Susan "Sue" D. Snell is a fictional character created by Stephen King. She was one of the main characters in his first published novel entitled Carrie.
In every adaptation and portrayal of the character, she is a popular teenage girl dating Tommy Ross. After tormenting Carrie White in the locker room, Sue begins to feel remorse for her actions. She asks Tommy to take Carrie to the prom, in an attempt to make Carrie feel accepted, and to ease her own conscience. In this she has been described as the "godmother" in King's "dark modernization of Cinderella."[1] The disaster that takes place at the high school prom is set in place when Tommy accepts.
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In the novel, Sue is a popular student at Ewen High School, who feels guilty after participating in a mean-spirited prank designed to humiliate Carrie. Her teacher, Rita Desjardin, says that Sue is not a bully by nature, and therefore the shower incident is out of character. Sue had been dating Tommy Ross for six months, and had lost her virginity to him two weeks prior.
While preparing for the prom, buying a gown and accepting Tommy’s invitation, Sue begins to plan for Carrie to go to the prom in her place.
Staying home on prom night, she begins to doubt her own motives, and worry about her late period -- she both fears and hopes she is pregnant -- and the possibility of Tommy falling for Carrie. When the town whistle begins blowing, Sue looks out her window, sees the fire at the school and rushes to her mother’s car. Speeding towards the school, Sue is horrified when the school explodes. She slams on the brakes, and the car screeches to a stop, throwing her against the steering wheel. She gets out of the car, and is knocked down by the explosion of a gas station nearby. She later flags down a police sheriff, who interrogates her. The sheriff later recalls her stating "They've hurt Carrie for the last time," indicating that she had no part in what happened.
Three hours later, Sue finds Carrie lying by a wrecked car driven by Billy Nolan and Christine Hargensen. She and Carrie have a brief telepathic conversation in which she convinces Carrie she had no part in the prom prank. Carrie cries out for her mother and dies, every detail of her death witnessed by a horrified Sue, who later identifies Carrie's body for the official records. The stress brings on Sue's menstrual period -- so if she was pregnant, she has lost the baby.
Sue is targeted by the White Commission panel as a partial instigator of the setup to humiliate Carrie at the prom. Sue accuses the commission of wanting a scapegoat. She later authors a book, My Name Is Susan Snell, which records the events of the Black Prom from her perspective, reminding readers that "we were kids" and apt to make mistaken choices even while trying to do right.
In the original film adaptation by Brian De Palma, Sue is portrayed by Amy Irving. She is rather pretty in the film, and has curly, shoulder-length brown hair, blue eyes, and a fair skin tone.
As in the novel, Sue participates in Carrie's locker room humiliation, and begins feeling guilty because of it. She eventually asks her boyfriend, Tommy Ross (William Katt), to take Carrie to the prom. Unlike the novel, Sue doesn’t seem to feel worried over the possibilities of Tommy falling in love with Carrie. She instead heads over to the school and sneaks into the prom to check on them, and is happy to see Carrie smiling and being elected prom queen. Sue then notices the cord running along the stage, leading up to the bucket of pig blood above Carrie. When Sue investigates the inside of the stage, she catches Chris Hargensen briefly, but is forced out of the auditorium by Miss Collins (Betty Buckley) (who erroneously believes her to be interrupting the ceremony out of jealousy and does not listen to her protestations), seconds before the cord is pulled and Carrie is splattered with the blood. Before Sue can get back in, Carrie mentally closes all of the doors, locking Sue out while the chaos begins inside.
Following the death of all of her classmates, Sue is seen in her bedroom some time later after seeming to have had some sort of mental breakdown. She and her family are getting ready to leave on a vacation after being besieged by reporters. She is having a dream in which she lays flowers on the burnt down lot of Carrie’s house, only to have Carrie reach her bloody arm through the rubble to grab Sue. She wakes up from an apparent nightmare in hysterics. She is quickly comforted by her mother (Priscilla Pointer, who is also Irving's mother in real life) who is nearby, suggesting that Sue has been having the nightmares for some time.
In the 1999 film The Rage: Carrie 2, set 23 years later, Snell (again portrayed by Irving) recovers from her temporary insanity and becomes the high school counselor for the new school. She begins to notice a telekinetic spark in an awkward student named Rachel Lang, following the suicide of Rachel’s best friend Lisa. While asking Rachel about her powers in her office, Sue stresses her out, causing Rachel to shatter Sue's globe, scaring the both of them before Sue realized that she was right; Rachel has the same powers as Carrie White did.
Sue tries to first get Rachel to admit to her abilities before trying to help her in an attempt to prevent another meltdown, even bringing Rachel to the old, burnt down school that was destroyed by Carrie White in the first film. However, this only stresses out Rachel further. She rejects Sue’s help, and Sue becomes desperate to prevent another chaotic experience similar to Carrie White's prom night.
Sue sneaks Rachel’s institutionalized mother, Barbara, out of an asylum after discovering that Rachel shared a father with Carrie (the father being Ralph White). Sue rushes to an after-game party at Mark Bing’s mansion, but Rachel has already been humiliated and is in a rage. She closes off the mansion doors. As Sue and Barbara attempt to enter the mansion, Rachel launches a fire poker, which tears through the front door and through Snell's head, killing her.
In 1988, the property was adapted for a musical. Sue was portrayed by Sally Ann Triplett in both the London and the Broadway productions. As in other adaptations, she is dating Tommy and does not attend the prom. Sue is shown as being much more sorrowful for Carrie than in the other versions. She has one solo song, "It Hurts to be Strong," which she sings when challenged by her friends as to why she is being kind to Carrie. The musical closes as the book does, with Sue comforting the dying Carrie.
In a reading in November 2009, Sue was played by Tony nominee Jennifer Damiano.
In the television movie, Sue is portrayed by South African actress Kandyse McClure.
In this version, Sue is portrayed as an African American woman with a dark complexion, medium length curly black hair, and hazel eyes. She and her best friend, Helen Shyres, are both popular students at Ewen High School, and are members of the popular clique led by Chris Hargensen, however, neither Sue nor Helen appear to like Chris at all. Like the novel and 1976 movie, Sue had participated in taunting Carrie when she had her first period in the locker room. After Ms. Desjarden forces the girls involved in the prank against Carrie to attend boot-camp style detention if they want to attend the prom, Chris tries to rally the girls, but Sue silences Chris.
Sue feels guilty about how she treated Carrie, especially after learning that Chris and Tina vandalized Carrie's locker and filled it with tampons. She asked her boyfriend, Tommy Ross, to take Carrie to the prom instead of her. Once Carrie accepts, Sue helps her get ready for the prom, something she didn’t do in any portrayal before. She assists Carrie with her make-up, helping her choose a good shade of lipstick.
Following the destruction at the prom and the death of Carrie's religious fanatic mother Margaret, Sue eventually finds Carrie, unconscious in a bathtub full of bloody water. Sue pulls her out and successfully revives her; Carrie telepathically links with Sue's mind and Sue sees Carrie's entire life (in the book, Carrie sees Sue's entire life, proving her innocence). Sue is interrogated by the police, and claims to have found Carrie dead and left her. In truth, she hid Carrie in the ruins of the school until things calmed down. The police initially suspect that Sue was somehow in on Chris and Billy's scheme to humiliate Carrie, but are convinced of her innocence when Jackie Talbot reveals Sue had no knowledge of it. Later, Sue drives Carrie to Florida to help her start a new life.
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