“Teacup” – The Blood, Practical Effects and Paranoia of Peacock’s Sci-fi Horror Series [Set Visit]

Peacock’s horror series executive produced by James Wan, “Teacup,” assembles an impressive cast and crew with horror pedigree for a new, modern take on the sci-fi western. One that only loosely pulls from the novel that inspired it, Robert McCammon’s Stinger, without sacrificing the horror or impressive practical effects. 

Bloody Disgusting visited the set of “Teacup” earlier this year in Atlanta, Georgia, where writer, producer, and showrunner Ian McCulloch (Yellowstone) detailed plans for the inaugural season of his puzzle box genre series, and the lead cast offered insight into their roles.

While McCulloch’s interpretation of Stinger offers a more scaled-back, intimate mystery, his vision is set to bring the horror in delightfully gory ways.

The plot follows a group of people on a ranch who must come together in the face of a mysterious threat in order to survive. “Teacup” boasts an impressive cast playing the rural residents who find themselves trapped in a nightmare that breeds mistrust. That includes Scott Speedman (The Strangers), Yvonne Strahovski (“The Handmaid’s Tale”), and Chaske Spencer (“Jessica Jones,” The Twilight Saga), Kathy Baker, Boris McGiver, Caleb Dolden, Emilie Bierre, and Luciano Leroux.

Scott Speedman and Yvonne Strahovski play James and Maggie Chenoweth, respectively, spouses and parents of two dealing with a personal crisis before the mysterious force arrives: Maggie has uncovered James infidelity with Valeria Shanley (Diany Rodriguez), the wife of Ruben Shanley (Chaske Spencer). 

The horror threat in “Teacup” can be anywhere, creating paranoia and mistrust when things escalate. That means that the immediacy of James and Valeria’s affair will compound the trust issues. Speedman says of his character, “James is in the middle of a crisis. He’s a good man, a good dad that has strayed from his family. We meet him at probably the worst time in his life. It’s a pretty opportune time for the other genre elements to take place.”

From her character’s perspective, Strahovski tells us, “It adds to the pressure cooker of distrust because we get to the point where you can’t trust anyone because you don’t know where this force is jumping to, and it inhabits a body, and then there’s what happened between them. So, it’s sort of ultra devastating, and it’s a really lovely journey for Maggie because we see her in these moments of control. She’s trained to be in control, too, as a medical professional. Then we do have this lovely moment; I think it’s in episode four, where you kind of see her world crumble, and her whole control just shatters and goes out the door, and that’s a really fun scene to shoot because it was an anxiety attack basically, and it happens in her clinic. We see her lose it with all this stuff that’s going on, and then she’s figured out who the affair was with at that point, too.

“So it’s this pressure cooker of everything and her world crumbling around her.”

That the central characters are grappling with a personal crisis that’s immediately followed by bizarre, preternatural circumstances threatening their very lives provides fertile ground for drama. The lingering, unresolved resentment over the affair bleeds into the paranoid setting. It adds an unexpected complexity to the characters and their interactions.

That’s something that Chaske Spencer really gravitated toward when signing onto the project. “When I talked to Ian about the series, he said, ‘Everything’s underneath.’ And he said, ‘Your character is going to play everything close to the chest. We don’t want the audience to know what he’s thinking.’ That to me is a huge challenge because as an actor, by nature, I’m a pretty animated guy, but this character, he keeps everything in,” Spencer says of Ruben. “Everything’s underneath the surface. I’m saying a line to [Maggie] that really is not what I mean about the situation. That’s where I love the complexity of this script, and the show is that, like I said, the audience is going to notice. I don’t ever underestimate the audience. Audiences are very smart, and they’re going to see it and feel that and stuff, and I think it’s going to play very well.“

It’s not just the Chenoweth ranch nestled at the center of the horror that puts their family on the frontlines of the mystery; it’s Maggie’s profession. The invading force comes with a host of obstacles, including a lack of electricity and tech that helps trap them in place. When the horror arrives in earnest, it’s safe to say that the characters will be in dire need of medical help. That puts Strahovski’s Maggie at the forefront. The actress tells us, “She’s a veterinarian, so I mean she’s on the farm, so it’s intertwined with the story. The animals are acting strange, which is straight up in the first episode. That gives us the first clue into what’s going on, but also, she’s the only one who is a medical professional in all of this, and as things start going horribly wrong, we need a medical professional around. Things really go sideways in a really big way, in a physical way. I will say there was one moment when I did walk on set, and I thought, wow, this is maybe the best prosthetic I have ever seen, given what happens.“

