Nerdophiles was present for NBCUniversal’s Backlot Pass, a preview of what’s to come in 2026. Part of the day, we previewed the new series Crystal Lake! Developed by Brad Caleb Kane (Fringe), the highly anticipated Friday the 13th prequel follows Pam Voorhees (Linda Cardellini, DTF St. Louis), a grieving single mother who lost her son Jason (Callum Vinson, Chucky) to drowning in the town lake. When two strangers start digging into her past, a series of chilling events occur that leave people questioning who Pam is. During our press conference, we spoke to Cardellini and Kane about creating a prequel to such an iconic and beloved franchise, and so much more!
On the emotions of bringing the franchise back after a long hiatus, Kane said: “It’s thrilling and terrifying since I grew up with the franchise. I’ve seen almost every one of these movies in theaters for the first run. The first one I saw, in the summer of 1982, was Friday the 13th Part III in 3D. It blew my mind and it opened my eyes as a gateway drug to the wider world of film genre. The horror genre became the thing that I measured everything that I did by. So, it’s absolutely terrifying, but at the same time, I’m thrilled with what we made. I’m very proud of the show, and, hopefully, people will just go on a fun ride with it.” Cardellini chimed in: “It’s a well-loved franchise. So entering into that is exciting and also daunting. So it’s all of those things.” Kane added: “But I will just add, everybody that was involved with the show — myself, Linda, Dave Presto, who is our special effects makeup person, everybody — are longtime fans and made the show, crafted it lovingly and with hopefully great respect for the fans.”
On the reliability of horror as a genre and why it’s resonating so deeply with audiences nowadays, Kane shared: “I think because it’s primal, and a release valve. I think people are wound pretty tightly. Obviously, the golden age of the slasher flick, the horror genre, was the late ’70s, the early ’80s. You are coming out of a time in America of economic depression, but certainly, as Jimmy Carter said at that time, malaise, mistrust in institutions. Just, everything was changing, and people wanted an escape, and people wanted a thrill at the misfortunes of others as opposed to their own. So, I think people just love it as a release valve. It’s just fun. People love fun.” Cardellini quipped: “I think there’s something really fun about getting your adrenaline going and then also knowing that, at the end of it, you can either shut it off and walk away or have a shared experience with somebody if you are watching it in the theater, and now those theaters are at home. So it’s something really fun to experience with each other. You feel very present when you are watching horror because you are scared and you are involved, and so it’s something that, I think, makes people tune in.”
On people liking to get scared for “fun” and not in real life, Cardellini told us: “I think the controlled fear of watching it in a film and exercising those muscles but not having the stakes be truly high is the allure. It’s just an adrenaline rush, and it’s a fun, wild ride to go on. When I see our show, it really does operate with these ups and downs and these wild moments and these beautiful, sort of, colors and music, and I think it’s just sort of a feast for the senses.”
On the technicalities of the gore of the show, Cardellini mentioned: “There were a lot of cleanups and redos. There’s a specific scene we were shooting, and that blood had to fall exactly in the right position on my face for that stunt to work. So there were several different ways and people involved in how we did it, but for it to really have its full impact on my face took a few takes.” Kane further explained: “A lot of the gags and special effects in the show are very complicated. Linda had to go through a lot. And they are very hard to reset, and we didn’t have a lot of opportunities to do that. And just giving my props right now, here in front of all of you, to Linda — she nailed it every single time. There was never a “Oh, Linda was not in the right place. The bag blew open. Great. The blood hit perfectly, but Linda wasn’t under it,” right? No. She nailed it every time. So it was a pleasure working with her with these complicated gags because she’s a consummate pro.”
On the contradictions and evolution of horror films, Kane noted: “I had not heard of Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma when we started writing, conceiving and shooting this show. I still haven’t seen Camp Miasma, but I’m dying to. I love Jane Schoenbrun, and I think she’s one of our great horror auteurs now, but it’s interesting. When these movies first came out — obviously, Camp Miasma is not like this. I haven’t seen it yet, but I think it’s got a lot more to say, and is more of an exegesis of a slasher film than just a straight slasher film. But when these movies first came out, they were in many ways considered exploitation flicks. I know a lot about the making of the first Friday the 13th movie from the original family that made it, and it was meant to be a thrill ride and just a fun time at the movies for people. And in many ways, when these movies came out, whether it was this, Sleepaway Camp, or The Burning, which were misogynistic or problematic at that time. I think they’ve been reclaimed today and looked at a little bit differently, and I think these movies inherently have a lot of contradictions in them. Obviously, they are in some ways exploitative, but at the same time, they gave birth to the concept of the “Final Girl.” And I think there are a lot of ways that they are contradictory in both good and bad ways, which I think makes them interesting. It makes for interesting theses on these movies, and I think there’s a lot more there than anybody would maybe have thought when they initially came out. That’s my sort of — that’s my very quick — honestly, I could talk about the contradictions of slasher movies and horror movies of the time, like, for a long time, but that’s not for this press conference.”
On Pam’s angelic and righteous nature that descends into hell, Cardellini revealed: “We all know where Pam ends up because she starts all of the killing in the first movie. So, we know where she ends up. I think what Brad gave me was a beautiful beginning and somewhere to go. There’s an arc there from somebody who means well and is trying to survive and doing the best that she can and fighting hard for things that she thinks are right to somebody who then turns out to do all the wrong things. So I think it gives me a lot of places to go, and that descent is very necessary.”
