49 Fun Facts About Carrie

The trailer for the 1976 film Carrie misspelled Stephen King's first name in which way?

Steven was the trailer's spelling, a sign of how unknown he still was: Carrie was his first published novel and the first of his books to reach the screen.

In which fictional Maine town is Carrie set?

Chamberlain is all but destroyed on prom night: walking home, Carrie opens a gas main that levels the downtown and pulls live power lines onto the streets.

In Stephen King's novel, Carrie is short for which unusual first name?

Carietta White was drawn from two girls King had known at school, one mocked for wearing the same outfit every day and one from a strictly religious home.

Where does Carrie's mother lock her up as punishment for getting her first period?

A closet is her punishment for what her mother calls sin; never having been told about menstruation, Carrie had believed she was bleeding to death.

Which supernatural power does Carrie White unleash on her classmates at the prom?

Telekinesis reached King through a Life magazine article suggesting that, if such a power existed, it would be strongest in adolescent girls.

Which popular girl leads the locker-room bullying of Carrie and later plots the prom prank?

Chris Hargensen refuses the detention handed out for the bullying and is barred from the prom; when her lawyer father fails to get her reinstated, she plots revenge.

Which classmate, feeling guilty, asks her boyfriend to take Carrie to the prom?

Sue Snell is later blamed for setting the disaster in motion, and she writes a memoir to defend herself and express her sympathy for Carrie.

Which popular athlete takes Carrie to the prom at his girlfriend's request?

Tommy Ross is knocked out by one of the falling buckets at the moment of the prank and never wakes up, one of the many who die that night.

What is dumped on Carrie at the moment she is crowned prom queen?

Pig's blood is collected in a raid on a farm, then rigged above the stage to pour down as the prom king and queen are crowned.

In Stephen King's novel Carrie, what is the gym teacher called before the 1976 film renamed her?

Miss Desjardin became Miss Collins in the 1976 film, but later versions restored her name, including the 2013 remake and the 2026 series.

How does Carrie kill her mother in the novel?

She stops her heart by will alone, moments after being stabbed with a kitchen knife; the flying knives that kill her mother belong to the 1976 film.

What nickname does Stephen King's novel Carrie give the night of the disaster at the school dance?

The Black Prom makes national news in the novel, and a federal inquiry called the White Commission is set up to investigate what happened.

What fate awaits Carrie's hometown after the novel's prom night?

Slow abandonment follows: survivors move away from a town unable to recover from a night that killed hundreds, among them most of the students at the prom.

How does Stephen King's novel Carrie end?

A letter about another gifted girl closes the book: a mother tells her sister that her little daughter shows the same strange talent, which runs in the family.

What literary form does the novel partly take, mixing narrative with reports and excerpts?

King enjoyed faking documents in the style of Esquire and Reader's Digest.

What do Carrie's classmates chant as they pelt her with tampons in the locker-room shower?

Plug it up! is the chant in a scene King nearly gave up on: unsure he could write about teenage girls, he threw his first pages in the trash.

Who rescued the first pages of Carrie from the trash and urged King to keep going?

His wife Tabitha did more than save the pages: she guided him through the girls' side of the story, starting with the locker-room scene he had felt unable to write.

What was King's day job while writing Carrie?

Teaching high-school English at Hampden Academy paid so little that the Kings lived in a trailer, and he sold stories to men's magazines to help make ends meet.

Which publisher released the Carrie hardback in April 1974?

Doubleday kept half of the paperback money under its standard contract, and King later said that 50-50 split was why he eventually left the house.

After a $2,500 hardback advance, how much did the paperback rights to Stephen King's Carrie fetch?

$400,000 was split evenly with his publisher, and King's half let him give up his day job and write full time.

What did Carrie do in King's original ending, which his editor had him cut?

Grew horns and downed a plane: the first draft made Carrie a lightning-throwing giant until editor Bill Thompson urged something just as lethal but less like a comic book.

Which novel followed Carrie in 1975 as Stephen King's second published book?

'Salem's Lot grew from King wondering aloud what would happen if Dracula turned up in a sleepy American town; its working title was Second Coming.

Brian De Palma's film of Carrie renames the novel's Ewen High School in tribute to which Hitchcock thriller?

Psycho gave the film Bates High, named for Norman Bates, and its shrieking violins too: De Palma cued the famous strings whenever Carrie flexes her powers.

Sissy Spacek, Carrie's doomed prom queen, had been a real-life homecoming queen in which US state?

Texas: she was crowned at Quitman High School, yet on the Carrie set she kept apart from the rest of the cast so that her character's isolation would feel real.

Who plays Carrie's mother in the 1976 film?

Piper Laurie had been away from films for 15 years, and when she signed on she took the script for a comedy rather than a horror story.

Which future Grease star plays Billy Nolan in the 1976 film Carrie?

