Steven Prusakowski
Horror fans are booking their fateful stays at Crystal Lake. The new Peacock series goes back to the 1970s to tell the backstory of people’s favorite hockey-masked slasher, Jason Voorhees (Callum Vinson). But instead of focusing on Jason, the series shifts to his mother, Pamela Voorhees, played to bloody perfection by Linda Cardellini.
During this year’s New York Comic Con, Awards Radar sat down with the cast and creator of the series as well as attended a packed-house panel of fans excited to learn of the story behind the mysterious happenings at Crystal Lake, a series that balances psychological drama and slasher horror.
Photos from the New York Comic Con press room
Many fans know Jason, but not as many remember the woman behind the man in the mask was no one other than his dear old mom, Pam – a woman who would do anything for her son… anything. Exploring the story behind the character whose role in the original Friday the 13th was brief but unforgettable became creator Brad Caleb Kane’s mission.
“I just wanted to dip into all the time that occurs between what we knew was Jason’s drowning and the woman that we know from the first movie. I just wanted to explore that time. I mean, we meet Pamela Voorhees for like 10 minutes in the last movie and memorably played by Betsy Palmer, brilliantly played. It felt like Betsy Palmer Pamela Voorhees deserved all that history that we were missing,” said Kane.
Kane’s goal was to provide more than a horror villain origin story, it was to explore who Pamela was before her transformation to a killer, the protective mother never explored in the films.
“We don’t really see the cornerstone of that relationship. We don’t really see her and Jason as people before all that stuff happened; she wasn’t born a psychopath. There was a journey that took her from loving and protective mother to the person we know in the first movie and I wanted to show that journey,” explained Kane.
That transformation is what attracted Emmy-winner (and TV Topics guest) Linda Cardellini, who saw an opportunity to explore a character who has a pivotal role in an iconic film series who still remains largely unknown.
“She is the original killer. There is a story there as to how she gets to that place. And what is that story?,” shared Cardellini. “There were so many facets to the character. There’s a real woman who is a mother and a loving person and a new person in town, a fish out of water, somebody running from the past. And then also, there’s this other side to her and this rage.”
For Kane, bringing Cardellini into the role meant finding an actor who could handle the complex evolution without reducing Pam to a one-dimensional monster. Who better than the talented Cardelinni who has decades of experience across genres. The actress came to Kane with a series of questions she needed to answer to flesh out Pam.
“When you hire someone like Linda, you stand out, you get out of her way because she finds all the levels of the character,” said Kane. “They were all great questions and they forced me to dig a lot deeper into the character and into the story. They affected the show in a brilliant way.”
Photos from the New York Comic Con panel & premiere screening
At the center of Pamela’s transformation is her relationship with her son, Jason who was born with significant physical challenges. Cardellini describes a mother who wants to do right by her son but is also burdened by the belief that she has failed him. That guilt becomes tangled with shame and a growing rage hidden beneath her meek exterior.
“I think Pam tries to be a good mother. She feels like she’s made some mistakes and there’s guilt and shame in that. Anger and shame are very closely related – so I think that’s part of her rage as well,” explained Cardellini. “She wants to take care of him. She’s done everything she could to do so but I think she believes that she made a lot of mistakes and I think she blames herself for things that aren’t even her fault.”
How Pamela’s protective love shifts to a vengeful anger that boils secretly inside her is part of what makes Pamela such an interesting character.
Kane added, “There’s nobody scarier than a mother protecting her kid. We wanted to see the birth of the Pam we knew from the movies. She fights for survival in the first thing, but eventually, I don’t know if it’s a spoiler to tell you she does come to enjoy it. And she becomes very good at it.”
The backstory also brings unexpected tenderness to a family saga that eventually gives way to machetes, gallons of blood, and dismembered bodies.
“I think the relationship between Jason and Pam starts in a place that is fresh because we all know how it ends. He’s so wonderful and how could you not love him? And he goes through so much in the show and I think that is a really beautiful piece of the puzzle,” said Cardellini.
