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.”

The first thing Linda Cardellini does upon entering Dante, the loungey lunch spot at the Beverly Hills Maybourne Hotel, is apologize for the noise.

“I didn’t know it would be such a DJ scene in here,” she confesses, nodding to the guy in a camp-collared short-sleeve shirt pumping out synth beats by the bar counter.

There is, admittedly, more of a hip cabana party vibe than one might expect for Saturday afternoon tea in mid-September. The actress, 51, speaks with the waiter about possibly moving to a quieter table on the patio outside. Only, there’s a heat wave. So sitting outside at Dante is hell.

It’s best to keep to the comforts of AC and chalk up the pounding bass as the unconventional soundtrack to a conversation about murder and mayhem — i.e., her upcoming role on Peacock’s Crystal Lake (Oct. 15), the Friday the 13th prequel series in which she plays Pam Voorhees, an icon of horror and the mother of future machete-wielding serial killer Jason.

Cardellini looks, to put it simply, cool among such posh patrons. She wears a simple gray T-shirt and jeans with her hair pulled back, attire she swears is for a makeup trial later in the day in preparation for the Emmys the following Monday.

Six days prior to this luncheon, at the Creative Arts Emmys, she accepted her first-ever award from the Television Academy, sfor her supporting role in HBO’s limited series DTF St. Louis as a complicated small-town wife caught up in a love triangle with her swinger husband (David Harbour) and a local weatherman (Jason Bateman).

The afterglow of that moment, when she rocked a strapless yellow Monique Lhuillier gown on the Peacock Theatre stage amid a swell of emotions, hasn’t yet worn off. She likens the experience to her first TV appearance: winning a traditional cherry-finish fireplace on The Price Is Right back in 1994. Both that and her victorious Emmy night felt “like being on a roller coaster.”

DTF St. Louis, and the recognition Cardellini received with it, are the latest capstones in her thriving Hollywood career, which was defined early on by the comedies Freaks and Geeks and the Scooby-Doos. But Crystal Lake showrunner Brad Caleb Kane says he was inspired to cast her as Mamma Voorhees after her complex performance in Dead to Me, which is arguably where this Cardel-aissance really began.

While writing the scripts, Kane kept replaying reels in his head of Cardellini as Judy Hale, who pretends to be grieving a deceased spouse in order to bond with Jen (Christina Applegate), the wife of the man she accidentally killed with her car.

“The person who was linking the Venn diagram between Dead to Me and Friday the 13th was very obviously Linda Cardellini,” he says.

Looking back, the star sees that role as a professional turning point.

“That was a way that people hadn’t really seen me,” she says of Judy. “She has a heart of gold, and the road to hell is paved with good intentions.”

The Netflix series also became a springboard for Dead to Me creator Liz Feldman, who — adhering to Cardellini’s request to write her “a badass bitch” part — crafted her the role of Margo Starling in follow-up series No Good Deed (2024).

Crystal Lake, however, remains a surprise job to Cardellini. She’ll be the first to acknowledge she’s not exactly known for horror, despite a handful of roles in that space. That didn’t bother Kane.

“We went on a three-decade journey with her,” he explains. “She’s worked consistently and she’s put in varied work, from comedy to drama to camp, the Scooby-Doo movies, all of it. You realize she truly can do it all, but in such a humble way. Her humility is her talent, and that just made me want her more.”