Linda Cardellini, who played Velma in 2002’s live-action Scooby-Doo, is now Pamela Voorhees. All 8 episodes of Crystal Lake, Peacock’s Friday the 13th prequel, arrived today, October 15.
Describing her character, Cardellini said, “I had not been offered anybody whose rage was so naked.”
Her former Mystery Inc. castmates have horror projects of their own. Matthew Lillard, the film’s Shaggy, plays Principal Henry Grayle in Mike Flanagan’s Carrie on Prime Video, following Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 and Scream 7. Lillard said of Flanagan, “I will follow him into whatever he’s doing next.”
After playing Daphne, Sarah Michelle Gellar played Ursula Danforth in Ready or Not 2: Here I Come, which was released March 20. She’s set to play the Grim Reaper in Thud.
Freddie Prinze Jr., Scooby-Doo’s Fred, returned as Ray Bronson in 2025’s I Know What You Did Last Summer. He and Gellar met on the 1997 original and married in 2002, the year Scooby-Doo came out.
That family film had a more adult pitch, Gellar recalled on the Shut Up Evan podcast in January. She said it “was not the movie I set out to make,” citing ideas including “Fred was sleeping with all the groupies” and “more stoner jokes.” Looking back, she thinks the studio “were right.”
Writer James Gunn has said the first cut received an R rating “only because of one stupid joke.” A kiss between Daphne and Velma was also cut by the studio. Gunn signed on for a third movie in 2004, but said the sequel “didn’t do well enough to warrant a third.”
Lillard has described his own complicated relationship with the franchise: “I resented ‘Scooby-Doo’ for a long time, but I never regretted doing it.” Discussing the career difficulties that followed, he said, “We sold our cars, we sold our house.”
