SPOILERS: This post contains details about Peacock‘s Crystal Lake series
While Crystal Lake revisits several familiar locals from the Friday the 13th franchise, Gwendolyn Sundstrom brings a fresh role to the slasher prequel series.
Now available to stream on Peacock, Sundstrom told Deadline that Jason Voorhees’ (Callum Vinson) childhood friend Grace has been her “favorite character so far” to play, filming the Brad Caleb Kane series in New Jersey when she was only 13.
“It was fun, ’cause in real life I don’t really relate to Grace that much, but it was fun to try and find things from my life that I could put into Grace and really play her,” explained Sundstrom. “But I had a great day every day on set, it was amazing.”
As the series recounts the accidental drowning of young Jason that was first mentioned in the original 1980 movie, the opening scene of the first episode reveals Grace throwing a bully’s ball out into the lake after he was teasing Jason. While counselors Claudette (Danielle Kotch) and Barry (Phoenix Parnevik) sneak off to hook up, Jason goes after the ball, only to drown in the depths of Crystal Lake.
Jason and Grace’s endearing adolescent friendship continues to play out through flashbacks as she struggles to mourn his death amid the usual complications of growing up.
“I think it was really helpful that Callum and I had really good chemistry in real life too, but I think building Grace as a character, she’s also kind of an underdog,” explained Sundstrom. “She also doesn’t have very many friends, so I think we could kind of work off each other and portray that kind of character cause we’re so similar.”
With nowhere to put her maternal love after the loss of her son Jason, Pam Voorhees (Linda Cardellini) soon takes an interest in Grace, whose own mom appears to be abusive and neglectful.
“I loved working with Linda. She was so nice,” Sundstrom said. “I definitely learned a lot from her. I think when Pam takes on kind of this maternal role, I think that’s something Grace, first of all, isn’t really used to, and also doesn’t really want. I think she’s trying to push Pam away, and Pam only wants to get even closer and even more protective, and I think that’s kind of a conflict that the two characters have.”
After finding a new “family” in a pack of traveling hippies, Grace ends up on a drug trip that results in a deconstruction of the very first kill in the Friday the 13th franchise. But instead of Pam, it’s revealed that Grace was the person to kill Claudette and Barry in that first-person POV sequence.
“I had a lot of fun with that scene,” said Sundstrom. “I definitely like filming more dramatic, gritty, emotional things, so that was really fun for me.”
And while diehard fans of the franchise might not be down with the retcon of such an iconic kill scene, Kane explained he wanted to “blow people’s minds” and “give the audience something different to chew on.”
“You have to re-contextualize it, and you want a shock,” explained Kane. “We come to these movies for the rollercoaster ride of it, we come to these movies for the jaw-drop of it. If you think you know everything from the movie coming into the TV series, and then we just go, ‘yeah, it’s exactly as you thought it was,’ that’s no fun.”
Now streaming on Peacock, Crystal Lake stars Cardellini as Pam Voorhees, who struggles to grieve after her son Jason drowned the summer before. As two strangers begin digging into her mysterious past, Pam goes to murderous lengths to keep her secrets buried and find her son, whom she’s convinced is still alive after his body was never recovered.