Linda Cardellini has spoken to NME about Crystal Lake, the Friday the 13th prequel series in which she portrays Jason Voorhees’s vengeful mother, Pamela.
In the original 1980 film, a group of teenagers attempts to reopen the abandoned Camp Crystal Lake, only for their efforts to be interrupted by a mysterious cloaked killer. As the death toll rises, the killer is revealed to be Pamela Voorhees, a grieving mother seeking revenge for the death of her son, Jason. Jason supposedly drowned at the camp 22 years earlier while the counsellors responsible for supervising him were having sex in a nearby supply shed.
Although Pamela had only a few minutes of screen time, Betsy Palmer’s performance left an enduring impression on a generation of slasher fans. The next 11 films focused largely on Jason, Pamela’s masked son, while the new prequel series Crystal Lake explores the origins of his mother’s bloody vendetta.
“You can’t deny that it is part of a franchise that has many movies as well as fans who are attached to every [one of those]. But it goes back before the first movie begins, so there is room to expand [the story],” Linda Cardellini told NME. “Betsy Palmer plays this incredible Pam Voorhees at the end of the first movie. She is Pam. Her version is the version… but to be able to expand on that is fun.”
Cardellini is reluctant to rank Pamela among horror’s most frightening killers, leaving that distinction to the audience. “That’s for the audience to decide… although it’s pretty terrifying in the original movie, because you expect [the killer] to be another camper,” she said. “The fact it’s this grown woman who was a trusted cook at the camp, and had this history that nobody knew about, is pretty crazy.”
After completing the Emmy-winning dark comedy DTF St. Louis, Cardellini had only a week before beginning work on Crystal Lake. She found the dramatic contrast between the two productions invigorating. “That was actually the most exciting thing for me coming off DTF,” she said. “They’re just so wildly different. It didn’t give me much time to try to get in my own head about it either. I couldn’t get in my own way. I just had to start doing it.”
As Crystal Lake unfolds, Cardellini’s portrayal of Pamela reveals glimpses of her life before Jason, including a stint as a lounge singer. She performs Ella Fitzgerald’s ‘Blue Skies’ and Connie Francis’s ‘You’re Gonna Miss Me’ to bring this side of the character to life. Cardellini had dreamed of becoming a Broadway singer while growing up, but the musical moments in the series were not inspired by that ambition or by her rendition of ‘Dream a Little Dream of Me’ in the Netflix comedy Dead to Me.
“That was all Brad [Kane, Crystal Lake showrunner],” she revealed. “He was on Broadway when he was still a little kid and he was [the singing voice of] Aladdin [in three animated movies]. He based [Pam’s career] on his own mum. He’s a real cinephile and knows every song, so those [songs] are his picks.”
Cardellini believes Pamela’s background as a performer makes her an even more unsettling character. “There’s something dangerous about a performer who doesn’t get to perform.”
During overnight shoots in New Jersey and at Blairstown’s Camp No-Be-Bo-Sco, which featured in the 1980 original, the cast and crew kept themselves awake with music. “We would play a lot of ‘70s and ‘80s music. Everybody would call out their favourites, and we’d all be singing and talking as we stayed up all night together,” Cardellini said.
Her favourite albums include Prince’s Purple Rain and Madonna’s Like a Prayer. “I was a big Madonna fan as a kid. I still remember going to the [‘Blond Ambition World Tour’] and that was such a big album for me. I’m also a huge Jesus Christ Superstar fan, so there’s always a little bit of that playing.” After a night involving fake blood, woodland chases and wrestling with dead bodies, Cardellini prefers something “happy and cheerful”. Her go-to track is ‘Groove Is in the Heart’ by Deee-lite.
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Cardellini grew up watching horror films at Halloween-themed sleepovers organised by her parents, although she moved away from the genre as she got older. She accepted the role in Crystal Lake because she “hadn’t done anything like it before”.
“I’d been offered things [like it] and I’ve dabbled in this world before… but I was [always] the person who was being chased. This time around, I get to be the person who’s chasing everybody [else], so that felt very different. It had a different kind of power about it that I had not explored.”
One of Cardellini’s best-known roles bears little resemblance to Pamela: Velma, the crime-solving detective in the live-action Scooby-Doo movies. The first film in the series turns 25 next year.
“I loved doing that film,” said Cardellini. “When I was a kid, I grew up watching fun, adventure mystery movies such as The Goonies. To be in one that was also based on my favourite cartoon growing up too… I never in a million years thought I’d get to do something like that. So actually getting the part and then shooting the movie [was] so much fun. I really had a great time. It was in Australia and I had never been there before, so I got to do a lot of firsts.”
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