort of deal with her failings there. And so it comes out and lashes out at everybody else."
Brad Kane: "And I think all of that is true, and I think also you can read the show and Pamela’s journey as a journey to either reclaiming her identity, or finding her true identity possibly, you know? Is this who Pamela always was, but these were the circumstances that allowed her to shed those old masks and be her true self? Or is this her putting on a new mask? You know, is this a transformation, based on the pressure that everyone put her and Jason under over. You know, the
backstory that they go through? Is this her forging a new identity, but one that feels
more empowering? I think you can read it (the journey) a few different ways. Depending on how you look at it."
Linda Cardellini: "It's not just Saint to Sinner. It's more; she's more flawed than that."
Anke Hofmann: The ’70s are also kind of a character in this series, so, how challenging or fun was it? Did it give you joy? What kind of horrors do you have with this series set in the ’70s?
Brad Kane: "Well, you got to dress in all those cool ’70s clothes."
Linda Cardellini: "Oh, yeah, I mean that was a big draw to me too - I loved that it was in the ’70s, I thought that was really fantastic about it. It's just so much fun to go to a time before cell phones and being able to research anything or record everything. And I just think there’s something that’s so, present about that. And also just sort of her journey as a woman through that time and we even go back sort of into the late ’60s at one point. The costumes and the hair - you know, all of the aesthetics are really fun to play with. And then the idea that this all comes before that very first movie that we all know and love so much, that’s- it’s just- there’s a lot to uncover there."
Brad Kane: "And I set it in the early ’70s for very a specific thematic reason, which was, because during that time, America was going through a pretty significant, and painful change coming out of the sort of death of the dream of the late ’60s. The Nixon era was unfolding, Watergate was becoming a thing, and we were realising as a country that we couldn’t trust our institutions anymore.
We couldn’t trust who we were, as Americans anymore, and people started going into free fall emotionally, and that’s what gave rise to, the Human Potential movement, the Me Decade, people falling into hedonism, the hippie movement going wrong. Obviously the women’s liberation movement - people felt ready and compelled to break the bonds of who they were told to be. And I wanted that transformation of America at that time to mirror Pamela Voorhees’ transformation and the journey that she goes on. So, it was a very intentional, reason to set it at that time. But of course, cool clothes!"
Behind the scenes of The Curse of La Llorona
Ahmed Sharma: Firstly, you previously played a protective mother fighting a maternal myth in The Curse of La Llorona. And now you’re playing the ultimate maternal myth in Pamela Voorhees. What was it like exploring those two different sides of maternal desperation? And if it all, what unexpected parallels did you find between them?
Linda Cardellini: "Well, they’re both trying to protect their children, and from something unknown. I think for Pam, she’s the unknown. She doesn’t understand herself, she doesn’t understand sort of what’s happening, and, and I think they’re very different, but at the same- they’re both set in the ’70s, you know. I think there’s something wonderful about that, before sort of the advent of cell phones and being able to take a picture or talk to whoever at at any time. But I think that, it’s very different to be the perpetrator. It’s a different kind of feeling, there’s a different drive there. So playing Pam was different because she’s chasing, not being chased.
And I think that is in and of itself just an incredible motivator. And I’ve only sort of
dabbled in certain things like that, but to be on the other side the knife, I will say, is a totally different feeling. There’s a certain amount of, like, decision and control that goes into playing that person that is totally different than anything else, and in order to sort of operate in the world as the killer in that world, you are on a different wavelength than everything else that’s happening around you. So, that was really fun to explore! But I loved both"
Ahmed Sharma: Lastly, Linda, you’ve played all kinds of roles. But which would you say, as an actor/performer, is the most challenging and/or entertaining role that you’ve taken on?
Linda Cardellini: "Oh, that’s a good question. I don’t know that I have one answer for that. I mean, challenging - I do think horror is really challenging. I do think it’s physically demanding in a way that other roles are not as much. I had one week in between DTF St. Louis and Crystal Lake. And those roles are so completely different. And challenging in amazing ways, both of them, but the physicality of horror is a real, it’s a workout every single day.
I remember just coming home and just having bruises everywhere, even though I have an amazing stunt woman. AC, she’s incredible - she does a lot of it. But it is inevitably incredibly physical. It’s night shoots, it’s- so that part of it is..."
Brad Kane: "And you did A LOT. You dragged those bodies."
Linda Cardellini: "I did."
Brad Kane: "And you were on the floor in that blood. And doing the pounding on the bo- I mean, you did a lot."
Linda Cardellini: "Yeah. I mean, that stuff gets you into it too, so it’s kind of like having that physicality is part of the joy of doing the work in some ways because it really puts you right there, in terms of getting things going, you know. But yeah, horror’s challenging in its own way that is separate from anything else."
Adam Williams (Hooked On Horror): This franchise is renowned for its kills and gore. Firstly, do you both have a favorite kill? Secondly, do you think that there’s a kill in this series that could be the new contender for the 'Best Kill of the Franchise'?
Brad Kane: "A favourite kill in the show, or in the Jason movies?"
Adam Williams (Hooked On Horror): Both. If you could tell us both please.
Brad Kane: "I think for me, my- I- gosh, there’s so many great kills! I think for me, my favourite kill in the movie is Jason zipping up the sleeping bag and beating that girl against the tree with it. From what I understand, there’s more footage now that just came out of that where it’s a lot more graphic than what they put in the movie. I think that’s my contender for my favorite kill.
I would also say, even though the movie goes in really, really wonky places, obviously the freeze-drying in Jason X is pretty iconic and fantastic. And then Jason himself falling on the knife in Part 4, you know, when he allegedly 'died' before he was revived in Part 6 is pretty awesome. In our show Linda, do you have a favorite kill in our show?"
Linda Cardellini: "Well, it’s the first. My first real sort of... machete building one."
Brad Kane: "Yeah. Face off."
Linda Cardellini: "Which- they did it practically. And so Aaron, the wonderful actor who’s playing opposite me, he was in this prosthetic and I hadn’t seen what was going to happen yet. And it was rigged to- once I hit him with this thing- to fall off. And there was a look on my face that Brad keeps in the edit for..."
Brad Kane: "Oh God! It’s so memeable!"
Linda Cardellini: "It’s outrageous! It stays on my face for so long, but it is truly my reaction.... of how disgusting it looked when the pieces of his skin just fell off. So that one, I have a special place in my heart for."
Brad Kane: "But in terms of your other question, do I think there's a new contender for best kill of the franchise? I think there are a number of kills in this season that could potentially... stand in for 'Best Kills' of the franchise. But, I’m a little biased."
I wasn't lying at the beginning when I said sounds like we're in for a great series. The eight-part series will be available exclusively on Sky and streaming service NOW in the UK and Ireland from this October. Peacock October 15th in US.
Hooked On Horror have been invited to the UK premiere of the first two episodes in London this October, so my review will be out ahead of the release. Keep an eye out for that, you can check out the full trailer below.
