There’s something really weird going on in the rural Georgia community that’s the setting for Peacock’s new horror series Teacup. The eight-episode series follows a small group of people who find themselves trapped by a mysterious threat.
Loosely based on Robert McCammon’s novel Stinger, Teacup stars Yvonne Strahovski (The Handmaid’s Tale), Scott Speedman (You), and Chaske Spencer (Marvel’s Echo) as Ruben Shanley. Strahovski, Speedman, and Spencer took part in Peacock’s first San Diego Comic-Con panel for the show in July 2024. Following the panel, the cast and showrunner Ian McCulloch participated in roundtable interviews to dive deeper into what viewers can expect when Teacup premieres on October 10, 2024.
Yvonne Strahovski and Ian McCulloch Teacup Interview
How closely did you stick to Robert McCammon’s book? What did you take from it for the series?
Ian McCulloch: “I did not stick to the book. When the producers of Atomic Monster, James Wan’s company, came to me, they said, ‘Hey, do you have any interest in adapting this book?’ I read the book, and I went, ‘Well, this isn’t my cup of tea.’ But then I thought, ‘Well, what if I just flipped it all on its head? What if I took everything that was big and made it small? What if I took the cast of an entire town and made it about three families? What if I took the location of an entire town and made it a secluded farm?’
And it all kind of came together. So, it was about keeping the conceit and some of the ideas that inspired me, but everything else went out the window. And none of that would have worked if Atomic Monster hadn’t been on board with that. And really none of that would have worked if Robert McCammon, who wrote the book, wasn’t on board with that. So, I had conversations with him. I said, ‘You’re a maximalist writer, I’m a minimalist writer. This is what I want to do.’ And to his credit, he was on board. He came to set; he had a blast.”
Horror is well known for having feminist themes. Are there feminist themes in this show?
Ian McCulloch: “Well, it’s funny because I don’t write … I don’t think about politics or isms. I just write characters and then put them in situations. But I think that horror lends itself to something like that because it’s a way to kind of, it’s not real life and it’s a way to break it down. Granted, in our show I hope there are some real-life complications and obstacles and conflicts between people, but you’re kind of doing a larger-than-life version of that. So, you can say Maggie’s character, look how strong she is because she can deal with this and you get to see what that is right in front of you, and it’s big and scary. It’s not having to navigate something that’s subtext or something that’s mentioned inside. It’s something right in front of her that’s impossible, yet we can identify with.”
Yvonne Strahovski: “Ultimately, it really, I guess, is a bit of a feminist story. […] But you know, I think the same. I don’t necessarily go into something thinking about the politics or, you know, in hindsight, what the themes are. I think that’s something that comes to light after the fact. Once we’re here in this position, we put it together and we get to talk about how it’s relatable on a global scale or more universally.
Definitely, definitely there is this strong feminist storyline in it because Maggie, it’s all about her motherhood journey and what she would do. What lengths do you go to to protect your children and what lengths do you go to to carry an emotional burden for yourself, for everybody around you? What masks do you put on to pretend that you’re strong enough that you can handle things until you crumble, and then you put yourself back together again and you keep going?
And you see this woman steadily handle and acknowledge and accept and fall and get back again and ultimately fight and protect and make the hardest decisions of her life at the end of this journey. I’ve got goosebumps! But that was like really the most amazing thing for me because it’s not just a genre piece. This is a story where I, as an actor, can go, ‘Wow, what would you do if circumstances were this insane and your family is at stake?’ I think that’s the piece.
I mean, yes, we are a horror. Yes, it’s going to be exciting to get to the end of the episode and go, ‘Oh my gosh, I can’t wait to see the next one.’ But I think really the threat here is the characters and watching Maggie, the character of Maggie, and her husband and the kids who are extraordinary and Chaske and everybody else who is in this farm setting, you know, deal with everything that’s thrown at them. That’s the key, for me anyway, I think, as an audience member. I wouldn’t watch it otherwise, and I wouldn’t have done it otherwise.”
Why do you think Maggie is the first one to accept the directive not to trust anyone?
Yvonne Strahovski: “Well, I think she’s definitely set up to be in a not-so-very trusting mood when we meet her. I think that becomes apparent as to why when we watch episode one, which is great because we’re already deeply emotionally invested in this family because something’s really off. And the character’s already dealing with something that’s deeply hurtful to her. We really kind of set the bar high already for what’s to come, in terms of emotional dealings in the show.”
What was the most unique experience that the show afforded you guys?
Yvonne Strahovski: “For me it was really, I think, the most unique in the last two episodes. They’re really something else. I mean, I’ve been doing this for 20 years and I don’t often feel like perhaps I’m going be like super challenged, just because I’ve done, I don’t know, I’ve done so much sort of carrying a lot of emotional weight for certain characters in different shows and things. And this definitely raises the bar for me, for sure, which was both surprising and very exciting.”
Ian McCulloch: “I would say the entire experience because this is my first show. As you can tell, I am not a spring chicken. And the most unique thing about it was that I had really high expectations of what I wanted the experience to be. I’ve worked a lot of jobs in a lot of industries, and I didn’t want this to feel like a job. And it exceeded every single expectation.
It was the hardest job I’ve ever had, but it was also the best job I’ve ever had. So yeah, the whole thing was unique. We finished production, what, a month and a half ago, and I’m still like, ‘I gotta go back to summer camp. I love it.’”
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