Voorhees, was the original killer.” That quote from “Scream,” in which Ghostface trips up Casey (Drew Barrymore) while asking her about scary movies, is a reminder that for many modern audiences, “Friday the 13th” matriarch Pamela Voorhees exists as little more than a trivia question. Yet Peacock and A24 are betting big on audiences’ interest in an epic tale about the murderous mother. I certainly didn’t get into [1981 summer camp slasher] ‘The Burning’ to hear about [the killer] Cropsy’s long backstory,” Kane says.
But in doing TV, and I’ve done a lot of TV up to this point, there really is a lot you can do delving into character and motivations and transformation.” For the uninitiated, 1980’s “Friday the 13th” is about the young counselors of Camp Crystal Lake getting murdered as they try to reopen the property years after a tragic incident. In the end, the killer is revealed to be Mrs. Voorhees (Betsy Palmer), who blamed her son Jason’s drowning years earlier on counselors hooking up when they should have been watching him, and she decided to teach this new batch of horny teens a lesson.
The “Friday” franchise swelled into a dependable moneymaker, with 11 more films, a TV show, video games and merch galore following the original indie slasher. The focus shifted to Jason — now a hulking, undead killer — as the antagonist, leaving Mrs. Voorhees as little more than a footnote in the series.
But with “Crystal Lake,” Kane, who is also the showrunner of horror prequel series “It: Welcome to Derry,” was interested in creating a fully realized antihero with a strong sense of time and place. But when you get into television storytelling, people come to TV for character. We didn’t know much about the town of Crystal Lake, even though it’s fun to see in the movie.
Where we started was, ‘What decade are we telling the story?’ And obviously, before the events of the first movie that take place in 1980, what was happening in that decade in America? Can we start with those thematics and somehow parallel the story of America in the ’70s and all the changes that were happening? There were a lot of changes that were happening for Pamela Voorhees and how she became the mother of all slashers that we ultimately know.” Cardellini, who has had key roles on critically acclaimed series from “Freaks and Geeks” and “ER” to “Mad Men” and “DTF St.
Louis,” was excited to work on an ambitious project which had a broad canvas for her character and an opportunity for her to contribute to its success. It wasn’t something where I was going to be shut out and just told what to do. The collaboration of it was exciting.
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