Meet the New Jason Voorhees: Crystal Lake’s Jonathan Tison on Becoming the Iconic Slasher Villain
The actor talks his top-secret role as “Larger Jason”, crushing prosthetic skulls, and his hopes for a potential Season 2 for the Friday the 13th prequel series
by Lana Thorn 21 October 2026
Sitting alongside Darth Vader and Hannibal Lecter as an all-time great villain, there are few figures in cinema history more menacing than Friday the 13th’s machete-wielding, hockey mask-wearing antagonist, Jason Voorhees. While Peacock’s new prequel series foregrounds his mother, Pamela (Linda Cardellini), the killer from the original 1980 film hellbent on avenging Jason after he drowned because some negligent camp counsellors were too busy having sex, her infamous son still looms large in Crystal Lake, first as a little boy (Callum Vinson) and later as a full-grown monster with superhuman strength.
With his role initially kept firmly under wraps — and a burlap sack, as is the character’s canonical head covering pre-hockey mask — actor Jonathan Tison caught up with Phantasmag to discuss his take on the iconic character, his climactic killing scene in the final episode, and bulking up for a potential second season.
[Spoilers ahead for Crystal Lake]
Tison on the set of Crystal Lake. Courtesy of Jonathan Tison.
Phantasmag: Can you walk me through how you boarded the project? What was the audition process like?
Jonathan Tison: I got an email from my agent saying, ‘Hey, this project's looking for a part named Joey.’ The project title was Mama's Boy, and the role was called Joey/The Figure. I read the script, and at the very top of the little scene, it said, ‘This kid emerges, and he's wearing a bag over his head with an eye hole cut out.’ And I was like, ‘Okay, so this is a creepy child — I can play a creepy child.’
I thought it was for American Horror Story or something; I had no clue what anything was about. Then I looked at my roommate and was like, ‘I think I should get a grocery bag and cut an eye hole in it.’ And he said, ‘You're insane. You can't do that. They wanna see your face.’ I was like, ‘No, no. I think they wanna see my face just with the eye.’ I wanted to trust my roommate — he’s done a lot of things and was saying, ‘You’re not getting the part’ — but I felt in my gut that I needed to do this. So I sent in the tape. Three days later, they put me on hold, and then they wanted to make sure that I was okay with prosthetics and cutting my hair. I called up my agent asking, ‘They wanna cut my hair, what do you think?’ and she was like, ‘Well, do you want a role on TV?’
I didn’t know I was Jason; I was signing the contract to play ‘Joey’. I got to the FX studio, and they needed a mould of my finger for when I crush a skull. I said, ‘What? Joey crushes a skull?’ and they asked, ‘Who’s Joey? You’re Jason.’ I was like, ‘Jason? Jason who?’ They said, ‘Jason of Friday the 13th.’ They were shocked they were telling me, and I was shocked to find out. They were also really excited because I have long, double-jointed thumbs, so they thought it would look cool when I have that big moment.
Photo: Brooke Lunsford
P: Speaking about that skull-crushing scene, how was that filmed?
JT: Hamish was there, and we did a lot of takes with me actually doing it to him. He was letting out a bloodcurdling scream, and every take was insane. It’s just nice to be next to an actor who really makes you feel like you’re killing them, you know? We did a take with an eye patch on him so I could press more into it, and then we got the cool puppet that [SFX artist] David Presto made.
Usually for a production like this, they would make a few crush-and-go type skulls, something I could crush once and then it would be unusable. But they wanted to do a lot of takes, so they made a dog toy-style puppet that could be squished and then [retain its shape]. Because of that, it was actually really hard to squish. And Jason is supposed to have superhuman strength. If [Hamish had been down lower], I could have really gotten my chest into it, but we were eye-to-eye basically, so doing the squish over and over was exhausting. When you see my face grimace, it’s because I’m really putting a lot of pressure into killing my father [laughs].
P: What were your early conversations like with showrunner Brad Caleb Kane and director Quyen Tran to develop the character?
JT: It was a really fast process. I got the part at the beginning of September, and by the time I was on set and knew I was Jason, I had two weeks. Once I was on set, I got to meet Quyen — we call her Q on set — and she came up and told me she loved my audition, which is amazing to hear as an actor, to know you’re on the right track already. As the scene went on, she’d give me little notes like, ‘Jason’s very confused and out-of-body right now; he’s just been on a killing spree.’ She also gave me little tidbits about the show because I was on set only knowing about Episode Eight.