To reveal what those prosthetics are or describe what they look like would venture into spoiler territory, but it won’t take long for audiences to discover the impressive, violent demises this series has designed and Special Effects Makeup Designer Carey Jones (“Fallout,” “The Walking Dead”) from KNB EFX Group has created. It’s not just humans, either. Set in wooded, rural Georgia, “Teacup” won’t be kind to humans and animals alike.

While “Teacup“ focuses on the steady build of its driving mystery, it’s unafraid to get gross and spill some blood. In fact, production designer Patti Podesta keeps photos and charts of blood splatter in her office. She explains, “I started collecting these things. I did Hannibal, the NBC Show. Part of it anyway, and I started collecting blood things then. It’s one of the conversations you have to have: blood is a color, and what color blood is ours, what viscosity is it, and how does it look?

“So, I put that up there because there is a lot of blood in this.”

How will the characters fare when it comes to the horror and gory elements? “Well, at first, she’s trying to come up with the reasonable medical explanation to all of this, and I think she is playing a bit of a game of trying to convince herself that her son has just had a concussion and that maybe would explain the weird talk that’s coming out of his mouth, but as we progress, you can’t ignore that obviously he’s acting really strangely,“ Strahovski explains of Maggie’s mindset. “And then with the appearance of another cast member, another person on the farm who has been able to enter the force field that we’re stuck in. That sort of starts the ball rolling where she realizes that this is much, much bigger than what is just going on at this property, and that this is a bigger external force, and that it’s not necessarily just even this thing that’s in the air of whatever is causing this energy field; but it’s also that people are a part of it.“

Spencer considers Ruben’s headspace, “I think he’s in denial still. He’s got a lot of other things going on. I think the main thing that really shakes him up is his marriage, which is dissolving, and I think that’s the main thing he’s more worried about. I think the other stuff is just surface until he gets more evidence of what’s going on. But right now, he’s got to try to hold on to his wife and then his family and figure this out. That’s the way I’ve been kind of playing it. I think he needs more evidence of what’s going on.”

The actor also gives insight into the first season’s timeline, adding, “What I love about this, it’s a span of 48 hours, and for what I understand from just human condition, it takes people a good minute to actually just process everything.”

“What I liked about it, too, is at the beginning, it’s not action-packed in the first 10 minutes,“ Speedman adds. “It’s very foreboding, and it’s kind of that show where you feel something coming, but you’re not sure what it is. Now we’re dealing with who in the room is infected, or however you want to call it. So, that’s interesting. You’ve got these people who know and love each other, but one of us is going to attack at some point.“

It’s not just the paranoia or gory practical effects that bring the horror in “Teacup,“ but its exciting lineup of directors, too. McCulloch has enlisted the talents of E.L. Katz (Azrael, Cheap Thrills), Chloe Okuno (Watcher, V/H/S/94), John Hyams (Sick, Alone), and Kevin Tancharoen (“Helstrom,“ Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.”).

McCulloch tells us of the first two episodes, “I think the hardest job is setting the tone. Evan Katz [directed] the pilot and second episode. It’s a harder job, I think, in some ways because they’re having to set the stage for the entire series, what it looks like, what it feels like.“

While McCulloch is quick to praise his cast and crew, the feeling is mutual. Speedman credits McCulloch for him wanting to be part of the series at all. He praises the showrunner’s vision, “I thought his version of this sort of a sci-fi Western really is how I looked at it; that got me really excited. When you start to read, it is a really unique blend of family drama, which he does really well. Then you add the well-executed genre elements, and I think you do have something here. I rarely feel that or say that.”

The first two episodes of Atomic Monster and UCP’s series “Teacup“ premiere on Peacock on Thursday, October 10, followed by two episodes weekly through Halloween.

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