How the Youngest ‘Teacup’ Stars Avoided Being Terrified on Set

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Robert R. McCammon

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The first two episodes of Peacock‘s new horror series Teacup have now premiered on the streamer, and it’s not much of a spoiler to say that there is some truly horrific imagery at play in the series already.

Such visuals include a body that’s been torn into shreds right in front of everyone and left to fester like a grisly statue outside of an apparently unbreachable forcefield. That sight of a gnashed body would be difficult for even the most veteran horror stars to stomach, so with two underaged children in the cast, the intensity of the prop was probably tenfold.

So how did the team keep the kids from getting too scared of what they saw on set?

TV Insider caught up with Emilie Bierre and Caleb Dolden, who play the young children of the Chenoweth family. The characters, one a teen and another an elementary school-aged boy, are experiencing a crisis on two fronts. Not only are their parents reeling from a painful betrayal, but the world around them is falling apart as mysterious forces have them desperately trapped on their farmland with no electricity, no outside communications, and no hope of escape. According to the actors playing these frightened little humans, it was their elders who kept the mood light.

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“Ian [McCulloch], our showrunner, is just this, first of all, brilliant person but also really hilarious guy. Scott [Speedman] and Yvonne [Strahovski] are also really, really funny people, and then we had a good time the whole time,” Bierre explained. “And I mean, for me personally, that’s the most fun thing about this job is getting to be challenged and having to go to those darker places. And then when you get to do that with such lovely people, it just makes the whole thing just a dream.”

Dolden added, “Yeah, it was easy to keep it all light and funny and natural because after each take, everybody was just back to being happy and smiling because it just came so naturally because you were so bonded pretty much. Everyone got along very well, the cast and the crew.”

For McCulloch’s part, he also didn’t want to spook his audience too terribly much and found a clever device to offer viewers some intermission between all the grimmest moments: music. Yes, all eight episodes are named after different songs — the first two are “Think About the Bubbles” as a wink to “Think About Your Troubles” and “My Little Lighthouse” — and the inclusion of lyrics and music throughout the series is a constant to break up the tension a bit.

Mark Hill/Peacock

“The series by design moves very quickly, and bad things started to happen very soon after the title sequence. And because of that, the audience doesn’t have a lot of time with these characters in sort of a comfortable, easy, relaxed setting. And so the idea was to use music that has that sort of homespun, comfortable feeling to give the audience — not to give them a breather, but to give them something that’s not [so intense],” he explained. “Throughout the series, they’re off-kilter, and we pull the rug out from under them, and we change things up. That’s something just to go, ‘It’s okay because Paul McCartney is singing to me right now. It’s okay because Fleetwood Mac is on.’ And it’s just something to give it another layer so that not everything is a thrilling, mysterious, horrific cliffhanger. There’s something that just gives us a little bit of solid ground.”

Find out what’s next for the kids and adults alike when the next two episodes drop next Thursday (October 17) on Peacock.

Teacup, Thursdays, Peacock