Interview: Mike Flanagan and the ‘Carrie’ Cast on Reinventing The Story for Today’s Horrors

The new girl in school has become quite popular. Carrie is not only topping the charts, landing as Nielsen’s No. 1 overall streaming title in the U.S. and hitting No. 1 on Prime Video in over 105 countries, the series has already earned a season two renewal. With so much horror content as well as content in general out there, why has Carrie cast a spell on viewers?

During my interviews with the cast and creator of the series we spoke about what makes this reimaging of a 50 year old story so powerful.  According to series creator, Mike Flanagan (House of the Fall of Usher, House on Haunted Hill) the enduring appeal of Carrie goes well beyond its supernatural elements, instead at its core is something far more human and relatable. Unfortunately, that something is bullying and at its core, it  has not changed much in the half-century since Stephen King introduced the world to Carrie White in his first novel and Flanagan just ran with it.

“It’s got an idea at its core that I think is so universally true, regardless of kind of where we are, which is it is a tragedy that is rooted in the everyday choices between kindness and cruelty,” Flanagan explained. “And I think that’s always going to be relevant. It always is.”

While the themes remain timeless, the way people bully hasevolved, especially with the rise of social media, something that was not even an idea when King wrote the original. Flanagan’s update brings them front and center.

“The things that were the most important to me were about the particular tools of today when it comes to social cruelty, which is something that I think our teenagers are dealing with in a way we never could have imagined even two decades ago. So social media, the internet, and kind of the normalization of that cruelty was something I really wanted to explore. The other thing is that I think our experiences with school violence have changed quite a bit in the half century since Stephen King wrote this book, especially in the United States.”

Alison Thornton, who plays Chris Hargensen, one of Carrie’s biggest tormentor found the updates’ relevance surprising. “I think for me it was how relevant it is today and how we keep the through line of Stephen King’s Carrie, but I think with social media involved, it gives people in 2026 a lot more permission to be crueler online because they aren’t experiencing the repercussions of what they’re doing or the target of the cruelty, which is really terrifying,” said the actress.

Horror veteran Matthew Lillard, who plays Principal Grayle, believes there’s much more to this Carrie than audiences might expect and the series approach gave Flanagan the room to go beyond where previous versions did.

“The reality is you have no idea what this version of Carrie is until you sit down and watch all eight episodes,” said Lilliard. “Your expectations are not what is the result. And so for me, I think that’s the best part is that you have eight episodes to dig deeper into the characters.”

Similar praise came from Josie Totah, who plays another of Carrie’s biggest bullies Tina Blake, a character that has always had limited screen time in previous versions of the story, but has much more in the series version of the story.

“I feel like a lot of times with television adaptations, it can feel like you’re purposely forcing yourself to stretch out a small story and but I think this adaptation just felt very natural and it felt like it was able to breathe and allow these characters to grow in a very authentic way that I think still very much respected the source material,” said. Totah.

The added depth extended beyond Carrie herself allowing characters that once only appeared to be bullies to have layers to them, including personal struggles that help provide more insight into their actions. Arthur Conti, who plays Billy Nolan notes, “That’s part of the job is that you have to find a way to like this person that you’re playing and how he thinks and why he’s doing what he’s doing in a way that. He’s not just a bad guy.”

At the center of it all is Summer H. Howell, stepping into a role that has become synonymous with horror. With such an iconic character comes a certain amount of expectation, but Flanagan made it clear early on that he wanted Howell to make Carrie her own.

“Mike told me from pretty early on, he said that as much as Carrie is his and Stephen’s, she’s now mine, which just like gave me permission as an actor to like have confidence in what I was doing,” Howell recalled. “Yeah, he just trusted me and the people he brought together, our incredible ensemble.”

Flanagan took a different direction when it came to the relationship between Carrie and her mother. Instead of the focus on religious fanaticism he focused on a parent’s inability to let go which can lead to, “accidentally monstrous parenting.”

“And then to kind of replace Margaret White’s historic kind of religious fanaticism with something else, with something that felt like a failure of love, almost, an overprotectiveness that became toxic, as opposed to this kind of abuse that was fueled by kind of hate and fear of her daughter,” explained Flanagan

For Samantha Sloyan, who portrays Carrie’s mom, Margaret White, the emergence of Carrie’s powers was even more frightening to her character because it led to the realization that many parents fear, she can no longer control her daughter, but in the case of Carrie that means much much more threatening than simple talking back. “I think it is the thing that terrifies her the most, that the control that she, which was always an illusion anyway, but it’s no longer there,” said Sloyann. “And the thing, unfortunately, that Margaret is having the hardest time is her daughter growing up.”

Howell sees the same conflict from the other side. “For Carrie, she’s got freedom literally in her fingertips and she just feels bad about using it. And it’s this journey of learning that it’s okay and not being really supported at all through it,” shared Howell. ”But yeah, she scares herself in a lot of moments, but then she starts to get into it and things go pretty crazy between her and Margaret.”

The combination of ordinary human struggles and Carrie’s extraordinary power are what make Carrie a horror classic. Flanagan believes the genre offers a way to confront uncomfortable truths and our biggest fears which are often intertwined.

“I think horror challenges us to be brave, which is what I think is beautiful about it. It holds a mirror to ideas we otherwise might be afraid to discuss, and it wraps it in a genre that makes it digestible and even appealing. I think we can have stories about big ideas that confront some of the darker truths of our nature.”

Watch the full interviews with the cast and Flanagan below and be sure to watch Carrie, the entire 8-episode season in its entirety, exclusively on Prime Video. And find my full review, here.