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How Peacock's Teacup Gave Us Realistic Kids Facing Realistic Terror
For the young stars of Teacup, the horror was secondary to finding the reality of their characters.
The new horror series Teacup (now streaming on Peacock) hinges on an ability to create a certain grounded feeling amid the strange supernatural events that govern the story. Like so many of the most effective horror stories you'll find on the big and small screen, it's a show that roots itself in its ensemble cast, and in finding believable connections between the characters and their individual struggles.
That's especially true of the two Chenoweth children, Meryl (Émilie Bierre) and Arlo (Caleb Dolden). When we meet them, they're just regular kids trying to live their lives, and thens those lives are thrown into tumultuous terror by the events of the show. And because we know them, and feel for them as real kids, we're right along for the scary ride.
But it's not just the viewers who feel that way. Speaking to SYFY WIRE about her time with the series, Bierre explained that she was drawn to the show not because of its horror elements, but because of how close she felt to the character of Meryl, a teenage girl struggling to be the steadfast, achievement-driven child her parents (Yvonne Strahovski and Scott Speedman) need her to be in the midst of a crisis.
Creating authentic kid characters in Peacock's Teacup
"I just love it when people write kids characters as real kids, and they just feel authentic and relatable, and they have their own journey and their own depth," Bierre told SYFY WIRE. "I felt that way about Meryl as soon as I met her on the page, and I just loved how she starts off as this regular teenage girl and has to grow up really quickly, and she goes through so much. So, that gives you a lot to play with and to create throughout a show. So, it was almost instantly I was like, 'I just want to read more of this. I want to know what happens with all of those people.'"
According to Bierre, that feeling extended out from the page and onto the set, where she worked with her co-stars and showrunner Ian McCulloch to breathe plenty of life into the Chenoweth family's very grounded, everyday dramas, even as the stranger elements of the show set in around them.
"I think our job is just about making those people feel real and just in the way it's written," she said. "They're not the perfect family. They're all flawed, and they all have their own stuff going on, and there is that tension, there is that drama already. So yeah, it was just about making them feel as real as possible, which was easy, thanks to Ian and our wonderful directors. And just being face-to-face with Yvonne and just that strength, that inner strength that she has in her, that's just a wonderful gift to have on a set. So, all of it just happened organically."
One kid, two roles: Caleb Dolden on Teacup
For Dolden, who noted that he related to Arlo the moment he read the script, working on Teacup was extra challenging, because the young actor had to embody not one, but two characters. There's Arlo, the curious young boy who loves exploring and investigating, and then there's Harbinger, the strange presence in Arlo's head who might be there to help the family, or might be there to hurt them.
When it came to embodying both characters, Dolden trusted McCulloch, but also tried to develop his own conception of how the being inside his head behaved.
"To me, how I picture Harbinger in my mind, it's almost like an invisible being," Dolden said. "When I picture Harbinger, I think of a very faint outline of something. And then, everything else, it's just clear for me."
Teacup is now streaming on Peacock. The two-part season finale arrives October 31.
