Mike Flanagan says they considered 1,400 actresses for Carrie but “only looked at one” for Margaret White, Carrie’s abusive mother. He expected to have to fight for Samantha Sloyan because major actresses wanted the role, but Amazon approved her the night it received her self-tape.
Flanagan says Sloyan found the love inside Margaret White and committed to showing how that love harms the daughter she’s trying to protect. He calls her work “the performance of her career, in my opinion.”
That approach draws on something he recognizes in Sloyan herself. “Sam approaches the world with a profound empathy, and she approaches these villainous characters with the same empathy,” Flanagan says.
He describes her as among the kindest people he’s met, with little ego, and says she builds her performances around how these characters justify their actions to themselves.
Sloyan previously played Bev Keane, the zealous church member in Midnight Mass. Flanagan says her conviction that Bev wasn’t the villain made the character more frightening.
For Margaret, he wanted to explore a mother whose attempts to keep Carrie safe become abusive. He describes what drives her as “a misguided love, and a frightening love by the end.”
Sloyan says she doesn’t approach her characters as villains. Her Margaret believes a loving mother will “do absolutely anything to protect her,” and gets it wrong.
Sloyan describes this version as a mother who “fails her daughter” through her inflexibility. She retained the “danger” and “unpredictability” she associated with Piper Laurie’s portrayal while finding a different foundation for the relationship.
