Linda Cardellini on musical ‘Crystal Lake’ murderer Pamela Voorhees and her favourite Prince and Madonna albums

Linda Cardellini has spoken to NME about Crystal Lake, the Friday The 13th prequel series in which she plays Jason’s vengeful mum Pamela Voorhees.

• READ MORE: ‘Crystal Lake’ review: ‘Friday The 13th’ prequel gives Jason’s mum a twisted origin story

In the original 1980 film, attempts by a group of teenagers to reopen the abandoned Camp Crystal Lake are derailed when they start getting murdered by a mysterious cloaked assassin. As the body count rises, it’s revealed that grieving mother Pamela Voorhees is the brutal killer. Her son, Jason, supposedly drowned at the camp 22 years earlier when the counsellors who should have been supervising him were off having sex in a nearby supply shed – and the murders were Pamela’s revenge.

As Mrs Voorhees, actor Betsy Palmer only had a few minutes of screen time, but she created a lasting impression on a generation of slasher fanatics. The next 11 movies mostly focused on her masked menace of a son Jason, but new prequel series Crystal Lake explores Pamela’s twisted origin story.

“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.”

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She won’t get drawn on where Pam Voorhees sits in the list of horror’s all-time scariest killers though. “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.”

Cardellini only had a week between wrapping work on the Emmy-winning flirty dark comedy DTF St. Louis and embarking on production for Crystal Lake, but that contrast was a thrilling one. “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 progresses, we get glimpses of Pamela’s life before Jason, including her stint as a lounge singer. Because of this, Cardellini performs both ‘Blue Skies’ by Ella Fitzgerald and Connie Francis’ ‘You’re Gonna Miss Me’. Growing up, Cardellini wanted to be a Broadway singer but those musical moments in the new show weren’t inspired by that time or her gorgeous rendition of ‘Dream A Little Dream Of Me’ in beloved 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.”

In Cardellini’s opinion, knowing Pam used to be a singer makes her character even creepier: “There’s something dangerous about a performer who doesn’t get to perform.”

During the all-night shoots in New Jersey and at Blairstown’s Camp No-Be-Bo-Sco, which features in the 1980 original, the cast and crew of Crystal Lake would play music to keep themselves awake. “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,” said Cardellini.

Her favourite albums are 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.” As for the perfect soundtrack after a night of fake blood, woodland chases and wrestling with dead bodies? Cardellini wanted to listen to something “happy and cheerful”. Her go-to track is ‘Groove Is In The Heart’ by Deee-lite.

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Linda Cardellini grew up watching horrors at Halloween-themed slumber parties organised by her parents but drifted away from the genre as she got older. She said yes to 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.”

Of course, one of Linda Cardellini’s most well-known characters bears little resemblance to Pamela in Crystal Lake – crime-busting detective Velma from the live-action Scooby-Doo movies, the first of which 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.”