Linda Cardellini, photographed by Matt Weinberger.
Linda Cardellini has cut anything but a straightforward path through Hollywood. Over three decades, she’s played a disaffected teen in Freaks and Geeks , a villainous sorority girl in Legally Blonde , and the brainy, turtleneck-clad Velma in Scooby-Doo , moving between comedy and drama with an ease few actors can claim. Now, she’s taking another left turn in FX’s Crystal Lake , the highly anticipated Friday the 13th prequel series. Playing a lounge singer, a mother, and a murderer all at once, she “contains multitudes,” as her friend, biggest admirer, and future They Know co-star Bill Hader points out. In conversation, the two take a tour through Linda’s idiosyncratic career, from playing America’s favorite nerd to its newest nightmare.
TUESDAY 3 PM OCTOBER 20, 2026 NEW YORK CITY
LINDA CARDELLINI : Are we going to talk about your haircut, Bill? Looks nice.
BILL HADER : I’m about to do press for Cat in the Hat and I’ve been told, “You need to get a haircut. We need to make sure you look like a human.”
CARDELLINI : Are you going to wear a hat?
HADER : [Laughs] Yeah, it’s The Cat in the Hat . You got to wear a hat.
CARDELLINI : I’m very excited about that.
HADER : It’s a very sweet movie. It’s a lot like your show, Crystal Lake .
HADER : I walked in and the kids were watching it and I was like, “What’s this?” Then you popped up and I was like, “Oh my god, is this Crystal Lake ?” They were like, “Yeah, this is so fucked up.”
CARDELLINI : They’re not far off. It’s a little fucked up.
HADER : I told you this when we were just recently working with each other, but you’ve been around for so long and you’ve been consistently phenomenal.
CARDELLINI : Oh, that’s nice. I don’t remember hearing this. [Laughs]
HADER : No, I did. I remember very well because I was like, “You were great. Me and my friends, we had such a huge crush on you.” Then I was like, “All right, bye-bye.” I just got all embarrassed.
CARDELLINI : Well, thank you. Right back at you, Bill.
HADER : Oh, thanks. When you first got here and you moved to L.A., you’re like, “Okay, I’m going to be an actor.” Was there any plan or was it just job by job?
CARDELLINI : It was mostly job by job. I moved to L.A., I thought that’s what you did. New York seemed too far from my family, but I wanted to do it and I didn’t know how. I would be in plays and just invite reps to come see it. I took stuff off of telephone poles when I first got to L.A.
CARDELLINI : Yeah, it was, “Come be an extra.” I grabbed it off the telephone pole and I ended up in the L.A. County jail, a dilapidated shutdown part of it at five in the morning. It turned out to be some movie about young girls in jail getting sold into prostitution, but it was non-union and there was no food. It was really freezing.
CARDELLINI : After that I was like, “No, thank you.” So I just kept doing plays and hoping. But I have a degree in acting.
HADER : Did it feel like, “This has to work,” or were you pretty confident?
CARDELLINI : I wouldn’t say I was confident. I was just driven. I don’t know that I knew I could do it, I just didn’t want to do anything else. I remember my mom saying to me, “There’s going to be a great writer, there’s going to be a great scientist. If that’s what you want, why would it not be you?” That always stuck in my head, and I tell it to my daughter too.
HADER : That’s really good advice and it’s true. What was the moment where you were like, “I think this is going to work”?
CARDELLINI : I’m still waiting for that moment.
CARDELLINI : I’m kidding. Well, you know, sometimes you’re like, “Oh, I’m never going to work again.”
HADER : We’re in a movie together that I wrote and directed, and we tested it and one of the cards was like, “I love this movie, but I hate seeing Linda Cardellini cry.” I was like, “Oh, that’s sweet.” There’s a lot of people who love you so much.
CARDELLINI : Well, your character is a real puzzle of a person.
HADER : Yeah, that’s true. I like to play those.
CARDELLINI : Oh, you’re so good at it. Your script is so good, and it’s such a great look at what that family goes through. I’m excited for people to see it.
HADER : I mean, everybody knows about Freaks and Geeks . That’s where I first saw you. But what was going on between school and Freaks and Geek s? Were there any ups and downs there?
