Kate Siegel on Carrie’s Killer Soundtrack, Floating Cars, and Her Feature Directorial Debut Method: Podcast

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Kate Siegel knows a thing or two about making audiences uncomfortable, but for her latest collaboration with Mike Flanagan, the Haunting of Hill House and Midnight Mass star wanted to give everyone a little happiness before the inevitable horror. Directing the third episode of Prime Video’s Carrie, Siegel turns a high school house party into a defining moment for Stephen King’s tortured teenager, drawing on her own experiences with bullying, adolescent freedom, and the kind of music that can make a single night feel like the rest of your life. Speaking with Kyle Meredith, Siegel digs into her carefully curated soundtrack, the surprisingly old-school trick behind a floating car, and how her upcoming feature directorial debut, Method, is taking shape. Listen above or wherever you get your podcasts.

Siegel specifically requested the party episode, recognizing that Carrie’s brief taste of teenage normalcy would make everything that followed considerably more devastating. “The better I make the party for Carrie, the more anxiety-inducing it is for people,” she explains. Music became her secret weapon, with a soundtrack assembled through obsessive playlist-making, conversations with teenagers, and plenty of TikTok exploration. But the episode’s most memorable trick required considerably less technology. For the scene where Carrie’s happiness sends a car floating into the air, Siegel spent weeks experimenting with approaches before settling on a decidedly unglamorous solution: “We used a jack. And then we also had people in the back bump it down.”

Beyond the party, Siegel sees Flanagan’s Carrie as an opportunity to expand the story’s exploration of female rage. “If you let Carrie live, it’s not revenge, it becomes vengeance,” she says, pointing toward the possibility of a much larger reckoning with the world’s treatment of women. That perspective also informs her upcoming feature Method, an original project she’s preparing to direct, along with her production company, Legitimate Pictures, which focuses on female and female-identifying experiences. She’s already building playlists for Method, although casting remains undecided. And if she could recruit one particular musician for a future project? “One of my dream goals is to cast Olivia Rodrigo in something.”

Siegel would also love to see a return to musicians creating entire albums for movies. For someone who says “music for me is step one,” it’s only natural that her filmmaking career is starting to sound as carefully considered as her record collection.

Listen to Kate Siegel talk about Carrie, Method, and more in the new episode above or by watching the video below. Keep up on all the latest episodes by following Kyle Meredith With… on your favorite podcast platform; plus, check out all the series on the Consequence Podcast Network.