Pamela was decapitated during a showdown with Alice Hardy (Adrienne King), the sole survivor of her rampage. Jason, who supposedly witnessed his mother\u2019s killing, took up the blade, slaughtering his way through several bloody sequels. And although Pamela has less than 15 minutes of screen time in the film, she continues to be celebrated by legions of \u201cFriday the 13th\u201d fans.<\/p>\n
As the 50th anniversary of the first film approaches, Pamela is finally getting her turn in the spotlight in \u201cCrystal Lake<\/a>.\u201d The Peacock prequel stars Linda Cardellini as Pamela, tracing her traumatic journey from grieving mother to serial killer. The opening episode depicts her deep bond with young Jason (Callum Vinson), an outsider who has significant health issues and is bullied by other kids.<\/p>\n Linda Cardellini as Pamela Voorhees in Peacock\u2019s \u201cCrystal Lake,\u201d a prequel to \u201cFriday the 13th.\u201d<\/p>\n (Matt Infante \/ Peacock)<\/p>\n It\u2019s a lead role the veteran actor is not taking lightly.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen you\u2019re playing an iconic character in a franchise loved by so many fans, it is daunting,\u201d said Cardellini in an interview over video call. \u201cIt\u2019s a lot of responsibility, but it\u2019s also a great responsibility.\u201d<\/p>\n Adding an extra dose of expectation was stepping into Palmer\u2019s shoes. \u201cBetsy Palmer gave this incredibly wild performance, and makes such a strong impression in such a short amount of time,\u201d Cardellini said. \u201cShe looks like someone\u2019s mother you might know, and then she becomes so unhinged. It\u2019s a great horror movie performance, and there\u2019s no way you could redo it.\u201d<\/p>\n She added, \u201cI took little glimmers, little pieces of her. I hope that people can see those little moments here and there. The show looks at the making of a monster, but his mother is also a monster.\u201d<\/p>\n Cardellini\u2019s turn in the terrordome comes just weeks after winning a supporting actress Emmy<\/a> for \u201cDTF St. Louis<\/a>,\u201d the HBO limited series in which she played Carol Love-Smernitch, a suburban woman and Little League umpire who becomes entangled in a lurid triangle with her husband Floyd Smernitch (David Harbour), an American Sign Language interpreter, and his colleague, weatherman Clark Forrest (Jason Bateman). <\/p>\n Cardellini, whose career has included prominent roles in \u201cFreaks and Geeks, \u201cER,\u201d \u201cDead to Me\u201d and other projects, said she was still riding high from the win: \u201cI have the Emmy at my house. I\u2019ve been nominated before, so it came as a big surprise. It was great when it happened.\u201d<\/p>\n Asked whether it was scarier to play Carol or Pamela, Cardellini paused.<\/p>\n \u201cBoth have their difficulties, and that makes them fun to play,\u201d she said. \u201cCarol is searching for control, while Pamela is exerting her control. There\u2019s this thing inside her that she can\u2019t control. She\u2019s got rage issues, and she\u2019s also repressed. Most importantly, everything she does is for Jason.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s a quality Linda has that Pamela Voorhees needed,\u201d said Brad Caleb Kane, the creator of \u201cCrystal Lake.\u201d \u201cShe has an effortless likability.\u201d<\/p>\n (Erik Carter\/For The Times)<\/p>\n Brad Caleb Kane, who created the series and serves as showrunner, called Pamela \u201cthe mother of all slashers. She is the protagonist of the first film, and the whole mythology comes from her. Her performance is indelible and left an impression for all of us who love these movies.\u201d<\/p>\n Casting Cardellini as Pamela \u201cwas my only choice,\u201d he said. \u201cThere\u2019s a quality Linda has that Pamela Voorhees needed. She has an effortless likability. You see that in all of her performances from \u2018Freaks and Geeks\u2019 to \u2018Dead to Me.\u2019 I needed that because Pamela Voorhees does a lot of killing, and you have to be able to empathize and sympathize with the character despite all of that bloodletting.\u201d <\/p>\n Cardellini doesn\u2019t have a specific memory of seeing the first \u201cFriday the 13th\u201d movie, \u201cBut I do recall seeing them at home with my brothers and having to pretend I wasn\u2019t as scared as I really was. I wanted to look cool in front of the other kids.\u201d <\/p>\n She was a bit taken aback when she was first approached about starring in \u201cCrystal Lake\u201d: \u201cI had never been offered anything like this before. I\u2019ve been offered roles where the character is on the other side of the knife or who is being chased. It\u2019s never been the person who is the chaser.\u201d<\/p>\n But the actor was intrigued by Pamela\u2019s dilemmas, which she characterized as a \u201ccrazy mixtape.\u201d \u201cShe\u2019s a single mom who is grieving. She\u2019s also in the world, trying to figure out if she should date again or have friends again. She\u2019s lonely and yearning for something. And there are these injustices that have been done to her and her child, which she\u2019s trying to deal with.\u201d<\/p>\n Kane was a key pillar of support as she attempted to connect with the essence of Pamela. \u201cBrad surely was a great resource,\u201d Cardellini said. \u201cI could go to him with a question about the movies, and he would answer specifically about where it was, how it was and what it was. He really is the leader, an encyclopedia of horror movie trivia and information.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cShe\u2019s a single mom who is grieving. She\u2019s also in the world, trying to figure out if she should date again or have friends again,\u201d said Cardellini about Pamela.<\/p>\n (Peacock)<\/p>\n Still, it was not an easy shoot, Cardellini said. \u201cIt was so physical. There were times when I thought, \u2018This is really getting crazy.\u2019 It was the summer in New Jersey, and we\u2019re in the woods in the middle of the night, definitely not at a resort or a beach,\u201d she recalled. \u201cThere really were snakes and ticks and bears. It was fun but also challenging. I would come home and take pictures of the bruises on my legs.\u201d<\/p>\n More uplifting were her warm scenes with Vinson, who was outfitted with an oversize head.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat a great actor he is,\u201d Cardellini said of the youngster. \u201cHe had a lot of really hard things to do, working with a very difficult prosthetic piece. None of that was easy, but he\u2019s such a trouper. It\u2019s so heartbreaking because he\u2019s so sweet. There\u2019s a scene where he has a medical issue, which was a difficult scene to play, even for adults. I just wanted to hold and help him.\u201d<\/p>\n That mother-child dynamic, she said, should allow fans of the franchise to appreciate the \u201cFriday the 13th\u201d formula beyond the expected horror.<\/p>\n \u201cI just really like that we show the sweetness of Jason before all of this other stuff happens. We get to know him as just a child,\u201d Cardellini said. \u201cWith Pamela Voorhees, there\u2019s something to be said of playing someone\u2019s story from beginning, middle to end. Hopefully people who care about the character will be excited to see more of her.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jason Voorhees has always been the face of the \u201cFriday the 13th\u201d horror universe. But if he could…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":803366,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[262313,263790,263792,263789,21456,96,111277,30036,263791,82252,86282,9604,43064,2839,263788,4238,163653,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-803365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-13th","tag-betsy-palmer","tag-callum-vinson","tag-cardellini","tag-crystal-lake","tag-entertainment","tag-fan","tag-friday","tag-iconic-character","tag-jason","tag-linda-cardellini","tag-lot","tag-mother","tag-movies","tag-pamela-voorhees","tag-time","tag-turn","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/803365","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=803365"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/803365\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/803366"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=803365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=803365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=803365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/1792066571_668_.jpeg\")
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