‘Carrie’s Samantha Sloyan On The Finale Twist That “Helped To Anchor” Her Margaret White; Teases ‘The Exorcist: Martyrs’ Is “The Scariest Thing” Mike Flanagan Has Made

SPOILERS: This post contains details for the Season 1 finale episode of Prime Video‘s Carrie

With Mike Flanagan‘s take on the works of Stephen King in Prime Video’s Carrie, he tapped one of his frequent collaborators for an iconic role.

Samantha Sloyan, who stars as Carrie’s religious extremist mother Margaret White (originated onscreen by Piper Laurie in 1976), told Deadline she was attracted to the role when Flanagan wrote “a whole different human” for his adaptation, all episodes now available to stream.

“So, when Mike first brought up the concept of possibly doing Carrie, I was terrified because I was thinking, I’d read the book and I’ve grown up with the De Palma film,” noted Sloyan.

Plus, the Margaret audiences have known from previous adaptations is “a parallel character in a lot of ways” to the role she played in Flanagan’s Midnight Mass (2021), the overzealous church lady Bev Keane.

“I thought, ‘Oh, I don’t know if I can do that because she is so bombastic and huge and terrifying in this like dreamy, dangerous quality,'” she said of playing Margaret. “And not only that, but how would I get rid of that in my mind? How would I not be always aiming to be a version of what Piper had created?”

Sloyan continued, “And then, those fears were quickly alleviated when Mike was like, ‘Oh no, the reason I’m doing it is, I have this point of view on it, and a big part of that point of view is that Margaret and Carrie love each other.’ And then you’re like, oh OK, that’s a whole different human.”

The actress, who has worked with Flanagan on The Life of Chuck, The Haunting of Hill House, Hush and more, explained that the horror creator will “hear a particular actor’s voice” in his head while writing characters, which led them to work together on this more maternal version of Margaret than we’ve seen from the likes of Laurie, Patricia Clarkson and Julianne Moore.

With several twists in store for fans of King’s 1974 novel and its other adaptations, the finale episode “AP Physics” reveals that Margaret is also telekinetic, and that the TK gene that gives Carrie her powers is hereditary.

“It does play into so much of parents wanting, trying so hard for their kids not to suffer the same things that they suffered, and in doing so, sometimes create a new trauma for that kid,” she explained. “And I think, what I loved about it also was it really helped to anchor how, maybe we don’t see it until episode 8, but it helps anchor, if you go back, all the decisions she made. She understands because she knows it’s real.”

Sloyan added, “And that’s kind of the intensity that we see throughout her, the whole time. It’s not thinking, not knowing that she knows something’s up with her daughter, but she does. And that’s what’s been leading this kind of charge the whole time.”

In addition to her role in Carrie, Sloyan recently worked with Flanagan on “a small role” in The Exorcist: Martyrs, which she praised as one of his “scariest” titles yet.

“I have a very tiny footprint in that one, but I did get to go and see some stuff. All I’ve seen is what I watched through the monitor that day. But, it’s stunningly beautiful,” said Sloyan. “And, for me personally, I think from what little I saw, it’s the scariest thing that I’ve seen him do. So, I’m very excited. I’m excited as everybody else is to see it.”

Read on about Samantha Sloyan’s portrayal of Margaret White in Prime Video’s Carrie, all episodes now available to stream.

DEADLINE: What was it like working with Mike Flanagan again, especially after Midnight Mass?

SAMANTHA SLOYAN: I’m sure you know, but we made that during COVID, so just the fact to be working at all—but we felt like, if anything, that really cemented the feeling of family because there was no traveling back and forth. A lot of times, people will only come up for the stuff they’re shooting, they’ll leave, but we couldn’t do that. So, we were forced to become a family, and it was lovely. I think with this one, it was huge for me because it was my biggest footprint in a piece of his. I really got to be there and work with him. He’s such a wonderful collaborator. You always feel an ownership of it, but for this one, I just felt so deeply involved. He also opened up his set to all of us, to the younger cast and everybody, to come and watch the work even when you weren’t working. And so, that resulted in a lot of people being there frequently, even when you’re not working. Being an actor, sometimes you feel like you’re such a small cog in a really big machine and you don’t get to see a lot of it happen. And for this, I felt really like I was part of it, so it was a big deal.

