In the summer of 1982, a young Brad Caleb Kane went to the movies with his big sister, who snuck him in to see Friday the 13th Part III in 3D. For the future actor, TV producer, and singing voice of Disney’s Aladdin, it opened up a whole new world. “My most visceral memory is seeing Jason squeeze somebody’s head and the eyeball flying into the audience,” Kane tells Esquire. “It was a wonky special effect. But everybody screamed, including me. I knew this was something I wanted to do with the rest of my life. It was the gateway drug to my career.”
Decades later, Kane’s magic carpet ride through Hollywood comes full circle as the creator and showrunner of Crystal Lake, a prequel series to the Friday the 13th franchise. Set years before Jason Voorhees picks up his hockey mask and machete, the series follows Pamela Voorhees (played by Linda Cardellini), who grieves for her only son, Jason (Callum Vinson), after he drowns due to negligent counselors who went off to have sex. Over eight episodes, streaming now on Peacock, a grief-stricken Pamela searches for any trace of her son left.
While talk of a Friday the 13th series began as far back as 2003, and a network pilot was produced in 2015, Crystal Lake came to fruition circa October 2022 under a different creative team. After the 2023 strikes, A24 sought new direction. In 2024, Brad Caleb Kane came aboard with his own pitch zeroed in on Pamela. “I was at the tail end of filming It: Welcome to Derry, and we hadn’t been renewed for season 2 yet. I was going, ‘What’s my next job?’ I was scrolling [online], and I noticed that Peacock and A24 were doing Friday the 13th.”
The possibility of creating a Friday the 13th series had Kane begging to try his luck. “I was the kid who had all the novelizations of these movies. This was my jam,” he says. “I knew what I would want to see as an adult fan of TV, which is a deeper dive into character. I made my pitch, and here we are, a year and a half later.”
Linda Cardellini stars in Crystal Lake as Pamela Voorhees, the mother of Jason (Callum Vinson). The series begins with Jason’s death at summer camp and follows Pamela’s transformation into the villain of the first Friday the 13th from 1980.
Like Jason, Kane has long felt out of step with normies. He wasn’t one of the cool kids. He spent weekends watching horror and kung fu flicks, which all seemed “like junk food” to his parents. He was a real-life version of Chainsaw, from the 1987 film Summer School. “All those things that would make you go, That kid’s weird, they all paid off in the end. That’s what I learned as a creator on my first show. All the things you’re doing for fun and trying things out, deep diving into subcultures, that becomes your identity. It becomes grist for the mill.”
In a conversation with Esquire, Brad Caleb Kane unpacks the making of Crystal Lake, what TV can do that multiple sequels can’t, and what the future may hold for Jason Voorhees back on the big screen.
This interview has been edited for clarity.
It’s funny that we can trace a direct line from you seeing Friday the 13th III to recording the Aladdin soundtrack.
The horror part of my life came before Disney. I grew up haunting the grindhouses of New York City in the ‘80s. Some of those movies were Disney. The Rescuers and The Great Mouse Detective, and crazy live-action movies you could never make today, like The Devil and Max Devilin. The ones I gravitated towards the most were the janky, low-budget horror movies. Re-Animator and From Beyond, British imports like Xtro. That took me first, then Disney. Careers have long and winding paths.
We know Jason Voorhees’s origins from the very first Friday the 13th. How will Crystal Lake help us better understand Pamela and Jason? What can a TV show do that ten movies can’t?
Show you the connection between mother and son. That’s the thing the first Friday the 13th didn’t, because it was a movie in 1980 and it was a whodunnit. Once you hear Mrs. Voorhees’s soliloquy about Jason drowning, that’s it. You don’t have a sense of her and Jason. Jason is just a monster. You don’t see him as a boy. You don’t understand why a mother would haunt the place and kill anybody who steps on it. I think fans would want to see the relationship, how tight it was, and why a mother might go to extremes avenging her son. You’re able to dive into that more in a television show.
Jason’s story is particularly tragic for a slasher villain. It’s a crime and a tragedy that a child died because some teenagers were reckless. If my kid died like Jason, I would want justice. How is Crystal Lake about Pamela’s grief?