CARDELLINI : I worked for a while before that. I had been on a Saturday morning kids show, which I loved. It was my first job called Bone Chillers . It got canceled after 13 episodes, but I had a job. Up until that point, I was scooping ice cream at my college and I was making $4 an hour. So getting that first paycheck as a working actor was one of those moments where I thought, “Oh my god, it’s possible.” But Freaks and Geeks was several years after that. I had been working, but nobody had really paid too much attention to me.
HADER : What were you working on outside of Bone Chillers ?
CARDELLINI : I did some sitcom guest stars, which was really fun, because it’s a live audience, which you can’t find anymore the way it used to be. Maybe SNL is different, but that live audience sitcom thing was a totally different animal.
CARDELLINI : I was always somebody’s plucky or sassy friend. I wore a lot of dark purple lipstick and pleather. Then, the year before Freaks and Geeks, I had auditioned for something 10 or 11 times and just didn’t get it. I was heartbroken. Then, the year of Freaks Geeks , it was that and two other shows, and I was in line for possibly making it to network. Remember you’d have to go to the network and then you’d have to test?
CARDELLINI : It was a never-ending process. And if you signed the contract, that meant that if you got the part, your contract went through. But the other two girls, theirs’ got ripped up or vice versa.
CARDELLINI : I loved Freaks and Geeks so much that I just picked that one over the other two and dropped my opportunity to be in those two. Luckily, it paid off, but then that got canceled. So, that didn’t feel like the success it may feel like today.
HADER : That’s so funny because we were obsessed with that show. And then, when the DVDs came out, it was huge. How were you feeling as an actor at that point?
CARDELLINI : We loved it. We felt like it was special, but it wasn’t getting the network ratings. People liked it and thought it was cool, but people weren’t watching it. They put us on a Friday night and then they took us off for baseball. It was one of those things where you didn’t feel like you were the favorite. So, it disappeared, which didn’t totally shock us by the way that things had dwindled. But it was heartbreaking.
HADER : I mean that show is insane. The whole cast went on to do such amazing things.
CARDELLINI : And we were all relatively unknown to begin with. But because it wasn’t considered a success, it wasn’t like you just immediately got other jobs.
CARDELLINI : I mean, I can’t speak for everybody else, but we just auditioned and kept trying.
HADER : Were you being recognized or anything like that?
CARDELLINI : Not too much. I would get recognized though, because I did a guest star on a show called Boy Meets World where I broke up the main couple, which I didn’t realize was a thing. In fact, people are still mad about it.
HADER : People driving by being like, “Bitch.” [Laughs]
HADER : I’d only had it where I tested for a couple of pilots and I didn’t get it, but yeah, where you go through all those auditions and then you have to go in front of the network. I always think it is like Mulholland Drive , the weird shadowy people and you can’t see anything and you’re like, “Well, this is just very cold and strange for something to be very happy.”
CARDELLINI: You can’t help but take it personally. Especially when you come in five times and then they’re like, “It’s almost you.”
HADER: It’s the worst feeling. It’s that weird thing where you have to be open and be vulnerable in your work, but then at the same time you have to have a really thick skin because it’s brutal. And people will tell you, “It’s brutal out there.” But I’m like, “No, it’s actually really brutal.”
CARDELLINI: Yeah, it just hurts your feelings.
HADER: I remember a casting director, I did my audition for a comedy and I finished, and she went, “You know this is a comedy, right?”
CARDELLINI: Oh, no. [Laughs] She’s sorry now.
CARDELLINI: Did you think what you were doing was funny though?
HADER: I thought it was really funny, but you know what I did that was wrong? I should have brought in a bottle of water or something because the scene was me getting drunk, and I was miming. I came from improv class and you would mime everything.
HADER: What happened next with you after that? Was it the Scooby-Doo movies?
CARDELLINI: I think so, or maybe it was Legally Blonde .
HADER: You played such wildly different characters in so many different things. Was that a plan? Legally Blonde , it took me five minutes to realize that was you. I was like, “Wait a minute, that’s Linda Cardellini.” The same in Scooby-Doo where I’m watching it and it’s like you embody those characters and you’re having fun. It’s not a pretentious thing or like, “I need to feel the spirit in me,” or whatever. You’re just out there doing it. It’s always been very inspiring to me, your career and the choices you made. Was that something that you thought about or were you just kind of like, “This is what I’m being paid to do and let me do it”?