Callum Vinson, who plays Jason, also helped Cardellini discover a side of the character she hadn’t expected, because of the innocence Kane brought to him.
“I think acting with Callum, you know, he’s so sweet and I think the person that you come to know is Jason. You don’t see that at all coming,” shared Cardellini. “Him being so innocent to begin with. I didn’t anticipate that and I just thought it created such a beautiful relationship and we have so much further to go before we get to that first movie.”
Playing Jason required the young Vinson to look beyond the character’s status as a horror icon and figure out who he was as a person. Thankfully, the 12-year old Vinson was already a longtime Jason fan, even if he hadn’t been allowed to watch the films.
“I loved Jason ever since I was a kid. I had this action figure that I played with every second. And I actually had two of them because one of the legs broke. And I wanted to watch them for so long,” explained Vinson. “And I finally booked this. And I was like, I can watch them. I can watch them. I can watch them. Can I watch them? Can I watch them?”
“It was hard for me to find who he was really cuz you can’t find yourself and all that. You need to dig deep and I found it really hard. But you just need to think about who he is and what he brings to the table,” said Vinson.
Jason’s best friend is a young, compassionate camper named Grace, played by Gwendolyn Sundstrom, who adds another dimension to his story. The two bond when most other kids only tease or pick on Jason.
“I think Grace also did not have a lot of friends. She’s having a pretty tough life at home, at school. A lot of people are just against her. And I think when she meets Jason at summer camp, it’s like this person’s kind of in the same boat as me. Grace has a really sweet heart and she’s just like, ‘Let’s be friends.’ Like, I’m gonna look out for this person,” said Sundstrom.
Pam’s relationship with Jason is the focus of the story, but Kane makes sure to add more facets to Pam including her relationship with the town sheriff, Levon, played by William Catlett. Of course a budding relationship with the Sheriff when you nearly literally have skeletons in your closet is a bit of a tricky situation, it adds another layer to the fun. Levon sees someone dealing with loss and believes he can connect with her, even as the audience knows just how dangerous she proved to be.
“I think he sees the good in people. And when he meets Pam, by her going through a loss and him losing his wife, I think he feels that he can reach her and help her. Once you open your heart to someone, it’s kind of hard to close it. And so, he sees the good in her, but then she starts killing people. I think that’s his Achilles’ heel,” said Catlett.
Crystal Lake is more than the Voorhees family. Additional residents, some carry-overs from the film series and others brand new to the mythology, turn Crystal Lake into a living, breathing community full of mystery and ripe for terror. Devin Kessler describes Briana, the journalist sister of Sheriff Levon who is looking into some odd goings-on, as “very truth-oriented… wanting to uncover whatever the truth looks like. With a capital T truth.” There’s also Cameron Scoggins, playing Dorf in an expanded role from the original film, who said it was exciting “to explore what the hell is he talking about when he’s talking about the weirdness out here.”
For Cardellini, bringing Pamela to life was much more internal than most slashers. Once Jason is tragically lost, he lives inside her, not just in her heart, but her mind. Figuring out how to portray the thoughts and voices running through her mind, particularly in the scenes where she talks to Jason on the stairs which involved trying different approaches and filling her own head with the thoughts Pamela might be having, even when those thoughts weren’t spoken aloud.
“There’s a lot of people in there,” laughed Cardellini. “It depends on who I listen to at any given time. Some of them I have to tell them to quiet down. My face always tells on me. So I do have to fill my head with whatever is being said.”
“When we shot those scenes where I’m talking to Jason on the stairs, we shot it several different ways. They let me do what I wanted to do and I talked it out. Sometimes he was there saying it to me and sometimes he was not. And sometimes I was saying what he was saying. I was repeating what he said to me and sometimes I was just standing there repeating whatever I wanted to that came into my head,” explained Cardellini. “I wanted to know what it would sound like. So it is actually readily in my head saying.”
Check out all of the first season of Crystal Lake now streaming exclusively on Peacock.
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