‘Exorcist’ star Linda Blair reflects on ‘The Masked Singer,’ if she ever experienced paranormal activity
EXORCIST typecasting: Linda Blair has played numerous types of evil over the years, but she’ll play a version of it for four hours this Halloween — her first in TV — on The Masked Singer.
It’s only been six years since Blonde was cast as the sinister Miss Hannigan in the cult classic The Exorcist, and she’s finally returning to TV as the evil witch this fall, thanks to a new TV series. The show, which will air on NBC in October, will be written by her longtime co-star, and Blair was thrilled to be able to get back to her iconic role.
“It was so good to make the most of it,” says a happy-go-lucky Blair, who says she’s always drawn to characters with an intriguing history, and finds herself drawn to “sudden, unexpected, dramatic changes.”
For the first few months after the show’s pilot was shot, Blair found it difficult to adapt to the character, who is also well-known for playing a serial killer in three feature films — including one she herself wrote in 1971, The Mask of Satan, which was nominated for an Oscar.
“My experience with The Exorcist was very different,” says Blair. “You think you know the people, the people you’ve played, and then it’s like a complete revelation. I went from having read The Exorcist and The Exorcist Live! to seeing the real thing!”
The actress, who grew up in a modest family in a Catholic town in Maine, said the show gave her the opportunity to “look at things in a different, maybe a different way.”
“It’s so much like television,” says Blair with a laugh. “You have to show a new side of yourself to