Courtesy of Jonathan Tison
So I had to build up the character a lot by myself. I watched the films. I really analysed Jason and his relationship to his mother. Because of the experiments he goes through [in the series], I think there are some problems going on with his memory. When he’s choking [Pamela], I had to think, ‘Why doesn’t he realise that’s his mom?’ And then her words cut through and make him human again. So it was about finding the human, emotional vulnerability of Jason, and then smashing some skulls on set [laughs].
P: Had you seen the movies before?
JT: I had always known of Jason and the hockey mask, but I was more of a ghost person growing up. I liked a lot of Paranormal Activity-type movies; I ate those up as a child. My family wasn’t really a slasher family, so with the bag over his head in the audition, I didn’t even know that Jason didn’t have a hockey mask at one point. So I based a lot of my physicality off Jason with the [burlap] sack in Friday the 13th Part 2. I was inspired by everything until he dies in The Final Chapter, because I decided anything after he comes back [in Part VI: Jason Lives] would be too far in the future.
P: Watching that second film, what were the specific things you were looking out for as far as his physicality?
JT: He moves with power. What’s so interesting about Jason is that you always see him walking places, but then he just shows up in an instant to kill. You know he's coming, but you don't know where he's coming from. A lot of what I was thinking when I was becoming younger Jason was: I need to still have the innocence and the wholesomeness that Callum [Vinson] brings to the part to create that emotional bond with people, but I need him to stand with power, because he does have so much untapped strength because he's young. He doesn't know all the things he can do yet.
Photo: Brooke Lunsford
P: What was your hair and makeup process like, and how did the prosthetics influence your performance?
JT: I went to the FX studio to get my mould done — when I learned I was playing Jason — and then two days later I had to get my eye sized. I went to an optometrist, and they were very confused about what I was doing it for. So I had a glassy, glazed-over eye. Then on set, I had to be there about four hours before everyone else, and I was in the chair for around three hours. It was a great time. Watching layer on layer of prosthetic going on your face kind of builds the character for you. Then you have all these people who are super fans of the franchise making Jason in front of you. So you’re hearing their stories about watching the movies for the first time, and it was just so cool.
The prosthetic, though, it wrapped around my lips, so I couldn’t really eat on set. I had to drink a lot of shakes. I also had dentures in, and I couldn’t see out of one eye and hear out of one ear. Linda [Cardellini] was amazing, and she’d say things like, ‘There’s a stump here; we need to move this stump right now because he's gonna trip and fall.’ She actually closed down set one time to get someone to remove the stump.
P: What was your collaboration with Linda like, especially for the choking scene?
JT: It's crazy because I know Linda from Velma in Scooby-Doo, and now she's my mom. I'm like, ‘Velma is my mom, Pamela Voorhees is my mom, and I am now choking her against a tree.’ It was surreal. She also is such a phenomenal actress and was very easy to act off of. Like, it, it, she made it very easy for me.
Tison (left) with younger Jason (Callum Vinson, right)
P: You touched on your interest in ghost movies, but what is your relationship with the horror genre like?
JT: I didn’t grow up being really into horror, but I think I’m going to get more into it now. I did sneak into It: Chapter Two without my parents knowing — well, my parents still don’t know this, so they’re going to find out now. We told them we were going to a different movie, and it scared the pants off of me. I’ve gone more into it, with the Scream movies and things like that, but I still need to watch A Nightmare on Elm Street, for example.
P: Brad Caleb Kane has already said that he has ideas for a second season. Would you be interested in revisiting the character, and what would you want to explore with Jason in any potential follow-up?
JT: I really liked playing Jason. I have been bulking up because I've gotten comments from people saying, ‘We love you as Jason, but we need a bigger Jason.’ So I'm hoping to give fans the bigger Jason they want. The whole cast is so excited for a [potential] Season 2, and Brad Caleb Kane has some crazy things in the works.
P: It’s always a gift when somebody who loves the source material so much gets to do their own thing.
JT: And that’s what I kept hearing on set, just these stories from each person about their connection to Friday the 13th. They love it so much. Whenever I walked on set as Jason, I had crew members come up to me and ask, ‘Can I take a photo really fast?’ I got to pretend to choke people. And I’m excited to do the conventions too [Tison was recently announced as part of Baltimore’s Monster-Mania Con] and see the fans.
Crystal Lake is now streaming on Sky and NOW in the UK and on Peacock in the US.