Produced by James Wan (The Conjuring) and created by Ian McCulloch (Yellowstone, Chicago Fire), Teacup is a new sci-fi/horror series based on the book Stinger by Robert McCammon. Although the show is best experienced unspoiled, we can tell you that it’s a tense, mysterious thriller about a group of neighbors who find themselves trapped on their farm by a mysterious threat.
At Teacup‘s Fantastic Fest world premiere, we got to speak with McCulloch and actors Rob Morgan (Mudbound) and Chaske Spencer (Twilight) about the show, their roles, and what makes Teacup such a unique specimen. Check out the full interview below!
Teacup Interview
FandomWire: What was it about the book Stinger that intrigued you?
Ian McCulloch: Well, I read the book, and I thought about it. I said to myself, “This is huge. This is so massive in size.” And then a light went off in my head. I said, “Well, if we took it all away and we just had the central idea and had the freedom to take it where it wanted to go because it’s a TV series and not a movie — it’s a long-form narrative.
I think that’s the hallmark of a really good book. It’s like a cover of a good song. If you take away all the instruments and you just have somebody playing on guitar and singing it, if it still works, then it’s a good song. And so that’s what it was, stripping down everything and seeing if it still worked.
FW: And for the actors, what was your relationship with the book? Did you read it before? After? Purposefully avoid it altogether?
Chaske Spencer: I started to read the book, but then — I won’t give any spoilers away — it wasn’t what was in the screenplay. And like what he said, he stripped it down to the core of what the story was. And that’s what attracted me to this story. It was all the subtext, what goes on underneath. When we would get the scripts. I would just read them as they came out, so I’d wait till the end to see what was going to happen. It was fascinating. It was a good way of working.
Rob Morgan: Yeah, I totally immersed myself into the scripts. I didn’t even check out the book.
FW: Mr. Morgan, your character could easily have been ridiculed, but you approach him with a lot of empathy and nuance. Why did you want to approach this character?
Morgan: To honor the voice of the character. I believe that when we do play our roles, the space that we should start from is coming in with some human qualities so that people can attach to it and identify with the character and care about it through the journey. I’m just fortunate that this brother even called me to play the role, you know what I mean? Then when I got the scripts, I was just like, “Oh, this is amazing. This is fun, I don’t even know what’s gonna happen.” So if I don’t know what’s gonna happen, imagine the audience.
FW: And Mr. McCulloch, do you have anything to add about how you wrote this character?
McCulloch: Well, all the characters coming from a place like, like Rob said, who are they as human beings? Because if you don’t do that, we don’t care. McNabb, in a different version, he could be a madman, right? But he’s not. He’s a guy who thinks he might be a madman, might think he’s crazy, and then it turns out he’s right. Realizing that you’re not wrong, that everything that’s happened to you actually happened, and that other people are believing you — that’s a journey that’s really heartfelt and human.
FW: One of my favorite scenes in Teacup is the cold open to episode 7, where you didn’t have any dialogue. How did you approach some of the more minimalistic scenes like this?
Morgan: Trusting Kevin Tancharoen, the director of that episode. He was very open about describing the feeling that we were going for. And I just went with it with the trust of the director, and that’s what we got.
FW: I think one of the compelling things about Teacup is that it’s not just a horror show. It’s got that emotional through-line. It has mystery. Why do you think this show is more than just scary and fun?
McCulloch: Well, I think scary and fun better serves a movie. This, we want people in for the long haul. And I think audiences have seen so many movies and TV shows and read so many books, that you need to keep them on the way. To keep them on the edge of their seats is to constantly shift the ground that they’re on. The story that you think you’re in in episode one is very much 1000 miles from the story you end up in in episode eight. And that is very much by design because if they know exactly what’s going to happen, there’s no reason for them to look up from their phone.
You want to keep them interested without jumping the shark, without breaking the suspension of disbelief. You want them never knowing what’s going to happen next, or they may have an idea what’s but they don’t know how we get there.
Morgan: I thought the journey of the human experience through all the characters is something that the viewer can relate to. Because innately, we all want to connect. We all want to support each other. We all want to band together when challenged from outside sources, and I think that is revealed in Teacup. So people are going to naturally connect to that because it’s like a bond. People come together, regardless of how their relationship was prior to whatever experience got them to say, “Hey, we gotta come together.” I think we’re actually experiencing that in the real world. So, this story is going to connect with so many people.
Spencer: To add on to his quote, what I love about this story is when the audience can just think, “What would you do?” And I love stories like that, that are futuristic, and I watch those and go, “What would I do?” And you find a character in this and kind of relate to that character.
Teacup played at the 2024 edition of Fantastic Fest, which ran September 19-26.
