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‘It pushed me over the edge’: why The Exorcist made Linda Blair’s head spin

'The pressure that came down on me wasn’t anything I was prepared': Linda Blair in The Exorcist - Getty
'The pressure that came down on me wasn’t anything I was prepared': Linda Blair in The Exorcist - Getty

In 1972 William Friedkin was a filmmaker possessed. On the set of his latest feature, the French Connection director was determined to push cast and crew past their limits. That included his 13-year-old lead actress, forced to wear make-up so caustic it burned her skin and strapped into a harness which left her with permanent spinal injuries.

The film was, of course, The Exorcist. And the young star was Linda Blair. In her big-screen debut, the teenager scorched her way into the memories – and nightmares – of a generation of film-goers as vomit-spitting, head-rotating demon-child Regan MacNeil.

The Exorcist would become a blockbuster and barf up its own mini-cinematic universe. But for Blair, the experience of portraying a devil writhing inside an adolescent would inflict physical and emotional scars. And at a practical level it arguably derailed what could have been a successful life in Hollywood, dooming her to be typecast as an eternal victim.

Considering what it put her through, it might be felt The Exorcist franchise had an obligation to Blair. Apparently not. Universal Pictures, in a desperate search for a cinematic property to monetise, has summoned from the grave The Exorcist series. It is lavishing $400 million on a new trilogy. This will take up the story carried on in John Boorman’s bonkers Exorcist II, William Peter Blatty’s Exorcist III and two justifiably forgotten follow-ups from 2004 and 2005.

Universal has made it clear that it is planning a continuation of those films rather than a reboot. The first of the new Exorcists, to be released in October 2023, will star Ellen Burstyn, who played Regan’s mother in the 1973 original. She will appear alongside Hamilton’s Leslie Odom Jr, portraying a father whose own daughter has become possessed.

But in all the excitement around the announcement, one name was conspicuously absent – Linda Blair. This wasn’t lost on the now 62 year-old, who tweeted to her 22,000 social media followers that “there has not been any discussions about me participating or reprising my role”.

It’s hard not to suspect more is going on than meets the eye. And it feels wrong for Universal to push ahead with a new series without Blair. The horror of the original largely flows from her chilling performance as a school girl possessed by the Mesopotamian demon Pazuzu.

It is also undeniable that Blair was far too young to have been cast in the part. In one notorious sequence, the demon is shown violating Regan with a crucifix and uttering the notorious line “f__ me Jesus”.

Blair had to say those lines – so that her utterances would be in synch with Mercedes McCambridge, who provided the croaking voice of Pazuzu. When Blair was interviewed by IGN several years ago, the journalist stated the obvious by suggesting he would not have allowed his 13-year-old to have participated in such a scene. Blair essentially agreed with him.

Linda Blair on the set of The Exorcist - Getty
Linda Blair on the set of The Exorcist - Getty

“You know what, I wouldn't let my child do it,” she said. “I mean, I can’t disagree with people. I can only tell you that I didn’t understand. I never knew what that was about. I thought it was very odd that I had a cross and that I was sticking it in a box saying terrible language. But I have to say that I did not understand.”

By 13, Blair was already a veteran. She’d started working as a child model age five. She appeared in over 70 TV commercials before winning a role in daytime soap Hidden Faces. However, as she grew older, she lost her enthusiasm and instead developed a passion for animals.

“Modelling was pretty difficult back then,” she explained. “I did not find the business something that I had an interest in. I wanted to be a veterinarian. And when I was 13 I basically asked my mother if it was possible for this to end, that I’d had enough of it. And I truly had had enough. And that was right about the time that we got a call for a movie interview.”

The movie was The Exorcist, which Friedkin was directing from a script by William Peter Blatty, author of the original 1971 bestseller (and director of the subsequent Exorcist III). Friedkin made it clear from the outset that he wasn’t taking prisoners. Before casting Blair, he insisted she and her mother, Elinore read Blatty’s novel.

Linda Blair with The Exorcist director William Friedkin - Getty
Linda Blair with The Exorcist director William Friedkin - Getty

“We just got excited,” she said. “And so after I went through the initial first meeting with Juliet Taylor, the casting director, I met with Billy Friedkin. He asked my mother and I to read the book. We did. Children do not understand the same things as adults.”