DEADLINE: I love the original Carrie as well, and I was curious, was there a pressure at all to live up to Piper Laurie in a way? You really made the character your own in a really cool way, and I loved it.

SLOYAN: So, when Mike first brought up the concept of possibly doing Carrie, I was terrified because I was thinking, I’d read the book and I’ve grown up with the De Palma film and I even thought, I had done Bev [in Midnight Mass], and that’s, I guess, a parallel character in a lot of ways. I thought, “Oh, I don’t know if I can do that because she is so bombastic and huge and terrifying in this like dreamy, dangerous quality.” And not only that, but how would I get rid of that in my mind? How would I not be always aiming to be a version of what Piper had created? And then, those fears were quickly alleviated when Mike was like, “Oh no, the reason I’m doing it is, I have this point of view on it, and a big part of that point of view is that Margaret and Carrie love each other.” And then you’re like, oh OK, that’s a whole different human. But I did feel it was important, as did Mike, as the story to keep it intact. You still have to have Margaret be dangerous. You still have to have Margaret be something that Carrie is pushing up against, because I feel like you have to feel like Carrie’s stuck. She’s stuck between the torment in school and the torment at home, and you have to give her nowhere to go between those two spaces. So, a lot of that had to exist, just Margaret comes at it from a different angle.

DEADLINE: Yeah, I really appreciated that angle as well. And it’s funny you mentioned Bev from Midnight Mass, because when I was thinking of you taking on the Margaret character, that’s kind of what I thought, because I grew up around a lot of Bevs. But I really appreciated that she was much more maternal. It made it even more heartbreaking when she does eventually turn against Carrie.

SLOYAN: Yeah, and it’s darker.

DEADLINE: Absolutely, and also it felt grounded in a real way because there’s kind of a subculture of these very extremist MAGA moms, and it just felt much more realistic.

SLOYAN: I’m glad that’s the way it felt. I feel Mike is so good, and with Bev, like you were talking about, he writes people we recognize, which allows—I’m gonna say us as the viewer because I watch his stuff too—it allows you to disconnect so quickly and sometimes it helps give you that benefit of the doubt. It gives the viewer doubt, right? Like with Chris in this piece, it’s so hard to just write her off as a terrible human being. We get to know everything that’s happening.

DEADLINE: Another aspect that this version also showed more of was, how when Carrie’s dad dies and how that affects Margaret. Can you tell me a little bit about that and how she’s kind of coming out of this abusive relationship?

SLOYAN: Well, it’s interesting. I don’t see it as abusive because I always saw it as an agreement between the two that they had. I think it’s episode one, Crystal Balint, who plays the social worker, says they were a cult of three, and I feel like that is what they are. And is he the leader of the cult? He is, and in that we see, I think a lot of his conspiracy theories help her feel safe because she feels the world is so nonsensical and out of control that his explanations, regardless of how wild, just having something to point to as fact, makes her feel like she knows something and she has some agency over it. Bu yeah, I think what it gives to us also is, we’re tracking a woman who’s just lost her husband, in addition to being thrown into the world, so I had referred to it a bit of, if you go along with the cult theory, that you also have somebody whose bunker has just been blown up in a lot of ways, and so she doesn’t have any of the safeguards that she put in place, and she feels really naked out in this world and very vulnerable, and that I think is also what ratchets up and increases her reactionary tendencies and her aggression towards everybody else, especially in the protection of her daughter, the only part of her world that remains with her.

DEADLINE: Another part that I really appreciated about this version is how, it also really stresses the importance of mental health because Carrie calls out her mom as her bully.

