“Crystal Lake” Costume Designer Cristina Spiridakis on Linda Cardellini’s Pamela Voorhees & the Show’s Hidden Easter Eggs

With 12 films and a video game, Friday the 13th is one of the most expansive franchises in film history. On October 15, the canon extends further with Crystal Lake, an eight-episode series landing on Peacock that focuses on the immediate aftermath of Pamela Voorhees’s (Linda Cardellini) loss of her son, Jason (Callum Vinson), to accidental drowning. Created by Brad Kane, the series is set in the 1970s and positions Pam as a grim outlier in the otherwise colorful, doomed small-town world of Crystal Lake.

Costume designer Cristina Spiridakis worked with a team that ranged from 24 to 30 people to fill the show’s costumes with Easter eggs and visual homages to the first three Friday the 13th films (a certain camp sing-along that looks like a frame-by-frame throwback was no accident). “Everything that made it to camera is incredibly intentional and thought out,” she said. Long familiar with Friday the 13th from her own childhood days at summer camp, Spiridakis’s design process included making a side-by-side comparison between the franchise’s first three films and the video game, in order to see exactly “what was important enough to die-hard Friday the 13th fans that it made it to that game.”

Given the series’ period setting, Spiridakis built Pam’s wardrobe and the local police uniforms, but sourced looks for Pam’s lighthearted friend Rita [Joy Suprano], who tries to pull the grieving mother out of her funk. Pam also finds herself enamored of local police chief Levon (William Catlett), a reciprocated interest that plays out against the chief’s investigation into the dark times descending on Crystal Lake. Here, Spiridakis tells us about balancing these aesthetics and more:

What’s it like to design for a franchise that already has so much out there?

It’s really interesting to join not only an existing IP, but one that’s been around this long. I was really interested in why people keep coming back to this series, and why it is so beloved. If you rewatch the first film, it’s actually quite beautiful; the use of color is intentional, and the shots are really interesting. Yes, it’s low budget, but I’ve always loved their approach to characters. There are a lot of archetypes, but not caricatures.

Given the volume of Friday the 13th material that already exists, does adding to this world feel constrained or expansive?

Sometimes it’s a little anxiety-inducing, because you want people to know how much respect you have for this franchise. Two of the assistant designers on my team are huge horror and Friday the 13th fans. If we were pushing something or doing something that was a little bit out of canon, I felt really good that I had those voices in the room.

One early reference to the first film that we see is Pamela’s light blue sweater. Did you try to recreate the original?

In the original movie, she has on the sweater and a turtleneck, which I can categorically say was functional. They shot at night; I’m sure it was freezing. Ours is a different era, so we took the actual knit of the original sweater and sent it to a knitwear designer called Maria Ficalora. She recreated that cable pattern to fit on our sweater, and we made a one-to-one version, just on our smaller, late-60s version.

And Pam appears in it almost right away.

I wanted the sweater in episode one because I wanted people to know upfront the show was made by fans.

Besides the sweater, how did you approach Pam’s clothing?

All we know is that she’s a very dedicated mother and she’s an old friend of the Christys, which is the best line ever. It was very freeing in that way, because other than her sweater, there’s nothing for people to say, ‘Pam Voorhees never would have worn that.’ In episode seven, you find out a lot more about Pam. We used to joke about Crystal Lake having a picnic palette. Everybody was colorful, and then Pam was always a dark green or a maroon or a jewel tone. She just doesn’t want to be showy. And it comes back to episode seven, very much so.

Were there any big departures from canon?

There is a costume at the end of the series—part of it is directly derived from Friday the 13th Part 2, and part of it isn’t, and I know there’ll be conversations about it. We had extensive conversations about it. There are certain things you have to leave for the future, or for the continuation of the story.

Did the fact that people generally had fewer clothes in the 70s than they do now play a role in your process? For example, Grace has one bathing suit.

We tried to push the bathing suit. She wears it in the opening, and then the Founders Day version is all pilled, with some threads coming loose. We put a lot of thought into aging and dyeing certain pieces, especially Grace’s. When she talks to Pam in the cafeteria line, you can see her jacket is torn up. Valerie [her mother, played by Tonya Glanz] has no money, so Grace has a very limited wardrobe. In a later episode, she is given something by somebody whom she very much admires. Her costumes also play into her desire to be older than she is, get out of Crystal Lake, and latch on to anybody’s life but her own.

What was your approach to Levon’s off-duty looks?

Levon is a classic gentleman. He even talks about being from another time. We tried to make his wardrobe feel classic but still humble, because he is on a cop salary. Pam is the first person he’s been interested in since his wife died. We tried for incidentally handsome, but there are certain people that look so wonderful in clothing, and Will Catlett is one of them.

Rita is a lot of fun. How did you see her? 

We would have built more for Rita because she was so interesting, but we didn’t have to. Joy just walks into things. It’s a great balance to the subdued colors of Pam’s wardrobe. Rita’s the fun gal in town. Joy looks spectacular in everything, loves color, and loved Rita. Joy herself, as a child, loved Rhoda and had a friend that used to call her Rhoda. When I told her that that was my main inspiration for Rita, we completely connected on that.

Did you make the police uniforms?

We did, because they are derived from the original movie. We found a great 70s cop shirt we worked from, and a great pair of pants. We had a shirt maker in New York called Cego make all of the cop shirts. Anybody who dies in a dress shirt, Cego made those shirts. Anything we need more than one of, we pick the fabrics, we pick the body, we fit it, and then we give it to them, and they create the shirts. But yes, the cop uniforms were created head to toe.

Did you work with local vendors?

Very much. New Jersey and New York have different tax incentives, so the money that you are spending needs to be spent in the state that you’re working in. For Crystal Lake, we had to find new chain stitchers in New Jersey, new leather workers, and people who do silk screening and embroidery. We found a lot of fun people we’ve never worked with before.

There’s also a bill in Congress that could offer a federal incentive. Is that something that’s on your radar at all?

I will admit that I have not read up on it as much as I know about the local incentives. I’m curious about it. I do think whatever work we can bring back to the United States film industry would be wonderful. We’ve lost a lot, and it’s hard to watch how it’s affected my friends, our industry, and our resources. Hopefully it will be a good thing.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

Featured image: CRYSTAL LAKE — Pictured: Linda Cardellini as Pam — (Photo by: Peacock)