Blair has repeated this point again and again. As a child, much of The Exorcist simply soared over her head, she said. She emphasised, too, that she was raised in the Saugatuck Congregational Church in Connecticut, where fire and brimstone and eternal damnation were not big talking points. She was not brought up to believe in demons waiting to drag you down to eternal damnation.

“We didn’t talk about the devil. That’s Catholicism,” she said. “And so, that was my safety net. And I always say, it’s probably a good thing they didn’t hire a Catholic child, who may have heard about the devil, the things that were in the closet. And no one wanted to discuss them. So for me, it was a really big safety net.”

But there was no safety net from the physical challenges Friedkin required her to undertake. One of his first decisions was to minimise the involvement of Eileen Dietz, the stunt double for Blair the studio had forced him to hire. As Blair recalled: “Billy Friedkin came to me before we were filming and said, 'if you do not do all of this film, the film will be a joke'.”

'Cursed': Linda Blair in The Exorcist - Getty
'Cursed': Linda Blair in The Exorcist - Getty

In the end, Dietz was barely on screen at all. “I think you can see, I believe, 17 seconds that Eileen Dietz was in the film,” explained Blair. “And they are two of the vomit scenes. I had really had enough of the vomit. I mean I not going to lie. We kept at that equipment for so long. I was warm, stinky, smelly, thick, gooey. It was the one thing that just was like pushing me over the edge.”

A mythology quickly built around The Exorcist to the effect that it was “cursed”. There were certainly tragedies and mishaps. Several cast members passed away unexpectedly during the shoot, as did Blair’s grandfather. And the climactic exorcism scene was delayed when a pigeon flew into a lightbox, leading to an electrical fire which burned down the set.

Yet for Blair, the traumas were only too real. For the scenes in which Regan/Pazuzu thrashes around in a bed, Blair was strapped to a harness. It would repeatedly bang off her spine. In a sequence in which the bed levitates, a technical failure fractured her back. The injury developed into scoliosis, leaving her in chronic pain for years.

“I had a lot of difficulty living with the aftermath of The Exorcist,” she later stated. “The back injury was far more serious than I ever imagined and really affected my health negatively for a long time.”

Linda Blair, aged 15, with her sister Debbi during a 1974 press tour for The Exorcist - Getty
Linda Blair, aged 15, with her sister Debbi during a 1974 press tour for The Exorcist - Getty

The true horror was yet to come though. The Exorcist was an instant sensation – but a controversial one. There were numerous accounts of audience members passing out from sheer shock. And also claims that it was blasphemous. Rather than directing their ire at Blatty or Friedkin, offended Christians instead targeted Blair.

“The movie was released in New York City. They did a screening,” she recollected. “I was sitting in the audience. And so when the film was finished and the titles came up, you just knew…you knew the film was going to be something larger than anybody could have imagined and that my life was about to change.”

“Change” hardly does justice to what she suffered through. Religious zealots made death threats. People would follow her in the street roaring obscenities. And, as the headline star, she was thrust into the glare of the media and confronted with questions about the subtexts of a blockbuster she was too young to legally watch.

“When the movie came out, ……,” she told Dread Central. “Especially all the pressure the press put on me. They thought I had all the answers about faith and Catholicism…They’d put me on planes for these ridiculously long trans-Atlantic flights, which weren’t nearly as quick as they are now, and then I’d be thrust in front of hundreds of people I often couldn’t understand who were putting their faith into my hands. It was horrible.”

Linda Blair in 2019 - Getty
Linda Blair in 2019 - Getty

Blair won a Golden Globe for The Exorcist and was nominated for an Oscar. However, she found it hard to escape the shadow of Pazuzu. As a teenager she was cast in exploitative trash such as Born Innocent (notorious for its lesbian rape scene) and Sarah T – Portrait of a Teenage Alcoholic. In 1982, desperate to reinvent herself, she posed for Playboy.

This backfired, condemning her to spend the rest of the decade appearing in schlocky horror flicks, before parodying The Exorcist opposite Leslie Nielsen in 1990’s Repossessed. Her last role of note was an un-credited cameo in Wes Craven’s Scream. Since then she has devoted herself to animal rights activism. And when she looks back on her life and career, there is a sense that, had she to do it all again, she might take different path.

“I think that if I’d not made the movie, I might be a veterinarian in Connecticut,” she told IGN, with more than a trace of wistfulness. “I would probably be married with some children. That’s probably the way it would be. But because of the film, I don't have a normal life by somebody else’s standards.”