Amanda Righetti and Danielle Panabaker ('Friday the 13th' remake)

You probably won't remember Amanda Righetti, who plays Whitney in the new Friday the 13th remake from 2002's David Heavener B-Movie Angel Blade or from last year's Return to House on Haunted Hill with Cerina Vincent, but she probably will never forget it. Now she stars as Grace Van Pelt in the awesome crime drama The Mentalist and has one of the only non-offensive female roles in the new Friday the 13th. The other somewhat-non-offensive female character in the movie is Jenna, played by Danielle Panabacker (who hasn't done anything you would have seen, but has some credits to her name). These two women are the only two females, aside from Mrs. Voorhees, who don't get totally fake-tittedly naked in Friday the 13th. So we decided to talk to them. MILD Spoilers ahead!...

"It's exciting!" says Amanda about waiting for the reaction of the fans. "I am excited to see people's response to it. You don't quite know, a little bit frightening too, how people are going to react to it. That's one of the joys of movies is that you don't know how people are going to respond. But I am excited for it. I think its going to be good. I hope people will respond to it well."

Amanda and her cute boyfriend who needs a haircut in the beginning of the film

Auburn-haired Amanda has "seen the first three" Friday the 13th films, but horror is "not my first genre of choice," she admits. "Once in a while I'll get drug to a horror movie."
Danielle, brown haired, is definitely open to the experience of working in horror. "After working with Brad and Andrew, I have come to understand and respect the art of it and how much effort actually goes into it," she says. "After working with them I have a new appreciation for it."

Danielle plays 'Jenna', a fairly vapid but sympathetic young woman out for a good time in the woods near Crystal Lake with a group of her vapid friends. Jenna is immediately drawn to 'Clay', played by Jared Padalecki (Supernatural), a man looking for his lost sister 'Whitney'. Amanda plays Whitney, who actually is being held captive by the ominous Jason in the basement of his childhood home. Jenna helps Clay find Whitney and rescue her from Jason's evil clutches.

Danielle Panabacker as 'Jenna'

The movie is not for the intelligent; sometimes it is downright bad and irritating. The female characters definitely have the least to do (besides Whitney), and Danielle even points out a moment in the movie when her character catches her boyfriend sleeping with her best friend. "Our lives are in danger, "quips Danielle, "maybe we should focus on that instead the fact that you screwed my guy."

Jenna's untimely death comes as quite a surprise in the final act of the film. "I don't think there was ever a version where I lived," she muses.

Both women get terrorized by machete-wielding murderer Jason all throughout the film, and do their fair share of running, hiding, screaming, and being filled with horror.

"I don't think I had to scream that much!" says Danielle. "I was usually running! But I think I was trying to stifle my screams more than anything."

Amanda says she "did a lot of warm-ups for my voice. Making sure my scream came from my gut and not from my throat. I am shocked that my voice didn't actually go on me, because I did plenty of screaming. It got worked pretty strong."

Friday the 13th was shot in Austin, Texas, and the cast is filled with super hot guys. Jared Padalecki, Travis Van Winkle, Derek Mears (Jason himself) and Arlen Escarpeta are sexy and definitely worth seeing the film for. (Only you won't get to see Derek without his horrifying makeup!)

"At least you got good eye candy!" admits Amanda.

"They're all lovely lovely young men," says Danielle. "We all became really good friends. I just really was surprised at how smooth it went, because usually you get one bad apple in a show. But on this movie, honestly everyone got along really well, and we went and hung out every weekend. We were constantly together."

Amanda got to hug the sexy sexy Jared Padalecki. This is her 'Character Arc', by the way - pretty to muddy

Jared Paladecki is a Texas native, and took Danielle and Amanda to all the good BBQ spots, according to them, during the filming.

As far as her favorite death, Amanda likes Sherriff Nolan's because "you don't expect it when he gets the arrow through the head."

One of the best scenes in the film includes Jason causing a massive boat accident, and the boat then veering off into Crustal Lake, where it must inevitably crash.

"I'm sure it crashed." says Danielle.

"Jason took it and is saving it!" insists Amanda.

In the scene, actress Willa Ford wave boards topless for some awesome boating action. It's actually quite impressive. "She did all that wave boarding and she looks great", says Amanda. "I mean, that's really her!"

Danielle recalls how on the first day of shooting at the lake, producer Andrew Form fell in love with that boat. He said, "'Come on guys, let's go out on the lake!' And we were all piled on the boat. I think Drew tried to buy the boat and his wife wouldn't let him!"

Despite there not actually being an arc, Amanda says, "I like the arc of my character. I can't say that's what necessarily drew me to this film because I hadn't seen the script, but I thought that the character arc was solid. It was really important. I talked a lot with Marcus [The Director] about it in the beginning, her relationship with Nick [her boyfriend] was important to be playful and fun so that you see a different light of them before the movie goes on and goes elsewhere. I think it needed to be fun in the beginning, which paid off really well. You have your comic laughs in the beginning. You go through it being so scared and you have these moments where you can actually laugh."

Amanda in 2007's 'Return to House on Haunted Hill', which sucked

The thing that most fans will either love or hate about this version of Friday the 13th is Jason's odd relationship with Amanda's character, Whitney. Jason seems to think Whitney looks like his long lost mother Pamela Voorhees, so instead of killing her he kidnaps her and keeps her chained up in his basement for 2 months before her brother, Clay, figure out where she is with Jenna's help. But this causes some problems in the storyline. For instance, was Jason feeding her? How was she going to the bathroom? Doesn't this seem really really weird?

"There was a lot of stuff that we discussed," admits Amanda. "We tried to add "“ the food situation. I came from the perspective that he hasn't fed her anything. The producers were like, 'No, don't go there, we don't need that, its not important'. To me, it was like; I wanted to come at the character realistically. So they said, 'He probably fed you'. And then Marcus at one point had this idea where Jason would be feeding me peanut butter, off his finger, and it became a big joke that he would feed me peanut butter and brush my hair. So Marcus pitched it and they were all, 'No! Absolutely not'. But when we're in the basement, you'll see, there's a jar of peanut butter sitting there on the dresser next to me."

The only time Pamela Voorhees is even in the movie at all is in a few flashbacks. "The flashbacks "“ I didn't even know they were gonna be in the movie." Even though Amanda doesn't look anything like the actress who they got to play Pamela in the flashbacks, she does look like a picture of Jason's mom in a locket that is important to Jason. The connection is "actually based on the photograph that's in my character's locket, of Jason's mom."

Danielle Panabacker stands firm as the slutty 'Bree' breaks down

Danielle's character Jenna dies in this film, but will Amanda be back to do a sequel?

"They haven't decided what they're doing with it," she says. "Obviously they're waiting until the film comes out to decide if they're doing a sequel or not. But if they wanna bring me back; I'm under contract for an option."

Danielle says, "I'd work with Brad and Andrew again in a heartbeat. They're great people."

Danielle can be seen in he upcoming Prodigy in Spain, an action/thriller.

Amanda in 'The Mentalist' with Simon Baker

"I'm in The Mentalist shooting this season until April," says Amanda. "Number one show on television, maybe you've heard of it?" she smiles.