Summer H. Howell and Samantha Sloyan play a version of Carrie and Margaret White that we’ve never seen before in Mike Flanagan’s upcoming take on the 1974 novel by Stephen King.
“I don’t know if I was surprised,” Howell tells GamesRadar+ when asked if the changes to the original story shocked her. “I mean, I hadn’t really heard of Carrie before, which I know, shocking. I’ve worked in horror since I was eight, so you’d think I would’ve, but no. So I kinda went into it knowing it had been made, asking, ‘Why are we doing it again?’ like everybody. But then reading the scenes and the scripts and seeing the humanity that Mike writes into these characters is just beautiful, and it made me want to be her so bad.”
We all know the story: a bullied teenage girl named Carrie White has an abusive mother, a terrible time at school, and secret telekinetic powers. When Carrie kills her classmates after they outright humiliate her at prom, she ends up killing her mother in the process.
Flanagan’s story (though we won’t tell you how it ends) depicts Carrie and Margaret’s relationship in a way that is much more humane and believable (not that abusive dynamics between parents and children are uncommon or unbelievable). Margaret still has no idea how to love Carrie, but she does know that she loves her. Her fundamentalist Christian ways, which include sentencing Carrie to the prayer closet instead of listening to her troubles, still get in the way of their relationship… but this version of Margaret is much more fleshed out, and it might make you cry (and this is coming from someone who started sobbing around 26 minutes into episode 1).
“When he talked to me about it, that was the first thing that he said. He’s like, this isn’t the Margaret White that you recognize. They love each other,” Sloyan says. “And so that was so exciting because, one, it just freed me up to not have to compete with those performances and to, I think, give her so much more dimension because if we’re doing it for 8 episodes, you really have so much more to explore. Once Summer and I met each other, I think that even deepened the connection more because we were able to bring, you know, the relationship that we truly have to the characters, which just gave it even more depth.”
Keep in mind that King himself is a fan of the changes, writing on Threads: “Mike Flanagan’s version of CARRIE is brilliant. What it has to say about social media is shocking and true.” At a special WGA event attended by GamesRadar+, Flanagan noted that King isn’t always a fan of drastic changes to his work… and we don’t blame him. It’s worth noting that the social media comment applies to Carrie and Margaret’s relationship… and it may shock you.
Carrie hits Prime Video on October 7, with all eight episodes in tow. For more scares, here’s our round-up of all the upcoming horror movies you need to know about.