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.”