SLOYAN: And we have that wonderful character, Mr. Morton, the guidance counselor, and I feel Principal Grayle to a certain extent, and Miss D, you do have these people who—this poor girl has nobody to talk to, she is isolated in the worst sense of the word, in the kind of tactical sense of the word, that cults do isolate, so they have nowhere else to go.

DEADLINE: Tell me about working with Katee Sackhoff as well. I love seeing a lot of the usual Mike Flanagan faces return.

SLOYAN: Yeah, Katee’s incredible. First of all, just her energy as a human is so exciting. She just kind of has that—Starbuck was the character she played, right? You feel like she could take anything on, and I love her addition to this part just as a counterpart to Margaret. Margaret has nobody to talk to and suddenly she’s found this one woman who understands what she’s talking about. It just so happens where Margaret is asking, “How do I take care of my daughter? How do I help my daughter in these unusual circumstances?” She’s talking to somebody who’s like, “You don’t help your daughter, you destroy your daughter. And that’s the only option.”

DEADLINE: Which definitely made it feel much more sensical as to why Margaret would turn on her daughter after you built such a maternal character this time around, and I really appreciated that, but at the same time, she’s obviously very susceptible to influence.

SLOYAN: And also, one of the things that Katee’s character Amanda says, “If you don’t do it, somebody else will.” And there’s that kind of, again, the threat from the outside world to Margaret. She said to Principal Grayle, “What my daughter knows and when is my prerogative. She’s my child.” And the world she feels is just grasping at her daughter, and then the final insult of, it would be able to end her daughter, and she’s kind of like, “If anybody’s going to do it, it’s going to be me.”

DEADLINE: Another part that I was really intrigued by was the ending, with Kate Siegel and revealing that Margaret is also psychic with that TK gene, because it really says a lot about internalized hate and generational trauma. Tell me about your reaction to first reading that and then playing it with Kate.

SLOYAN: Well, my first reaction to reading it, I was like, “That’s awesome.” And I do think it does play into so much of parents wanting, trying so hard for their kids not to suffer the same things that they suffered, and in doing so, sometimes create a new trauma for that kid. And I think, what I loved about it also was it really helped to anchor how, maybe we don’t see it until episode 8, but it helps anchor, if you go back, all the decisions she made. She understands because she knows it’s real. And I think also, in the episode where we see the rocks fall, we know that Margaret knows, understands what’s happening. And I think that’s the moment where she’s like, “Carrie will not leave this house, because I know what the world does to monsters.” And that’s kind of the intensity that we see throughout her, the whole time. It’s not thinking, not knowing that she knows something’s up with her daughter, but she does. And that’s what’s been leading this kind of charge the whole time. As far as working with Kate, I’ve known Kate since I was in my 20s, and we were in acting class together, and for us to be there in that moment, working, because we’ve crossed paths in pieces—as you know, she shot me, and we’ve had a good time—but this was our first time to really sit down and work with each other. I wish it wasn’t just one day. I wish we got to do that a lot more.

DEADLINE: On that note, are you talking to Mike about any other future projects where y’all might cross paths again?

SLOYAN: I mean, I would hope, I would love to. The way that I work with Mike and the way I’ve gotten to know working with him is, one, he’s so prolific that he has like 10 things going on in his brain at once. And I think so much of whether any particular person is in it or not is, when he works, he starts to hear people in his head, hear certain actors or certain characters, and sometimes it’s unconnected to anybody he knows. But sometimes, he’ll hear a particular actor’s voice. And so, if he hears me in something, you better believe I will be doing that, and I’ll be thrilled.

I have a small role in The Exorcist. … I have a very tiny footprint in that one, but I did get to go and see some stuff. All I’ve seen is what I watched through the monitor that day. But, it’s stunningly beautiful. And, for me personally, I think from what little I saw, it’s the scariest thing that I’ve seen him do. So, I’m very excited. I’m excited as everybody else is to see it.