Crystal Lake creator Brad Caleb Kane knows that fans are tuning into his Friday the 13th prequel horror series just for Linda Cardellini as Pamela Voorhees, and you know what? He’s okay with it.

Chatting with DECIDER ahead of the release of the Peacock show, Kane — who also serves as executive producer — explains that not only does he understand that Crystal Lake is banking on fans following Cardellini and her character into madness, but the team behind the series says it’s part of the reason she became the protagonist in the first place.

“For me, after watching decades of her work and being a fan going all the way back to Freaks and Geeks where everybody fell in love with her … she struck me as one of the very few people, one of very few actors, who are effortlessly likable. You know, you will go along with her whatever she does because we attach an emotion to her, you know, we like her no matter what,” Kane says of the show’s fearless (and fear-instilling) leader.

The series follows Cardellini’s character, a grieving mother who heads back to the titular sleepaway camp after her son’s drowning the summer prior and begins an investigation into what really happened the day Jason went in the water, which leads to some shocking discoveries and some bloodthirsty actions. Given that the audience needs to understand and empathize with Mrs. Voorhees, Kane says Cardellini could not be a better vessel for bringing out both the evil and the humanity of a distraught mother.

“We’ll empathize with her no matter what. And she’s just got this great screen presence, and the things that we had Pam do, the things that we asked her to do, are questionable, you know? They’re suspect, they can be, and she has a reason for all of them, but they can be hard to empathize with. But when Linda does them, you go, ‘I can see why she would have to do that,’ and you take the ride. We needed everybody to take the right with Pam, and Linda was the perfect surrogate for me,” he shares.

For more on the series, including if there could be a second season and what inspired him to take on the project, keep reading for DECIDER’s full interview with Kane below.

Congratulations, I’m excited that you guys are going to Toronto. 

BRAD CALEB KANE: Yeah, that was a surprise. It was not on my radar at all. I mean, we’re just a horror show, but we’re a Friday the 13th prequel. You don’t expect a Friday the 13th anything is going to get into a prestigious film festival. It really knocked me for a loop.

Are we crediting Linda for that?

I credit all of it to Linda. I mean, I feel like we gave her a fun narrative to play, but none of it would work without her performance. Her performance is masterful. It lifts everything up. She makes every plot point better. She actually makes it all work and brings it all together. So yeah, she’s brilliant. 

Can you talk a little bit about what you saw in her and this story?

For me, after watching decades of her work and being a fan going all the way back to Freaks and Geeks where everybody fell in love with her — I don’t know why that show didn’t go on forever and ever and ever — she struck me as one of the very few people, one of very few actors, who are effortlessly likable. You know, you will go along with her whatever she does because we attach an emotion to her, you know, we like her no matter what. We’ll empathize with her no matter what. And she’s just got this great screen presence, and the things that we had Pam do, the things that we asked her to do, are questionable, you know? They’re suspect, they can be, and she has a reason for all of them, but they can be hard to empathize with. But when Linda does them, you go, “I can see why she would have to do that,” and you take the ride. We needed everybody to take the right with Pam, and Linda was the perfect surrogate for me. 

Can you talk a little bit about taking her to those extreme points?

I grew up watching these movies, and there’s a feeling that is very hard to create in television that we get with the collective film-going experience that these movies had in spades. I remember seeing them sitting in a thousand-seat theater, every seat full, on Friday and Saturday nights. Week after week, these movies came out weekly in the golden age of the slasher movie. The seats would fill up and when a kill would happen, or a surprise would happen, or a jump scare, everyone would go, “oh!” collectively as one, or jump up and yell, “holy shit,” or “get out of there.” I wanted to try and recreate that feeling for people at home, and in order to do that, you need to create a connection between the audience and the character, initially, that feels normal and ordinary, for lack of a better term. For instance, the bond between Pam and Jason.

There’s not a lot of it in the first episode, but there’s enough of it where you understand her love, you understand her devotion, and then ultimately, when what happens happens, you’ll understand her grief. Then, when you put her, when we put her in these very extreme situations, your like, “I don’t want anything bad to happen to this woman,” and when she gets the upper hand, or when she’s in true jeopardy, you’re taking that rollercoaster ride. And when gets one up on the bad guys, you’re leaping out of your seat going, “fuck yeah.”

We’re living in an age where A24 is backing this and The Pitt is doing a screening of their finale at Alamo Drafthouse and all these shows are going to the big screen. Is there a possibility that we could take this to a big screen?

I will say that I designed the last 20 minutes of the pilot to be watched with an audience. The point is to watch it with an audience because it does go to extreme places, it does feel like it ends and then it begins again and it does have a lot of blood and a lot of grizzly things and I tried to top it. I tried make it funny and I tried to make it thrilling and nerve-wracking. So yes, I’ve thought about it, I would like that to happen.

You mentioned making it funny. Can you talk a little bit about hitting the specific tone?

It is a hard tone to balance and I can’t say that I knew exactly how to balance it when I first started it. I know what I like, I have different interests, I like different movies and different tones and I really just thought of it as a mixtape, like, “I’m going to put all these different things together and I’m going to try and balance them and thread that needle and hopefully it works out and comes together.” I like extreme humor, I I like silly humor, I like crazy characters, but I also want you to feel legitimate empathy for them and follow them. So it was a hard tone and hopefully we did balance it. But horror shows and horror movies are made for that. Horror and comedy balance really well together. I think it’s just about finding the right places for everything,

Why do you think that they pair so well together? 

Etreme horror and comedy, they’re both release valves. Both horror and comedy are built for catharsis, you know, either extreme belly laughs or extreme [screams] aah, aahh. Your heart rate’s supposed to go up or down. Heart rate up and then release, you know, tension, release. You never feel as relaxed as you do after all of your muscles have been tensed up. That’s what horror does, and that’s what comedy does too.

I had never seen any of the Friday the 13th movies before this; what do you think about the fact that people are gonna discover the franchise for the first time through Crystal Lake? 

I mean it was designed for them too. It was designed for die hard fans, people who were casual fans, and people who don’t know anything about Friday the 13th. You can enter this show not knowing anything about Friday the 13th and have a really wonderful time and a good ride.

How much contextually would you say you pulled from the original movies?

The canon itself is not consistent. They retconned [film] two after[film] one was a massive success. I didn’t feel totally shackled by what the movies did. I felt a responsibility to pay homage to the movies as best I could as you go forward into the season. We do give more fan service as we go forward, not to detract from the story we’re telling, or take people who don’t know anything about Friday the 13th out of it, but true Friday the 13th fans who would recognize scenes, and are waiting for a certain kind of thing and a certain kinda feeling are going to be satisfied by all that. 

There are so many shows right now that are originally pitched or conceptualized as limited series that end up coming back for a second season. Is that something you’ve thought of? 

It’s not only something I’ve thought of, I know what the second season will be. 100 percent through and through. So hopefully we do well enough, fans enjoy it enough to ask for a second season, and we get the opportunity to watch the further misadventures of Mrs. Cardellini and Mrs. Voorhees. 

Crystal Lake is now streaming on Peacock.

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