Chlo? Grace Moretz remembers getting 'blood all over my homework' while shooting 'Carrie'

Chlo? Grace Moretz has had one hard and fast rule for the last 10 years of her career: Keep the fake blood in the blood bags. "I do not want any fake blood near me, ever," the 26-year-old actress tells Yahoo Entertainment with a laugh. "If I'm in a movie, I'm like, 'Hell no; there's no way you're putting that blood on my face!' The blood is done."

You can't blame Moretz for her decade-long aversion to being doused in corn syrup and red food coloring. Back in 2013, the Kick-Ass star spent more than a month drenched in fake blood for Kimberly Peirce's Carrie, a remake of Brian De Palma's 1976 horror classic based on Stephen King's blockbuster 1974 debut novel. Stepping into a role originated onscreen by Sissy Spacek, Moretz played Carrie White, an emotionally traumatized teen with telekinetic powers that are unleashed with full fury during the climactic "Bloody Prom" — a high school dance that becomes a slaughterhouse.

"I was a kid, and couldn't film long hours," remembers Moretz, who was 16 when the movie was shot. "We filmed that sequence for over a month and a half, and I was in fake blood every day for hours on end. I think I paid the piper on that!"

Carrie's rampage is triggered by a horrifying act of public humiliation. After being crowned prom queen, she takes the stage alongside her date — big man on campus Tommy Ross (played by Ansel Elgort) — to cheers and applause. But those cheers turn to jeers when a bucket filled with pig's blood falls from the rafters and covers Carrie in red, a prank executed by her nemesis, Chris Hargensen (Portia Doubleday). And those jeers turn to screams when Carrie goes on her rampage, taking revenge on all the classmates and teachers that tormented her or turned a blind eye to her suffering.

De Palma's version of the Bloody Prom remains an iconic sequence in horror movie history, one that its stars have talked at length about over the years. Speaking with Yahoo Entertainment in 2017, William Katt — who played Tommy in the 1976 film — remembered standing on a rotating platform with Spacek while the camera circled them in the other direction. "At the end of it, Sissy and I are laughing out loud," Katt recalled. "And the reason we're laughing is because I’m literally spinning her so fast she's up off of the floor, and we are so dizzy."

In 2018, Spacek likened the experience of being doused in pig's blood to "a warm blanket falling over me," adding: "Brian would say, 'Open your eyes wider,' after I was in the blood. That was very effective."

And in 2021, P.J. Soles — who played mean girl Norma Watson — shared the story of her painful Bloody Prom death. "Brian had his interesting ideas for everybody's death," Soles said. "For me, he thought it'd be fun to have the firehouse batting my head around. It was supposed to look like "Whack, whack, whack," and on the third "whack" it just went full force into my ear and broke my eardrum. I got workman's comp because that was my last day of shooting. You can see me wince and that's real pain."

Fortunately, nothing so traumatic happened to Moretz during the extended production process required for her Bloody Prom. "I was still in school, and I do remember getting blood all over my homework," she admits. "And having to sit in cars for hours, because I couldn't get blood on everything."

Unlike De Palma's dreamlike take on Carrie's prom experience, Peirce's film presents a starker depiction of her humiliation at the hands of teen bullies. And the director updated King's story to wrestle with some of the other real-world issues that teenagers were starting to confront at the time. "I remember that social media played an interesting role in the film," Moretz points out. "I thought that was a cool take."

Released at the height of scary movie season on Oct. 18, 2013, Carrie faced an uphill battle with critics and horror fans, who had De Palma's film top of mind when they sat down to watch Peirce's version. "Remakes always have a tough time," Moretz points out about the movie's mediocre reviews and box office. It didn't help that the studio, Sony Pictures, overruled Peirce on the ending that both she and her star both preferred.

"We had a couple of different endings that the studio didn't allow to come out," Moretz reveals. Her favorite of those discarded endings took place in a hospital delivery room where Sue Snell (Gabriella Wilde) — the one girl who sought to be nice to Carrie — is giving birth. Suddenly, Carrie's bloody arm reaches out from below her hospital sheets and grabs for her. "I thought that was really cool," Moretz says of that scene, which was abandoned in favor of a finale that's closer to the famous final jump scare featured in De Palma's film.

In recent years, horror fans have sought to launch campaigns for a director's cut of Carrie that would restore that ending, along with numerous other scenes that reportedly hit the cutting room floor. But Mortetz says she's still happy with the theatrical cut, which remains the last feature film that Peirce directed. "I really loved our version of it," says the actress, who later appeared in another divisive horror remake, Luca Guadagnino's 2018 update of Dario Argento's Suspiria. "And I love being in horror films — it's really fun to do."

Just as long along as there's no fake blood involved, of course.

Carrie is currently streaming on Max.