The new Peacock thriller Teacup will surely be the talk of the town when it debuts on the streamer in October, just in time for Halloween. In the show, Scott Speedman (the Underworld franchise, Grey’s Anatomy), Emilie Bierre, and Caleb Dolden play a family trapped with their neighbors by a mysterious force on their remote farm in Georgia.
At Teacup’s Fantastic Fest world premiere, we spoke with Speedman, Bierre, and Dolden about their roles and why they think Teacup is so much more than just a horror show. Check out the interview below!
Teacup Interview
FandomWire: So I think that, although Teacup is a horror show, at its heart is an emotional through-line of family, seen through your characters. What do you think is so resonant about Teacup that makes it so resonant?
Scott Speedman: It begins with Ian McCulloch, who is a really good writer. I’ve known him for a while now, and I knew when he was going to do something in the genre space, which wasn’t really his thing, I knew that he was going to be able to bring those elements to it — the family element. And I was right as soon as I read the scripts and said, “Okay, if we can get this on screen, this feel and dynamic between the three of us and Yvonne’s character, then we add slowly into the genre elements, we’re going to be cooking, and that’s exactly what happened.”
And Ian’s just never going to lean into the genre element, and that’s it. That’s just not who he is. So that part of it was right on the page, and I think for all of us, it was easy just to kind of jump in there, and the writing did a lot for us.
Emilie Bierre: I mean, the fact that those characters are so real and authentic, you know, the writing was just really special. As soon as I got the script, I was like, “Oh, this is a really interesting family.” So I think that keeps all of the craziness of it very grounded throughout the whole eight episodes.
FW: Mr. Speedman, I think your relationship with Yvonne Strahovski’s character is an important crux for the show. You have strong chemistry but also a lot of tension. How did you achieve this balance?
Speedman: I mean, at this point — and I don’t want to speak for Yvonne — but in our careers, I knew from her work, and I had an instinct that she just doesn’t need a lot to push to go there and get there. And at this point in my career, neither do I.
And that was already on the page. We started in a very fraught place. We’re starting right in the drama. So I knew we could just jump in there and go for it, and she would have my back, and I would have hers, in a sense, and that is what happened. You just kind of jump off the cliff together, hold hands and jump off and go for it, and let the drama come out. And it did.
FW: And Ms. Bierre and Mr. Dolden, I’d say the same about you as brother and sister. How did you create this bond?
Bierre: Well, we became friends pretty quickly. We had a lot of fun just in between our days filming. And it was really important for me, on that very first day when we met each other, even when we did the table read and everything, I just wanted to spend time with him and really try to build that relationship with him.
And then that just brings so much more to all the little moments that we had together. I think when you can connect with someone and build that chemistry naturally, then it just brings more magic to whatever you’re doing afterward. He’s a very smart, very kind kid. Though he seems a little scary in this, he’s a good kid.
Caleb Dolden: Yeah, I think that we did get along very quickly. And that does show in the show.
Speedman: There were no divas.
FW: One of the central themes of Teacup is paranoia. What do you think this show has to say about this topic?
Speedman: Oh, gosh, I don’t know. Don’t get me started on themes. I can talk about character and jump scares; ask Ian about themes. I mean, I think we’re living in a society that is leaning more and more into fear where it all seems to be so questioned in our spaces and getting more and more scared.
I think these people being so isolated, maybe it’s a post-COVID thing, but I think there’s more and more paranoia of each other and our neighbors and other people and our circumstances. So I do think it’s layering in that a little bit. But at the end of the day, too, we’re just trying to tell a story about a family in a fun, crazy way.
FW: Over the course of the season, the lines between good and evil and right and wrong are blurred. What did you find interesting about your characters in Teacup?
Speedman: For me specifically — and I don’t want to jump on another answer you guys too — but I started in a morally dubious position, and then have to work all the way through the next seven, eight episodes to the end where I kind of have an arc. So, for me, I start in the darkness and try to come back into the light with my wife and my family.
So that’s kind of why I really wanted to do this. I thought it was a real challenge to start this character in such a horrible way with the audience, and I knew the audience was not going to particularly like and then have to sort of morph their way his way back through with the audience to the end. These guys were just good from the beginning.
Bierre: I think — just for the show in general, not just for our characters specifically — what’s so interesting about this story is that all of the characters have all of their different things going on, but they still have to kind of come together and get over all of those complex relationships in order to just keep living and survive this whole thing. So, yeah, it was interesting to just build those relationships with all the characters.
FW: Another thing that makes Teacup so compelling is its mystery. Reading the scripts, how taken were you by the mystery of the show?
Bierre: It was pretty intense. We got only two at a time.
Speedman: We got them pretty fast. Faster than other shows that I have done.
Bierre: And it was interesting to try to guess what was going to happen. They would brief us on certain things that would come up later on, but I wanted to know where it would end, and it does just get more and more intense as you get to the next episode.
Speedman: I was really less for the mystery and more for, like, what crazy thing am I going to have to do in this next episode that I did not know I’d be doing.
FW: Well, with it being such an intense show, how challenging did you find the shoot to be?
Bierre: It was so good, so fun. We really had so much fun. The cast and the crew, I feel like we had just a really good team of people who were just smart and really kind-hearted too.
Speedman: Most of them. (he laughs)
Bierre: Well, maybe not him. (she laughs)
Speedman: Honestly, everyone was great. The darker the material got, the more fun we kind of had. By the time we were shooting the real dark stuff, it was like summer camp. We’d been doing it for a couple of months, and we knew each other very well, and we knew who liked to work how, and all that kind of stuff, so everyone had each other’s backs.
Bierre: Ian set the tone for that too.
Speedman: It really does start with the head writer.
Teacup played at the 2024 edition of Fantastic Fest, which ran September 19-26.
