One of the pre-release guidelines for Peacock’s new Friday the 13th series, Crystal Lake, asked reviewers to avoid mentioning anything about Jason as he appears in its later episodes. It’s understandable, since the show ends before the events of the first Friday the 13th movie, which very famously reveals that Pam Voorhees, played by Linda Cardellini in Crystal Lake, is doing all the killing throughout. The adult Jason doesn’t pop up until Friday the 13th Part 2.
As it turns out, though, Jason does indeed reappear in a transformed state at the end of the series. His incredible growth spurt from pint-sized outcast (as played by Callum Vinson) to hulking maniac across several months is explained by Crystal Lake‘s weird-science plotline, which we’re still trying to get our heads around.
At any rate, while Vinson’s casting as the bullied kid who drowns at Camp Crystal Lake was publicized ahead of time, Peacock kept everything about his character’s extended arc under wraps. So it’s only now that Crystal Lake is out in the world that the more cast members are emerging to talk about the show.
While we wait for Hamish Linklater to spill the beans on playing Jason’s father, Elias Wittering, in a year that also saw his incredible turn as the undead town founder in Widow’s Bay, we are getting some insights from Jonathan Tison, the actor who plays the advanced version of Jason.
Tison said he’d never seen a Friday the 13th movie before he joined Crystal Lake—he’s 26, so their heyday was before his time—but he did his homework once he realized he was playing Jason Voorhees. Incredibly, that reveal only came when he reported for duty at the show’s FX studio and learned the truth.
“I did not know that I was Jason. I thought that I was [playing] a part called Joey in a show called Mama’s Boy,” he told Deadline. “And then, I found out when I got to the FX studio, I had to put my finger into a skull. They complimented me on my thumbs because I have really long thumbs, and they’re like, ‘This is gonna be exciting.’ I was like, ‘Why is this exciting? I’m playing Joey.’ … They’re like, ‘Nope, you’re Jason Voorhees.’ I was shocked. They were shocked when they were telling me.”
The next step was obvious. “I knew I had homework to do, so I watched all the way to Part VI right away.”
Tison studied one film in particular to get his performance as Jason just right.
“I took most of my inspiration from Part II, because that is Sackhead Jason, and that’s the most recent young form of Jason that we really have,” he explained. “So, the chase sequence between him and Jenny all throughout the whole end of the film, I base most of my physicality off of him, because she pretends to be his mom in the end, and [in Crystal Lake] Pamela kind of has a similar thing where she’s like, ‘I’m your mom.’ He’s confused and stuff, so the head tilt, the different motions of how he did things, I was like, ‘that’s what I want to do for this Jason.'”
Crystal Lake is now steaming on Peacock.
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