Horror maestro Mike Flanagan is prom-ising fans they have no idea what’s coming in his latest Stephen King adaptation.
“If you’re lucky enough to be doing even a radically new version of Carrie, you’re gonna go to the prom with Carrie. And for me, my God, was I excited about that,” he told thousands of excited fans at San Diego Comic-Con. Joining him inside Ballroom 20 for the show’s first-ever panel — moderated by Jenelle Riley — were actors Summer H. Howell (Carrie White), Samantha Sloyan (Margaret White), Siena Agudong (Sue Snell), Alison Thornton (Chris Hargensen), Amber Midthunder (Rita Desjardin), and Matthew Lillard (Henry Grayle).
Flanagan continued on, “So, we absolutely get to go to the prom with Carrie White. It was incredible and took two weeks to film. You think you know what happens at the prom, and as we’ve been talking to people for the last couple of days, everyone’s like, ‘Oh, we know what happens at the prom. We know where this is going.’ The really exciting thing about the show is, ‘No, you don’t.'”
Presumably, the prom will take place near the end of the limited series’ eight-episode run, which kicks off Oct. 7 on Prime Video. In the 1976 film, Sissy Spacek’s Carrie was doused with pigs’ blood while dressed in her iconic prom dress. Flanagan shied away from mentioning whether Howell’s Carrie will meet the same fate, though he did speak about what went into the massive production.
“Our prom sequence really is a showstopper and really is one of my favorite sequences I’ve ever gotten to be a part of in my career, in any capacity,” he revealed. “It is the most complex scene I have ever, ever filmed. I remember just the shot list for it was something like 185 unique subs just to get us through.”
Flanagan compared it to the “incredibly logistically difficult scenes” from Episode 6 of Midnight Mass (“the big explosion”) and Episode 6 of The Haunting of Hill House (“where we try to do it all in one take”). However, the prom scene in Carrie officially “tops that list.”
Also at the panel, Howell explained how she purposefully didn’t watch any other Carrie media or read King’s 1974 novel prior to being cast. “It’s such big shoes to step into. Sissy is amazing. … But we agreed that it was best that I make my own version of the character. That’s what I did.”
The 22-year-old beat out over 1,000 other actresses to nab the iconic lead role. “It’s just an honor,” Howell declared.
This is Sloyan’s seventh project with Flanagan. “One of the greatest honors in my life is that he wrote this part with me in mind,” she told the Comic-Con crowd. While there are similarities between Margaret White and her Midnight Mass villain, she reiterated, “Both of us didn’t want to just have me play Beverly Keane again. So, this Margaret is very different than what you might be expecting from me and from Margaret White and from Carrie.”
Sloyan added, “Because it’s eight episodes, we have a much bigger world to flesh out, and we see her on a journey that’s much more connected to Carrie as an actual mother. It’s her love that has kind of mutated into fear that creates the Margaret of this Carrie.” Ultimately, her goal was to “de-monster” Margaret and make her a flesh and blood woman.
Flanagan said that now was the right time to adapt Carrie for television because “the world has changed quite a lot” since King wrote the book half a century ago.
Instead of being a “word-for-word” adaptation, Flanagan’s version of Carrie takes apart the novel “into its essential pieces” and uses that “to build something new.” The showrunner claimed that King was “very excited” about this fresh vision because it’s essentially “a big surprise” — for him and the audience.