On the creative choice to go back to the original New Jersey set of the first Friday the 13th movie to film this series, Kane disclosed: “It was a deliberate choice to go back there and do exteriors in Blairstown, absolutely, and that’s one of the Easter eggs we wanted to give to the die-hard fans, to re-create certain things. That’s all I’ll say to that. I’m sure you’ve all seen stuff. But in terms of people from the original work on it, nobody that I’m aware of. And, no, there were no locals that were there at the time in 1980, working on the film, who had anything, I mean, to say about it. There were some fans. It’s like Mecca for Friday the 13th fans. Fans make pilgrimages to Blairstown, New Jersey. You also have the Blairstown Diner. So it’s like coming to this lot in 1988 and sitting in Courthouse Square. It’s like you can feel Doc Brown plugging in the thing. That’s what Blairstown feels like. It’s, like, “Oh, yeah, I recognize this place.” And it feels frozen in time. It hasn’t changed, really, very much in 45 years. So it was very intentional on our part. And, no, there was nobody there who could tell us anything about the making of the first film.” Cardellini interjected: “Although I stopped and got a coffee, and inside the diner, it was completely decorated, full of Jason and Friday the 13th.”
On the biggest creative and conceptual challenges, Kane teased: “I think the biggest conceptual issue was people know what to expect from a Friday the 13th, or at least they know what a Friday the 13th movie should be. It’s teenagers going out to a place, having sex and doing drugs, and then they are hunted by Mrs. Voorhees or Jason in the subsequent films, or Roy in No. 5 for those die-hards. But, thankfully, we weren’t making a Friday the 13th movie. They are going to make another Friday the 13th movie, which I’m sure will be Friday the 13th to the max; but this was called Crystal Lake, and we were doing a story about the town and a prequel about Jason’s mom, and it was really fresh snow. We could build it however we wanted. And feeling ownership for the franchise as a longtime fan and a lover of it, truly die-hard lover, I kind of knew what I wanted to see as a grown-up Friday the 13th fan, as somebody who these movies opened doors for me, and I opened my eyes and I thrilled watching them with thousand-seaters full of people yelling at the screen. But I also grew up a little bit and became interested in other films and other themes in films, and I wanted to bring all of that cinema love to my love for Friday the 13th. So I was really given carte blanche, but I also wanted to honor the fans of those original movies and myself as an original fan of those movies by giving as many Easter eggs as made sense within the context of this story as possible, and I think we did that a lot. And there’s even more beyond Episode 4, and I think everybody here has seen four episodes. But we do more than give you Easter eggs going into five-six. We re-create things, which I won’t spoil here.”
On saying yes to this show, No Good Deed, and DTF St. Louis and eccentric career and character choices, Cardellini informed us: “Thank you for noticing how crazy my choices are. That’s what’s exciting to me about being an actor, and if I have not done it, then I really am keen to do it. Pamela was somebody that I had never played, and the idea of, here’s a franchise built on a man in a hockey mask, but it actually started with his mother — I thought that was a really interesting thing. I hadn’t seen that. And I know there are some coming out now that, sort of, when we were talking about it, I hadn’t really seen a lot of that happening. So I thought, “Well, I’ve never done that before. I’d like to try that.” But I’m very lucky that there are these roles that I’ve been able to do that are so different from the next, and that to me is what keeps me excited about what I do. And I’m grateful that people write things for me. I mean, the role that he wrote, I do so many things.” Kane injected: “And I did write this for you. We’ve talked about that.” Cardellini continued: “Thank you. And it’s just — to be able to do that many things in a role, in a series, in a job, it’s just — it’s delicious for me. But, yeah, No Good Deed to — she was a terrible person in a different way. And DTF St. Louis, she’s a different kind of person. I just have been very lucky to be able to choose varied characters and to be sort of — I don’t know — finding new things to do, sort of, several decades into my career — many decades into my career.”
On observing Betsy Palmer in the original Friday the 13th and making her own choices for this version of Pam Voorhees, Cardellini offered: “I have, of course, seen what Betsy Palmer did. And then, you know, you see a little bit more of it in 2. She kind of comes back as a severed head; but, no, of course, and the fans love her so much. And we toyed around with the idea of the short hair, but we figured she has ten years to get there. You know, you can’t duplicate what Betsy did, but what she did is play this devoted mother, and so, for that, I can take that and sort of bring that to the early childhood years of Jason’s life. I also think that you don’t get to where Betsy is without really truly loving Jason and getting to know him. So that was really important to us, too, going in. And, no, you can’t be another Betsy, but I do a little bit of an homage to a certain sweater, I think, that makes an appearance — and still, sort of, create something new.”
On a moment from the series that they’re most excited for fans to see, Kane expanded: “You haven’t seen it yet, but when you watch the first four episodes, you go, “Okay, they are telling a story, and there’s a little bit of paranoid conspiracy thriller here, and it’s a psychological devolution or evolution, however you want to put it; but where’s Friday the 13th?” Pam goes full Friday the 13th in this season, and you will see it. And there are a series of kills that are everything the movies do, and, hopefully, it will satisfy the real hunt hack-and-slash fans, too, but we build to it — but it’s coming.” Cardellini concluded: “There’s a lot of things I am excited for fans to see. I mean, I’m partial to the first episode — the end of that first episode, because it sort of operates like a — she doesn’t really speak anymore in the last — what is it? — like, 15 minutes. It’s just a fight sequence with me and the two men that show up at the door. And to me, that much action gets a little gruesome. It gets to be all of the things. It was really physical and really fun, and I think her rage really starts to show through, and you get a glimpse of who she will be throughout the series in those moments. And there’s a moment where, sort of, I am, postmortem, beating a body that I just feel is very Pam’s rage.”
Watch The Teaser Trailer Below And Catch All Episodes Of Crystal Lake Only On Peacock On October 15th!
Editor’s Note: This coverage reflects a condensed summary of the press conference. Some remarks have been paraphrased or edited for clarity and flow.
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