Linda Cardellini Is Done Playing Nice

In the opening scene of Crystal Lake, Peacock’s highly anticipated Friday the 13th prequel series, Linda Cardellini is covered head to toe in blood, her wide eyes the only thing visible as she stares blankly into the bathroom mirror. Her reprisal of Pamela Voorhees, the franchise’s original female slasher, is unlike any role she’s ever played. Being able to “dive into this character who is touched upon but makes such a huge impression was a fun idea,” the actress says. “She’s obviously not right in the head.”

It’s just the latest example of Cardellini making a lasting impression onscreen. Audiences first came to love her as Lindsay Weir, the naive, army-jacket-clad teen in Freaks and Geeks. Then came Judy Hale, the toxic yet endearing widow in Dead to Me, and Carol Love-Smernitch, the no-nonsense presence in DTF St. Louis, a role that recently earned her an Emmy. In fact, there hasn’t been a time in the last few decades when Cardellini hasn’t given us someone to remember.

“I’ve tried my hand at a lot of different things,” she says. And it turns out she’s craved the spotlight for a while. Cardellini first discovered her passion for performing at age 11, in a childhood production of The Music Man in Northern California: “I always wanted to act,” she says. “Then I had a teacher who put me in a play. Nobody ever really gave me a chance before that.”

The journey from stapling headshots at a San Francisco casting agency to landing her first union role as a series regular was a long one. “Once you have a paycheck in hand, it becomes more real,” Cardellini says with a laugh.

There was a big learning curve to being on a film or TV set. “I didn’t understand how to hit a mark,” she recalls. “I didn’t understand ‘Camera right,’ ‘Camera left.’” Cardellini says she “faked it” through her early movie gigs, including playing a mental patient and Kel Mitchell’s love interest in Good Burger, as well as guest roles on sitcoms, notably the zeitgeisty part of the girl who comes between Cory and Topanga on Boy Meets World. “I had no idea what I was really stepping into,” Cardellini confesses of nearly breaking up one of TV’s most iconic romances. “And how people would be angry about it for years.”

In fact, she kept faking it until she landed the role of Lindsay on Judd Apatow’s executive-produced, short-lived but beloved sitcom, earning a cult following and a coveted place in the director’s oeuvre. Perhaps at this point, the modest Cardellini can credit her success to precocious, God-given talent: an ability to fully commit to a part and play it convincingly. Taking on Lindsay at the ripe age of 23 was a calculated risk over safer, more marketable options—a choice that ultimately taught her to trust her gut.

“I always looked up to and was in awe of her,” says Busy Philipps, who first met Cardellini when they were students at Loyola Marymount University, before the two were cast as frenemies on Freaks and Geeks. Philipps says Cardellini taught her how to be an actor on set, both by example—and quite literally. She thinks back to a moment when a cameraman asked her to “banana,” a term she says she had no idea how to interpret, before Cardellini explained, “without judgment or calling any attention to it,” that she shouldn’t walk in a straight line, allowing the camera to follow her. “There aren’t many people who have careers as varied and impressive as hers, and I truly think that speaks volumes to not just her talent, but who she is as a person.”

“There’s so much that Freaks and Geeks left with me,” Cardellini says. “The material was so heartfelt. [I loved] being surrounded by comedy giants and seeing how they did it.” She still keeps in touch with other members of the cast, and recently had lunch with “geek” Martin Starr while in Atlanta filming DTF: “It feels like somebody you’ve known forever that you don’t get a chance to see all the time.”

In an era of nostalgia and reboots, where everything from the ’90s and 2000s seems to reign supreme in pop culture, it’s no surprise that movies like Legally Blonde have been given a second life (in fact, an entire prequel series). Cardellini’s Chutney Windham, who got two perms a year starting at 12 (“you do the math”), has since become internet fodder, but she insists she never imagined the movie—or any of her other credits, for that matter—would have an afterlife: “You have no idea what people are going to love or not love.”

For Legally Blonde, she spent just a few days on set. Even then, Cardellini was intrigued by the concept of playing a killer. “I liked the idea of going from this Lindsay Weir type to a murderer.” She praises the film as a fun left turn with a “really funny script.” And let the record show: That frizzy mop was her real hair. “The curling iron burned a piece of my hair off, so for a long time I had a sort of bald spot.”

As for the role she gets approached about the most, her turn as Velma in Scooby-Doo is high on the list. “People I meet have watched it many times,” she says. “For me, the things I watched growing up that I still connect to, there’s such a fondness for them. So I’m really proud to be part of that for anybody.”

Cardellini marvels at how Mad Men seems to be on “all the time,” attracting viewers who didn’t watch it when it originally aired. “The show is aesthetically so beautiful. The writing reels you in.” She calls it “one of her favorite shows,” separate from appearing in it. “I love to watch it.”

She played a 1960s housewife embroiled in an affair with Don Draper, but Cardellini is no stranger to complex characters. As Cassie Cartwright in Brokeback Mountain, she portrayed a local waitress who begins a relationship with Heath Ledger’s closeted cowboy later in the film, following his divorce. It was a quietly impactful role, and her experience working with the late Aussie actor has stayed with her. “He was extraordinarily talented and also kind,” she remembers.

With Crystal Lake’s premiere date fast approaching, Cardellini is turning her attention toward the A24-produced series. A lifelong horror fan (she loves Freddy vs. Jason), she admits the genre can still get under her skin. “Sometimes I have to turn off the TV,” she says. “I get a little creeped out.” She’s drawn to how a scary movie can put actors on a collision course with themselves, shifting them from protagonist to antagonist, sometimes within a single storyline. Pamela Voorhees, in particular, appealed to her because of the character’s twisted emotional logic: devotion that transitions into something much darker. “It was fun to see a woman operating out of love, which is terrifying because it leads to revenge,” she says.

As for what’s next, Cardellini hopes to develop and produce her own material, guided by advice she wishes she could give her younger self: “What’s meant for you will find you,” even if she’s still learning to believe it. For now, she’s still seeking out projects that don’t fit neatly into the same category. “I want to challenge myself to explore different women’s stories and identities and touch on things that are out of the realm of expectation,” Cardellini says. “It’s fun to be a storyteller. There are many different types of stories to tell.”

Lead image: Dress, boots, Hermès.

Hair by Dave Stanwell at PRTNRS; makeup by Sabrina Bedrani at The Wall Group; manicure by Merrick Fisher at Celestine Agency; set design by Isaac Aaron; produced by Alexey Galetskiy at AGPNYC.