Few actors have built a body of work in modern horror quite like Samantha Sloyan\u2019s. She was the zealously self-righteous Bev Keane in Netflix\u2019s Midnight Mass <\/em>and the ill-fated Tamerlane Usher in The Fall of the House of Usher<\/em>. Earlier this year she appeared in the Stephen King adaptation The Life of Chuck<\/em>. Now she takes on her biggest role yet: Margaret White in Mike Flanagan\u2019s Carrie<\/em>, a series adaptation of King\u2019s 1974 novel that premiered October 7 on Prime Video.<\/p>\n The role carries a long shadow. Piper Laurie earned an Oscar nomination for playing Margaret in Brian De Palma\u2019s 1976 film, and the image of Carrie in her crown, drenched in blood at the prom, is among the most recognizable in horror. Sloyan says it\u2019s that imprint that came to mind the moment Flanagan said the title. \u201cBefore he got through his first sentence, the second he said \u2018Carrie,\u2019 that was immediately where my brain went\u2014the performance and the imagery,\u201d she says. \u201cI feel like I\u2019ve always had that image in my head of young Carrie in the crown and the blood at the prom.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Flanagan, however, had a different version in mind. \u201cBefore he finished his sentence, he said that he wanted this Margaret to be different, because he wanted the relationship between Carrie and Margaret to be fundamentally different, in the sense that he wanted them to be a loving mother and daughter,\u201d Sloyan says. \u201cThat shifted so much of the story so fundamentally that I was like, \u2018Oh, I\u2019m not going to be playing the same character.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n That \u201cnew Margaret\u201d extended to how she looks on screen. For Midnight Mass<\/em>, Sloyan was fitted with prosthetics and airbrushed to age her character, a process she says gave her \u201ctime to mentally breathe and arrive.\u201d Margaret called for the opposite approach. \u201cThis was very much just<\/em> my face,\u201d she says with a laugh. \u201cWhich isn\u2019t a bad thing\u2014the older I\u2019ve gotten, my eyes have gotten more sensitive, so just the technical part of wearing less makeup is so enjoyable.\u201d<\/p>\n Even pared down, the makeup was carefully considered. Sloyan reunited with makeup artists Krista and Brooke, who had worked with her on Midnight Mass<\/em>, The Midnight Club<\/em> and The Fall of the House of Usher<\/em>. Brooke came to the role with questions about who Margaret is. \u201cShe was really wonderful in bringing me ideas like, \u2018Well, when she\u2019s podcasting, has she bought makeup? If she has, what kind of makeup is accessible to her, and what is she interested in doing?\u2019\u201d Sloyan recalls. \u201cPart of the collaboration of working on a piece is these other people who are so gifted at their jobs have ideas that you\u2019ve never had before.\u201d<\/p>\n The wardrobe also tells its own story. Because both Carrie and Margaret make their own clothes, costume designer Tammy mapped out an arc for Margaret\u2019s wardrobe, moving it from homemade and comfortable to something more militaristic. \u201cMargaret is building these suits and going from her house shoes to work boots,\u201d Sloyan says. \u201cTammy really had such a vision for when all that would happen, and I was so excited by that.\u201d<\/p>\n Long-standing creative relationships like these run through Sloyan\u2019s work, none more so than her partnership with Flanagan. Carrie<\/em> marks their seventh project together, and she says the shorthand they\u2019ve built is what makes the work exciting. \u201cSometimes different words mean different things to different people, so you have to get to know somebody to understand what they mean,\u201d she explains. \u201cIt buys us so much more time because we\u2019re not messing with that. He can be like, \u2018Okay, great, we have that. Let\u2019s try something entirely different.\u2019 That\u2019s one of the most exciting things about working with him.\u201d<\/p>\n Given the material, Carrie<\/em> could easily have been an emotionally draining shoot. But Sloyan says the heaviness tends to have the opposite effect on set. \u201cA lot of the time, when you\u2019re filming something like this, it demands that the mood on set be brighter, just because we\u2019re all doing that every day,\u201d she says. She credits the cast, and Flanagan\u2019s knack for assembling \u201cincredible ensembles,\u201d for keeping anyone from \u201cslogging home by yourself and trying to piece yourself back together.\u201d<\/p>\n Her own way of letting go after a long day is simple. \u201cI\u2019m a big bath girl,\u201d she says. She often leaves set with her makeup still on so she can take it off herself at home. \u201cI like that little luxurious moment of really getting yourself clean from the whole day, getting in your pajamas and in bed\u2014that feeling of warmth and cleanliness, I really enjoy.\u201d On nights when filming wraps early, she\u2019ll grab a castmate for dinner instead \u201cand talk about what happened that day and what we\u2019re thinking, and just decompress that way.\u201d<\/p>\n Since the premiere, Sloyan says one of the most rewarding responses has come from friends watching the series with their teenagers. \u201cEspecially working with Mike, not a lot of my friends\u2019 kids are seeing what\u2019s going on,\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019m so proud of our show. I\u2019m so proud of what it says. Knowing that people are watching it with their kids just makes me really happy, because it opens up those conversations. I think that\u2019s really the best we could have hoped for.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Few actors have built a body of work in modern horror q […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3580,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nichebeaty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3579"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nichebeaty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nichebeaty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nichebeaty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nichebeaty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3579"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nichebeaty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3579\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nichebeaty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3580"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nichebeaty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3579"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nichebeaty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3579"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nichebeaty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3579"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Samantha](\"https:\/\/cdn.sanity.io\/images\/0vv8moc6\/newbeauty\/9a8ed589653dd8bee544f64a00030c2bc7d67589-2500x3254.jpg?w=1200&auto=format&q=70\")