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Yvonne Strahovski, Teacup Stars on Finding Joy Amid the Horror: "It Just Flowed..."
Teacup isn't necessarily a happy show, but that didn't stop its cast from having a good time.
Peacock's new horror series Teacup, from creator Ian McCulloch and executive producer James Wan, is a lot of things. It's a rural family drama, a sci-fi horror story, and a tale of the anxieties and fears that come with isolation. As a horror story, its tones range from tense to outright harrowing, as the show's large ensemble case faces a deadly mystery.
But when you speak to the cast of Teacup, the tension they embody as characters onscreen doesn't come through. Instead, the cast speaks of an environment driven by enthusiasm for McCulloch's story, instant bonds as actors, and a sense of fun permeating the whole genre adventure.
How the Cast of Teacup Came Together for the Peacock Horror Series
Based on Robert McCammon's novel Stinger, Teacup follows a group of neighbors as they're trapped together on a farm in rural Georgia by a mysterious, deadly force. Faced with few resources and even fewer answers, the families have to do their best to survive while also digging down into the root of the mystery, and hopefully finding a way out in the process.
It's a tense scenario, and it gets even more tense when certain interpersonal secrets and issues come to light. But according to the cast, they didn't feel that same tension on the set.
"It really came together very naturally," Yvonne Strahovski, who plays veterinarian Maggie Chenoweth, told SYFY WIRE. "I think everyone came in with a big enthusiasm for this show. We didn't rehearse, we didn't spend a lot of time discussing the scenes or anything beforehand. It just flowed, and I think that's really a credit to Ian's writing and what he put on the page to begin with. It was very clear to all of us, what we were entering into, and we all had a similar vision for how we wanted it to play out."
That sense of enthusiasm and natural flow to the way the cast worked together ran so deep that, according to the cast, it even extended to perceived outsiders in the story. Rob Morgan, who plays that mysterious stranger in the gas mask you've seen in the trailers for Teacup, described something very similar when discussing his experience joining the cast, despite playing someone who carries an immediate sense of foreboding.
"I think the cast that was chosen, it was such a welcoming environment regardless of where you were at in your career," Morgan said. "It was like everybody was moving as one unit. No egos being displayed. You didn't have the diva factors going on. And I think the cast and crew just created an environment that was just so welcoming for us to be vulnerable and give our best, that that's what you're going to see on the screen."
So the cast all came to work, united in enthusiasm for the material, and got down to business simply embodying human characters trying to make it through a strange situation. When the horror and sci-fi elements came in, it was the icing on the cake, to the point that some cast members described working on the show as an environment of pure play.
"It's like we're playing in the sandbox," Chaske Spencer, who plays Ruben Shanley, said. "It's like we haven't left the backyard, just that we have more expensive tools now. And so when you hop into an ensemble cast, everyone's bouncing off one another. Working with all these phenomenal actors, I think the audience is going to relate because of the performances by the cast of characters in this."
Teacup premieres October 10 on Peacock. New episodes arrive every Friday in October, leading up to the two-episode finale on Halloween.
