The Lucky Accidents of Carrie: How a Misunderstanding Turned into Success

The Fortunate Mistake of Margaret White

Carrie's best performance was an accident. While Stephen King’s debut novel Carrie was turned into a highly successful adaptation by director Brian De Palma, one of the movie’s best decisions was a fortunate mistake by an actor.

Piper Laurie as Margaret White in Carrie 1976

Piper Laurie’s acclaimed supporting role as Carrie’s religious mother Margaret White was a lucky accident. Margaret is a rare horror murder victim who is worse than the villain, an unhinged zealot who abuses her daughter and uses her faith as an excuse to torment the poor girl. It is no surprise that most audience members celebrate the moment when Carrie finally uses her psychic powers to brutally kill her overbearing, callously cruel mother.

Piper Laurie Thought Stephen King’s Carrie Was A Comedy. Laurie misread the tone of Carrie's script and played the role for laughs, initially hating the script before she considered that Brian De Palma often injected his movies with dark humor. Her misunderstanding made Margaret White the unforgettably over-the-top monster that viewers love to hate.

The Unintentional Campy Tone

This exaggerated approach worked much better than might reasonably have been expected, earning the screen veteran a Best Supporting Actress nomination for her part in the adaptation. Laurie’s larger-than-life take on Margaret paired perfectly with De Palma’s flashy filmmaking style, ensuring that Carrie had a campy tone which made its bleak story easier to digest. A straightforward adaptation of King’s novel could easily have become unbearably grim, but the director’s technical bravura and the wild-eyed evil of Laurie’s performance both meant that Carrie never felt too heavy or self-serious. This was a balance that Carrie’s more grounded 2013 remake struggled to repeat.

Sissy Spacek's Carrie surrounded by flames in Carrie

Allegedly, Carrie’s supporting stars John Travolta and Nancy Allen also thought they were playing comic relief characters, not realizing that they were straight-up villains until they saw the finished movie. This is fairly evident in the movie, with both Billy and Chris acting more like overgrown spoiled children than the violent sociopaths that they are. Again, this misapprehension worked to improve both Allen and Travolta’s performances.

The Impact of Lucky Accidents

Carrie was a popular book upon its original release, but the massive success of its movie adaptation made King a household name. Carrie also boosted the career of its leading lady Sissy Spacek, supporting stars like John Travolta, Nancy Allen, and PJ Soles, and the directorial bona fides of De Palma. However, much of the movie’s success came down to a surprising, lucky accident on the part of one major star, who completely misunderstood the movie’s tone.

This exaggerated approach worked much better than might reasonably have been expected, earning the screen veteran a Best Supporting Actress nomination for her part in the adaptation. Laurie’s larger-than-life take on Margaret paired perfectly with De Palma’s flashy filmmaking style, ensuring that Carrie had a campy tone which made its bleak story easier to digest.