CARDELLINI: No, I thought about it. Sometimes when I’m offered something and it’s very similar to something else, I don’t want to do it as much. I grew up watching actors that I thought that when you couldn’t recognize them, it seemed like they were doing the job. I just loved that idea of a character that was different from the last thing that I had done. I remember, with Legally Blonde , I had never played a murderer, so that was my first. And coming off of something like Lindsay Weir, it just seemed like a fun turn.
CARDELLINI: Then with Scooby-Doo , I loved that cartoon growing up. I remember hearing rumblings about there being a movie, and the idea that I could actually be in that movie after that being my favorite cartoon of all time, it just didn’t seem like it could possibly happen. Then to play something that was broad comedy in a way, but she was also smart, was fun.
HADER: Then to do dramatic stuff as well after that, like Brokeback [Mountain] , was also cool. I wasn’t seeing that a lot. At that time too it was like, “This is your thing, you stay in your lane.” I know for me personally, it was very hard being on SNL , and they’re like, “You’re the comedy guy, you’re a Judd Apatow comedy person.” So, you actually had to go search out, find a script that you really liked that was dramatic, and then I had to go to the director and be like, “I can do this.” Did you ever have to do anything like that or were you just always in the mix?
CARDELLINI: I mostly identified with being dramatic, so it was always a surprise to me when I got cast in something funny.
HADER: That’s crazy because you’re really funny.
CARDELLINI: Oh, thanks. But I love the in between. I think that’s so true to life. People are not just serious and not just funny. I feel like the funniest people I know are very serious in life, and there’s so much duality there. So, I think that Freaks and Geeks, or even Dead to Me, or even DTF [St. Louis] walks the line between this sort of comedy drama, and that’s my favorite space.
HADER: I’ll see you do Dead to Me and all these other things, and then for a bit there, our daughters were friends, and I would see you, and you were just “cool volleyball mom” bringing donuts. I would tell my kids, “She’s one of the best actors working right now.”
HADER: And they’re like, “We love her because she gives us maple bars before the game.” How has that been? Because that’s also very inspiring to me, it really is. I’m not just saying that because I’m like, “Oh yeah, you can have those things and be able to do that kind of work and still have this grounded family life.” Is it because you have that grounding thing that it’s much easier for you to go there in something like DTF ? As I watched, I was like, “This is a very brave performance.”
CARDELLINI: Thank you. I mean, Steve Conrad, he writes these incredible characters and these journeys and what a role that is too, because it starts off and you think she’s something and you learn she’s something different. I never played a character like that. I went and I auditioned for it.
CARDELLINI: And I really fought for it because I just loved the writing.
HADER: When was the last time you would audition before that, do you think?
CARDELLINI: God, I don’t know if I remember. I auditioned for Brokeback Mountain . I auditioned for The Founder with Michael Keaton .
CARDELLINI: And I had to sing in that audition because I sing with Michael Keaton in that movie, so that was nerve-wracking.
HADER: That’s funny you talk about being nervous and stuff, because having just worked with you, I would describe you as fearless because you just go for it.
HADER: Then now with this new one, Crystal Lake , people are flipping out about it, which is really exciting. What was that like? I’m trying not to ask because I know you just did a shit ton of press for it.
HADER: I remember you telling me about it and you were pretty stoked.
CARDELLINI: Well, I do wild stuff, things that nobody has ever seen me do before. That’s great fun and also challenging. How do I make something new out of little, old me? I mean, she’s a lounge singer, she’s a murderer, she’s a mother.
CARDELLINI: So if I can put that all into somebody and you can watch that journey and believe it, that’s really fun for me.
HADER: Yeah. You were telling me you and Steve [Rodriguez] watched it and he was like, “What the fuck? This is crazy.”
CARDELLINI: I know, my dad stayed up all night last night watching it.
CARDELLINI: He said, “Oh, I really liked it. Should I go and watch all the Friday the 13th movies?”
HADER: Whatever they’re trying to do worked because now my kids are like, “Where are the Friday the 13th movies? Where can I find them? I want to see.” I’m just so happy seeing all this stuff happen. I mean, you’ve been working so consistently and there’s very few people that work that much who are always doing something new and exciting. In my movie, I can attest to that. We’ll be in the edit bay and I’m like, “I didn’t know she could do that.”
CARDELLINI: Thanks for giving me the chance.
CARDELLINI: Oh, my god, please. I should be so lucky.
Source: Fashion
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