John Travolta's Billy is goaded into the prank by his girlfriend and dies with her when Carrie wrecks their car as she walks home.

Who plays Carrie's chief tormentor in the 1976 film?

Nancy Allen's mean-girl turn led to more than a career: she later married De Palma and appeared in three more of his films.

Who plays the remorseful classmate who finds Carrie a prom date in the 1976 film?

Amy Irving's real mother, Priscilla Pointer, plays her screen mother, and Irving returned to the part 23 years later in the film's sequel.

Who plays the gym teacher Miss Collins in the 1976 film Carrie?

Betty Buckley returned to the story on Broadway in 1988, this time as Carrie's abusive mother in the ill-fated stage musical.

How has Stephen King rated Brian De Palma's film of Carrie against his own novel?

Better than the book is his repeated verdict: when a remake was announced in 2011, King asked why anyone would bother when the original was so good.

Brian De Palma held joint auditions for Carrie with George Lucas, who was casting which film?

Star Wars nearly shared its cast with Carrie: William Katt tested for Luke Skywalker and one of his co-stars for Princess Leia before De Palma hired them.

Who persuaded Sissy Spacek to audition for the title role in the 1976 film Carrie?

Her husband, Jack Fisk, was the film's art director, and De Palma, already set on another actress, agreed to test her mostly as a courtesy to him.

How was the closing dream sequence of the 1976 film Carrie shot to make it feel uncanny?

Backwards: the actress walked in reverse and the film was flipped, and the hand that grabs her is Sissy Spacek's own, since she insisted on being buried for the shot.

Which star of the 1996 slasher Scream plays the school principal in the 2026 Carrie series?

Matthew Lillard plays Principal Grayle in a retelling that changes the setup: this Carrie has been hidden at home all her life and starts school only after her father dies.

The songwriters of the 1988 Carrie musical had earlier collaborated on which 1980 film?

Fame's title song had won an Oscar for Michael Gore's music and Dean Pitchford's words, yet their Carrie flopped so badly that a history of Broadway disasters is titled Not Since Carrie.

Which studio, long the home of the James Bond films, released Carrie in 1976?

United Artists was well rewarded: Carrie took $33.8 million in the US and Canada, many times what the studio had spent on it.

Which two Academy Awards was the 1976 film Carrie nominated for?

Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress nominations went to Sissy Spacek and her screen mother; Spacek had won her part by testing with Vaseline in her hair and an old sailor dress.

Which Hitchcock composer was De Palma's pick for Carrie but died first?

Bernard Herrmann's death sent the job to Italy's Pino Donaggio, who went on to become De Palma's regular composer.

What was meant to fall on Carrie's house in a scene dropped from the 1976 film?

A rain of stones, as in the novel, was meant to bury the house, but the rig failed on the night, so the shot was scrapped and the house burns and sinks instead.

Although Carrie is set in Maine, in which US state was the 1976 film shot?

California stood in for Maine, and even the White home was partly fake: the house that is destroyed at the climax was a scale model.

Why did Sissy Spacek sleep in her stained prom gown while filming the 1976 Carrie?

Continuity: she chose to stay in the gown overnight so the stains would match from one day's shooting to the next, and she likewise insisted on being buried herself for the film's last shot.

The 1999 sequel to Carrie put which two words in front of 'Carrie 2' in its title?

The Rage arrived 23 years after the original and flopped, taking under $18 million in North America, less than it had cost to make.

Who played Carrie in the 2013 remake?

Chloë Grace Moretz landed the lead, though King, on first hearing of the remake, had mused about Lindsay Lohan as Carrie and said it would be fun to cast.

Who co-produced the infamous 1988 Broadway musical of Carrie?

Royal Shakespeare Company backing gave the show its premiere at Stratford-upon-Avon; on Broadway it closed after just five performances.

Which director was announced in 2024 to make a Carrie TV series for Amazon?

Mike Flanagan chose to build something new from the story rather than retell it, saying De Palma had already adapted the novel faithfully and beautifully.

Which novelist wrote the introduction to the 2024 50th-anniversary edition of Carrie?

Margaret Atwood introduced the edition marking 50 years of a debut widely credited with helping push horror fiction into the mainstream.

Who played Carrie's mother, Margaret White, in the 2013 remake of Carrie?

Julianne Moore went back to King's novel rather than the 1976 film to build the role, wanting more than a simple Bible-thumping villain.

Which director made the 2013 remake of Carrie?

Kimberly Peirce, the director of Boys Don't Cry, brought the story into the smartphone age: the locker-room bullying is filmed on a phone and posted online.

After Carrie's hardback sold under 20,000, how many copies did the paperback sell in its first year?

1 million paperbacks went in the first year, and the 1976 film lifted the total to about four million; as King put it, the movie made the book and the book made him.