Unlike other actors in past Carrie adaptations, Matthew Lillard and Amber Midthunder aren’t too pressed about the fate of their characters in Mike Flanagan’s new version of the 1974 Stephen King story.
Warning: spoilers for Carrie episode 8 ahead!
“First and foremost, in Mike Flanagan, we trust,” Lillard tells GamesRadar+. “Like, if you ask him, he will have a reason. But I do think that it lends to the tragedy. [Carrie] is so overwhelmed. If you would think she could make choices, we probably would have lived. But she loses her control, which brings ultimate destruction of the entire town.”
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Lillard plays Henry Grayle, Ewen High’s well-meaning principal who finds himself a bit in over his head when Carrie White becomes the new kid at school. Grayle soon realizes that Margaret White is no ordinary mother, and that Chris Hargensen is no ordinary teenage bully.
In the book, Grayle does not attend prom but presumably retires from education following the massacre. In the 1976 movie, Grayle (renamed Principal Morton) is electrocuted on stage at prom. He suffers the same fate in the 2002 remake. In Flanagan’s version, the electrocution scene is quite long, and somehow way worse than the original film depiction (in my opinion, anyway).
“And I do think that it’s sort of… not a morality tale, but it’s a tipping point,” Lillard continues. “And you can see how kids can possibly break. And also, it could become an allegory for what’s happening with gun violence, what happens to kids, like they just can no longer stand what happens. And so I don’t know, it really refers to a bigger moment.”
Midthunder plays Rita Desjardin, the gym teacher who seems to be the only person looking out for Carrie. In the novel, she retires from education altogether after surviving the prom night massacre and suffers immense guilt from not being able to prevent it. In the 1976 movie, she’s smashed to death by Carrie with a broken rafter after pushing Tommy out of the way of danger during the prom massacre. She survives the 2002 remake, as well as the 2012 remake.
In Flanagan’s version, Rita is knocked backwards into the burning gymnasium after calling out Carrie’s name in the middle of the chaos. We don’t see her die, but we don’t see her again after this.
“I like that we also see, like, not just that moment, but moments before that when Carrie sort of, she struggles with herself, and she struggles with sort of her power, right?” says Midthunder. “And we see her have guilt. Like this story, this iteration of Carrie has expanded. And in that, we get to spend so much time with so many of these characters, Carrie included. And I think you see everybody in a very different and detailed and humanized sort of way that makes the sort of picking, like who’s good and who’s bad and who are you rooting for, a lot more difficult.”
Adds Midthunder: “And obviously that is credited to Mike, who approached this so thoughtfully and wanted to be so honest to obviously loyal to the Stephen King fans, but also to kids today. I think he really cared about sort of making sure that everybody felt seen.”
All eight episodes of Carrie are streaming now on Prime Video. For more scares, here’s our round-up of all the upcoming horror movies you need to know about.
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