As much as the threat in Teacup extends to the entire world, the new Peacock horror series thrives on its very intimate focus on the family and friends at the center of the action — especially since they are facing crises on two very different fronts. In Episode 3, “Quite for No Reason,” we finally find out what exactly happened to drive such a sizable wedge between Maggie (Yvonne Strahovski) and James (Scott Speedman) as the two lay their cards on the kitchen table amid all of the supernatural chaos.
In the scene, Maggie reveals that she has figured out who he’d been cheating on her with: Valeria, their neighbor who also happens to be bunking with them after the mysterious attack on the farm that has now turned deadly. The conversation between the estranged spouses is tense. Maggie deeply resents his indiscretion, especially since it’s now lying in her living room.
When James tries to apologize, Maggie says bluntly, “Who cares if you’re sorry.” She goes on to add that it’s her job, as the mother of their two children, to be “better than that” and keep her composure, despite how she feels. When James insists that he does love her, she says sharply, “It wouldn’t hurt so much if you didn’t, James.”
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Similarly, Valeria’s husband Ruben (Chaske Spencer) just so happens to overhear this spat and, when his own straying spouse wakes up, declines to confront her.
For all of the stars involved in these quietly gutting exchanges, this shooting day was a special one for them.
“It’s emotional and heavy and dramatic and it was really, really fun scene to shoot,” Strahovski told TV Insider.
“I had that one circled and was very excited,” Speedman agreed. “I mean, a lot of people would think, ‘Oh, that’s a hard scene to shoot.’ But sometimes those, when you have a really good acting partner like Yvonne, those are the most fun, easy scenes where you just jump in there and get physical, and it all comes out.”
Spencer credited series adapter Ian McCulloch with giving his character such a muted reaction to such devastating news: “One of the things he pitched to me, he said, ‘Ruben’s gonna get some bad information. What I want you to do is a challenge is to put that aside, still keep that underneath. But there’s a whole thing going on above us.’ And that’s what was the challenge for me as an actor is to be able to as the character play what the situation is, but underneath is still trying to struggle with what he just found out. It was hard trying to balance those two and when to show it, not show it… My character is very stoic, and that was a challenge.”
Mark Hill / Peacock
This week’s batch of episodes also began to reveal what exactly is going on in that remote farmland, as the Chenoweths’ young son explains that he is helping the “Harbinger” inhabiting his head to escape “Assassin” and that he came from the sky.
There are still more questions than answers about all of this, of course, but the contrast between what would ordinarily be a massive, earth-shattering problem among these families and what’s happening around them is stark. Who can mourn a marriage when there’s an alien invasion underway?! Still, it somehow doesn’t undermine the heaviness of the emotional burden at issue for these characters, and for creator McCulloch, that was exactly what he tried to achieve.
“I’m not body-snatching for body-snatching’s sake, especially in long form. It’s a long-form narrative. There’s only so far you can take it. It has to connect with an audience in a way that doesn’t feel like a gimmick,” he explained. “When people watch it and maybe they’ve heard about someone who’s been cheated on or they’ve been cheated on or they cheated on someone, they understand that it’s a very human thing, and it’s a conflict they understand that’s happened to them. So then when you introduce something that’s impossible, that has the same dynamics to it, then they’re on board with that. It’s a little easier to believe the impossible things if you kind of ground them in something that’s an everyday real-world situation. It works great.”
Teacup, new episodes on Thursdays in October, Peacock
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