Summer H. Howell plays Carrie White in Mike Flanagan’s Carrie on Prime Video, and the Academy is already talking about her like horror royalty. On the carpet at the Academy Museum Gala in Los Angeles on Saturday night, the Academy’s interviewer told Howell she is in the horror pantheon now and asked what her relationship with horror is.
“It started my career. It’s what made me fall in love with acting, really,” Howell said. She was eight years old when she landed the lead role of Alice in Curse of Chucky, and she said she loves the genre and the people who make it, and that they are why she keeps doing this job.
The Academy posted the interview on Sunday, one of dozens of carpet conversations it shared from the gala, and the pantheon framing follows Howell straight back to Carrie. She carries Flanagan’s series, his take on Stephen King’s novel, in the title role, and the series has been at the center of the season’s horror conversation since it premiered on Prime Video on October 7. A child actor who broke in through Chucky is now the face of the most famous horror story ever told about a teenager, and the Academy noticed.
The gala was only the first half of her weekend. On Sunday, Howell is among the 10 Actors to Watch honored at the Newport Beach Film Festival. More than a decade after an eight-year-old’s Chucky break started her career, the pantheon label looks less like flattery and more like a description.