The important thing is to feel the justification. She’s trying to tell people, “I still feel my son’s presence.” And there are constant indignities thrown at her. Whether it’s about what her son looks like, or the fact these people are ready to move on when she’s not. A mother wants people to hear her. And when they’re not, they can have a bad reaction. Any parent would understand. When she goes on her killing sprees, you’re with her, because you understand it’s all in service of everything she had to do. It’s for a reason, not for no reason.
“She’s trying to grieve,” says Brad Caleb Kane on Linda Cardellini’s Pamela. “She’s grieving and these people can’t really join her in the same way.”
Let’s talk Linda Cardellini. She’s done plenty of horror and horror-adjacent projects. What does Linda bring to the table that helps your vision for who Pamela is?
We have an instant connection with Linda. Obviously, there’s Freaks and Geeks. Then all the comedic work, dramatic work—there’s an effortless likability to Linda and you need that feeling with this character, because you have to go on this journey watching her become this killer. There's a shorthand between audiences and Linda where you want to take any ride with her. You instantly like her, even if she's a killer.
She brings a depth of craft that’s critical for this show. A lot of the stuff that's happening with Linda is going on behind her eyes and in her head. Not every actor can do that.
No spoilers, but you’ve cooked up a larger backstory for Jason and Pamela. What compelled you to imagine Jason as more than a haunted mask and machete?
It leans into things I wanted to play with thematically. Creating that backstory for me had to do with the decade these movies came from, the ’70s. The paranoid conspiracy thriller decade. We’re setting the show in ‘71, ‘72. We’re in Watergate and Nixon; we don’t trust institutions. We’re starting to ask ourselves, if we can’t trust government and elected officials, who are we? I wanted to lean into that paranoid conspiracy thriller feel of it all. I did want to ground it a little bit in real-world situations. There’s something to be said for a revenant boogeyman—this is a twist on that, where Pamela came from and what she’s running from.
Crystal Lake is not the first horror movie with a TV prequel. What are your hopes for the show and its prospects at this moment for streaming TV?
I hope we run for multiple seasons. There’s lots of story to tell in this small town. But I hope audiences enjoy it. Audiences come to the horror genre for catharsis, for pleasure on a Saturday night. We’re doing something that hopefully has a little bit more than you might be used to in these movies, but I want audiences to get to the end and go, “Man, that was a hell of a lot of fun.”
While Crystal Lake doesn’t feature Jason in his hockey mask glory, at least initially, the show intends to segue right into the original movies.
What are your plans for Crystal Lake in relation to the films? Will the show segue into the first movie, or will it follow a new timeline?
The continuity is wonky, anyway. I played it fast and loose. In the original movie, Jason’s drowning was in 1958. Had we gone back to 1958, it would be a whole series in the ‘50s. I wanted Pamela’s grief to feel immediate in the aftermath of Jason’s drowning. I messed around and decided the drowning is ‘71, ‘72. I want it to feel like a prequel. Later in the season—and I know I’m giving spoilers here—we do shot-for-shot recreations of the first movie. Hopefully audiences make that shift mentally, and can see this running right up into the 1980 movie.
What do you know about the franchise's future? Do you think this could be a gateway to a new cinematic Friday the 13th?
The Jason Universe people keep stuff close to the chest. I know they’re trying to figure out another Jason movie. I don’t know what decade they’re going to set it in. Obviously, Jason was mowed down by toxic waste in one timeline, went to space in another. I had conversations with them about being involved, and then I got sidetracked with Welcome to Derry season 2. But I know they’re working hard to bring back the Jason everybody loves, with the hockey mask, to the movies. I think they’re in the script stage now, but I don’t know much more.
More than forty-five years later, how can this universe stay relevant to audiences?
To me, [Pamela’s story is] about manipulation. You could say [it's about] not listening to women. That’s relevant to the world we live in. That’s the theme I’m playing with, and hopefully audiences see the relevance.
Lately there’s been talk about sex, or lack thereof, in TV and movies. Gen Z audiences are largely averse to watching people have sex in their media. Sex is key to Friday the 13th and the slasher genre. What do you think the aversion to onscreen sex says about audiences today?
That has more to do with technology and isolation. People are immersed in their private worlds, enclaves, in their computers. I lament the fact people are not having more sex. I’m pro-sex and pro-sex on screen. I’m a huge Gregg Araki fan. People on film should keep fucking, and people in real life should keep fucking too. No mask killer is gonna get you.