‘Teacup’ Showrunner And Cast On Their Terrifying New Series
Out now from Peacock and James Wan is a chilling new supernatural horror show that you don’t want to miss this Halloween season. Enter Teacup, a series reminiscent of the works of Stephen King and From, but with its own unique twists that keep it feeling dangerous. Based on the novel Stinger by Robert R. McCammon, showrunner Ian McCulloch (Yellowstone) took the epic story and distilled it into Teacup.
The plot for the new series is simple: A disparate group of people in rural Georgia must come together in the face of a mysterious threat in order to survive. To say any more would ruin the experience of watching Teacup, but suffice it to say, it goes to some wild places.
We spoke with McCulloch and cast members Scott Speedman, Rob Morgan, Chaske Spenser, Caleb Dolden, and Emilie Bierre about horror television, adapting such an epic book, and the horrors to come.
Dread Central: Congratulations on Teacup! I’m obsessed with the show already. Ian, what attracted you to making this into a television show?
Ian McCulloch: James Wan’s company, Atomic Monster, came to me with the book and they said, “Hey, we want to know if you’d be interested in adapting this.” They sent me a book and I’d never heard of the book. I never seen the book. And I read the book and I said, I’m going to go do something and I’m going to come back in a couple of weeks with a script and if you hate it, we don’t have to do it. If you love it, then let’s do it.” And I find that things hit me at the right time, the right mood, the right place. And if it’s a struggle to come up with, especially with an adaptation, then something’s not working. But I knew exactly what I wanted to do and two weeks later I gave them the script. That’s pretty much episode one as it is now, four years later.
The book is really, it’s big, it’s massive in scale. When I read it, I went, “Well, what if you took everything away and you just have the central idea?” That’s where I think the genius of this book is. The central idea works without all the bells and whistles. So we took everything away and made it very, very, very small. And that’s where I tend to excel, with a small group of characters dealing with each other and dealing with external forces. So I got excited, as you can tell.
DC: What attracted you guys to being part of the series?
Caleb Dolden: What attracted me to being part of Teacup was Arlo and I could immediately see myself in Arlo, and I think that’s what really attracted me to Teacup. Also just the pure intensity of it.
Emilie Bierre: I would say, yeah, as soon as I got the first script for it, I just loved the writing and the pacing of it and the first thing I noticed was how the kids’ characters were actually written as real kids, which always feels so refreshing to see it. And yeah, I just liked the character and her personality and she’s changing throughout the series.
Scott Speedman: Well, I’ve been trying to work with Ian for years. I’d read something he wrote called The Glimmer of the Shade four or five years ago that kind of became a hot script around town for a while. It never got made, but I knew his writing and I’d been working on something else with him. So behind his back when I heard that he was doing something in the genre space, which I didn’t really think was his thing necessarily, stuff I’ve read feel like more Western kind of thing.
So I wanted to see what he would do with this kind of material. And I got three scripts behind his back from my agent and then kind of went on a campaign to try to get him to hire me for, so it went really well. It seems like
It was cool though. I read it and I was like, there’s something I could do. I was actually bummed. He didn’t call me about it originally, but no, I read it and I knew because he does the family stuff so well. AKA characters that on top of it, once you get back going and then you can add the genre elements on top of that, if we could pull that off. I thought we had a chance to do something really interesting and commercial, so we’ll see.
DC: What attracted the two of you to being part of this project?
Rob Morgan: Oh man. To work with this man and his Zoom setup. We did a Zoom and he has this phenomenal Zoom set up with the camera’s over there. You’re on a big screen.
IM: It’s the first time I had my own office. I was very proud.
RM: That was literally our first conversation. I was like, “Yo, this cool ass Zoom set-up. I want to be a part of this.” That’s what really kicked it off between me and Ian.
Chaske Spencer: What attracted me was, well, like what Ian was saying, it’s the story. And when I talked with Ian, it was the subtext of what was going on. So he explained the plot to me and everything, but he said, the kicker is what’s going on underneath. He explained the story of my character, and that’s what attracted me. I’d never played a character or a situation like that and I wanted to be a part of it.
DC: What keeps drawing you back to genre?
SS: Well, I mean it’s balanced out with other stuff. It’s not like I tell the people I’m working with, Hey, I just want to do horror. Horror stuff, when it works, can be really effective for an audience. Obviously, things that I’ve done in the independent space and the drama space kind of come and go without landing and that’s always interesting. It’s fine, but stuff like this, when it lands, it really seems to connect with an audience.
So the couple of things that I’ve done that have worked on that level, they always have the one element while The Strangers was something I did that I feel is similar to Teacup in a certain sense. They really took a long time to establish the human elements before adding the other stuff into it, and I really felt that on the page. And with this too, I had that feeling.
DC: Yeah, you guys feel like a family. What was that like for y’all working together to feel like you were a cohesive family?
EB: Yeah, I think we all kind of bonded pretty quickly, which that felt natural. The first time I met Caleb, we just became friends really easily. I’ve been a kid on sets too, so I know what that feels like and I was just trying to make him my little buddy so we could have fun playing siblings together.
SS: It was interesting because we were all kind of sequestered on a farm too, in one location. We did do a lot of stage work, but you’re kind of there and it is intense material. But I find other people have said this before to me, but when you’re doing such intense material like this, the more fun you can have.
EB: Yeah, totally. It was a really good group of people and honestly, you and Yvonne were just so smart with everything and just really fun to work with. So really grounded people and good humor, too.
DC: So what can people forward to in Teacup?
EB: Yeah, I think what’s really cool about this is that everyone will kind of have something to be able to connect with. We have a bunch of different characters that are all very complex and have a multitude of layers, so I’m excited for people to get attached to those characters and feel that intensity with the characters that hopefully get into the whole mystery and it all,
SS: It’s going to be fun. I think it’s going to be really fun for the audience to see how far we take this and I don’t think they’re really expecting what’s coming.
This sort of slow build, this tension’s rising, and by the time we get to episodes five through eight, I do think as those episodes go, it gets crazier and crazier and crazier. All the family stuff and all the family dynamics come out at the same time. I think it’s going to really work. If we can get people episode five, we’re in good shape.
DC: What do you think is so alluring right now about horror television? I feel like we’re seeing a spike in horror TV specifically and it’s really exciting to see Teacup come out. So what do you think is attractive about horror television specifically?
IM: I think right now people want new stories and genre stuff tends to get pushed to the side. For some reason right now things are coming together where it’s being taken more seriously. And that means people allow you to take chances. People and networks trust you a little bit more.
And Peacock, I could not have had a better experience. The amount of trust, I mean it’s like these guys didn’t know what was going to happen at the end of the season. They just trusted that I knew what I was doing, that the other writers knew what we were doing, and that we were going to make it work. Little did they know that I didn’t know if this was going to work. [Laughs]
DC: So are you all fans of the horror genre? Is that something that y’all gravitate towards?
RM: I dibble and dabble. I did Smile and so doing Smile, I had to go into deep horror research. I wanted to see what the genre was like and stuff. But to be honest, I don’t watch much TV or films. I’m pretty much a chess player and sitting at home. I’m boring like that.
CS: I am a genre fan. I think for me, horror is some of the first movies I saw when I was a kid. It was like staying up late to watch Friday The 13th. And I liked The Omen with Gregory Peck. I think for me, horror is adrenaline. My buddy and I lived in New York, we’d go see horror movies just to get the adrenaline going. You get a whole crowd of people in there, especially in a packed movie theater, you’re at a party.
Teacup airs new episodes every Thursday on Peacock.
Categorized:Interviews
