Summer H. Howell deliberately avoided every previous version of Carrie before winning the role.
The 22-year-old Canadian actress, who beat out more than 1,400 hopefuls to play Carrie White in Prime Video’s upcoming miniseries, told Entertainment Tonight that she never read Stephen King’s 1974 novel and never watched Brian De Palma’s 1976 film or any other adaptation. Howell wanted her performance to come entirely from instinct rather than imitation.
“I like to do things my own way usually in life,” she explained in the interview. Her strategy centered on trusting the script and her own interpretation rather than studying what Sissy Spacek or other actresses had done with the telekinetic teenager.
Howell believed this approach was her only path to standing out in a crowded casting process for such a high-profile horror property. “I thought that was a way I could do that by just, you know, trusting my gut, doing what was on the page and, you know, bringing my own to it,” she added.
The eight-episode series comes from Mike Flanagan, the filmmaker behind The Haunting of Hill House and Midnight Mass, who serves as creator, writer, and executive producer. This marks the first time King’s story has been adapted for television.
Samantha Sloyan plays Carrie’s fiercely protective mother, Margaret, with Siena Agudong, Matthew Lillard, Alison Thornton, and Joel Oulette also in supporting roles. The official synopsis places Carrie in a public high school after her father’s sudden death, where she faces a viral bullying scandal and the cruelty of social media while her telekinetic powers emerge.
Howell’s casting victory represents a significant breakthrough for the young actress, who wagered that ignorance of the source material would read as freshness rather than disrespect. The gamble paid off against more than a thousand competitors.