How to make a 'Friday the 13th' prequel: blood bags, vintage paranoia and Linda Cardellini as Pamela Voorhees

Star Cardellini and showrunner Brad Caleb Cain have teased a good prequel to "Friday the 13th." They tell IndieWire how '70s paranoia, their own horror tendencies, and Don Knotts (yes, Don Knotts) make Pamela Voorhees' story into something really juicy.

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It's interesting, to this day, how many people still don't realize that Jason Voorhees only appears for one second in the original Friday the 13th movie. Spoiler for a 46-year-old movie (and the opening scene of "Scream" and the entire premise of the new "Friday the 13th" series): Jason's mother, Pamela Voorhees, is the killer in the first movie.

In the 1980 film directed by Sean S. Cunningham, we know that Pamela Voorhees blames pretty much everyone at Camp Crystal Lake for the drowning of her son, Jason Voorhees (we're assuming you're familiar with her work), and goes on a murderous spree (which includes a young Kevin Bacon). The new series examines, well, how did it get to this point? Related Stories The New Sense and Sensibility introduces a different Marian Dashwood and a failed star in Esmé Creed-Miles.

"Crystal Lake" has been under development for about 23 years. "Friday the 13th" rights are caught in a very complicated legal situation, and different entities have different aspects. What will Jason Voorhees become? (For example, Jason Musk doesn't get his iconic hockey mask until the third installment, and there are legal claims about that creation versus what we see in the first film.)

But Crystal Lake, set in the 70s, is far from just anyone running around in a hockey mask. But! Finally we are making this show with Caleb Kane. And now, Linda Cardellini stars as Pamela Voorhees, after winning an Emmy for "DTF St. Louis."

Ahead, Kane and Cardellini share what they each wanted from the Pamela Voorhees we see in the series, and why the show added a conspiracy subplot that wasn't present in the movies. (Oh, and kudos to Don Knotts, who we see on the show, wonderfully.)

The interview below has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.

IndieWire: When Linda was cast, you didn't realize you were getting Emmy winner Linda Cardellini.

Brad Caleb Kane: No! But by the time I cast him for Crystal Lake, he should have won an Emmy. But I knew that all his performances were unmissable and amazing. He has an effortless loveliness. One of the things I was thinking about when I first called Linda about the possibility of playing her was her performance in "Dead to Me," where she keeps everything she knows to herself and can't tell anyone what she's done. That element of keeping all that information inside and making us see how much it bothers him and how contradictory it is without commenting on it. It was a real element that we needed for our Pamela Voorhees. Someone who keeps secrets, but you can see it eating away at him. And becomes someone who just lets his freak flag fly happily. So I wanted that quality and he does it effortlessly on that show, so that's why I reached out.

This series was first discussed in 2003.

Sean S. Cunningham indicated that he had an idea in development. Over the years, many people have tried. How did you do it?

Kane: Right place, right time. The right harvest for the right people

And I understand that it has had a very complicated legal journey.

Kane: Yeah, all of these things are kind of above my salary - all the lawsuits that kind of added up to all the salaries. I think this happened to A24 and Jason Inc. I think there is another rights holder? And some people have the right to the mask but not the name. All those things were done and dealt with before I got on board and pitched my opinion. It was really just a function of seeing that they were going to make this thing.

The great Bryan Fuller, who I'm a big fan of, I think had creative differences with some people. And finally he went another way. But they were looking to do it with somebody because they wanted to do a Pamela Voorhees prequel, and when I saw that happen, I was like, 'Friday the 13th Part 3' was the first 'Friday the 13th' I saw in the cinema.

That was 1982, right? That was my first, but I didn't really get into these until the pandemic. I found them comforting.

Kane: Right, and I remember a whole crowd and manipulating that crowd and yelling at the screen. There was a fine layer of marijuana smoke over everyone's heads that the blue beam of the projector passed through. This is all very prosaic to me.

Kane: Yes, absolutely! Shelly Finkelstein with her things! That guy is a lawyer now, I think he is a lawyer for some people who were in different movies. Because the Friday the 13th world is a small family, people come to them from movies and stuff. And I think he's actually a lawyer for some of these people. The actors of his various films have made the show "Friday the 13th" a career.

Linda, what is your previous relationship with "Friday the 13th"?

Linda Cardellini: I mean, I saw the movies when I was a kid. When I was a kid, I loved horror movies. I think it made me look cool to my older brother. I saw other movies in the theater, but I remember seeing Freddy vs. Jason in the theater. It was at Universal Citywalk in Los Angeles and it was packed with people. And people were screaming at the screen! I was waiting for the release of that movie. They were two symbols, two worlds colliding. So I love a Halloween horror night, I mean I'm less, a little older now, but I really love the excitement and fun of it.

And I'm a big Halloween lover. Halloween holiday So, all that I think is really fun. I mean, you really can't think of Friday the 13th without seeing the niqab in your mind, or thinking about how auspicious that date is. So I think for a child of the 80s it found its way - into your soul. Just like when you go to the pool and there might be a shark, you feel scared. [Laughs] Because we saw "Jaws"!

Keane: In terms of comforting them during the pandemic, do you think a lot of it has to do with the nostalgia factor and longing for a simpler time…

Yes, a simpler time when Jason Voorhees was running around stabbing people.

Kane: You walk into the campground and this guy grabs you. And probably in a very innovative and creative way.

Kane: Absolutely over the top. And there's something very comforting about going back to those things that were simpler in our youth than they are now—in our personal lives or in the world at large. So, yes, that's why they are comforting in many ways.

Cardellini: And it's not overly realistic, that's what's interesting about it. This part makes it entertaining to digest.

Are you surprised how many people don't realize that Jason basically isn't even in the first movie?

Kane: That's exactly what killed Drew Barrymore at the beginning of Scream. He got this answer wrong! I don't know, don't people now know that Mrs. Voorhees was the killer in the first movie?

I think an ordinary citizen generally does not know this.

Cardellini: And you think the hockey mask was there the whole time.

It is true that it is not displayed until the end of the third.

Kane: Well, we have to train them. [Laughs] I like to think of myself as a coach.

Linda has a scene where she wraps a man's head in a clear plastic bag with a head wound, then the bag completely fills with blood and explodes in your face.

Cardellini: When I read it, I was very excited. Because that's an ingenious way of looking at it. I don't understand, oh, wait a minute, I'm going to be head over heels in it.

Kane: Oh, you didn't realize the reality of it on earth?

Cardellini: No, but I thought it was very fun and inventive and quirky and I love that about parts of the show. We spent a week shooting that sequence. Is it like a 15 minute sequence?

Cardellini: It's a 20-minute sequence, and there's not much talking.

Cardellini: And he's just physically dealing with it. For me, I loved it. That it wasn't dialogue heavy and was really about...uh...it was cinematic to me. It read like a movie to me and I thought it would be a lot of fun and I've never done that before. After that, I think a great sign for him in the mirror, "What did you do?" And being at that point in his life puts you on the path to what you're about to see. And how he becomes that person.

Kane: And all of these things are just a function of him trying to survive. None of that is out of the blue, "Oh, let's show you a whole bunch of blood." He was struggling to survive. He does what he does…

Kane: He's trying to clean it up and not make it this mess and become this thing. These situations are increasingly absurd.