Peacock’s ‘Hysteria!’ set in Michigan during 1980s satanic panic
For “Hysteria!” actresses Anna Camp and Julie Bowen, horror is harder than comedy.
“Horror is really hard actually because there is a fine line you have to walk; you have to make it feel grounded and you’re put in these extreme circumstances: You’re being possessed or pulled through the air, there’s nothing you can do to relate to that,” explained Camp of “Pitch Perfect” fame. “With comedy, you can have a relatable situation and go, ‘I’ve been in situations like that.’ There’s nothing you can compare (horror) to, so you have to use your imagination. I find it harder. Your imagination goes home with you at the end of the day. You’re still thinking crazy thoughts.”
Bowen, best known for playing Claire Dunphy on “Modern Family,” agreed.
“Comedy’s pretty binary because it’s like either you can make people laugh or you don’t. I can’t watch horror. I’m terrified, terrified! I am the easiest scare in the world, so as far as doing (horror), I want to make it as real as possible. It was hard because I had to be really, really crazy. There were times when I’d get back to my hotel room at 3 a.m., I didn’t want to be alone in my head,” said Bowen, laughing.
Camp, Bowen, Royal Oak native Bruce Campbell (“Evil Dead”), showrunner David A. Goodman (“Futurama”), and Ypsilanti native/creator Matthew Scott Kane (“American Horror Story”) were promoting “Hysteria!” at the New York Comic Con in October.
The horror series is streaming on Peacock.
Set in the fictional Michigan town of Happy Hollow, the first episode of “Hysteria” begins with a popular quarterback’s disappearance and a pentagram is discovered on a garage door. As a result, rumors of the occult and satanic influence run rampant through the town. A trio of outcasts in a heavy metal band called Dethkrunch exploit this by rebranding themselves as a satanic metal band, which leads to them becoming the targets of the town’s witch hunt.
“Something on my mind a lot in 2019 was we’re living in this post-factual age with social media. It seemed like decades and decades ago, you could trust the news. Now everything is in question. When lies end up getting disseminated as truth, that starts to warp people’s version of reality. Suddenly, they’re living in a world other people are not. That was going on in the world I was living in and I very quickly connected it to the 1980s satanic panic. It’s not really that different because people were saying Ozzy Osbourne, Jason Voorhees (of ‘Friday the 13th’), and the Smurfs were going to turn your kids into satanists and kill you in your sleep. That didn’t happen. It wasn’t true, but so many people got worked up into such a fervor over it, bad things happened. … It was smoke without fire,” Kane said.
“Disinformation is not new,” Campbell said. “Disinformation will tear a town apart.”
Campbell portrays Happy Hollow Police Chief Ben Dandridge.
“This guy’s a reasonable cop; he’s a rational person who doesn’t treat the teenagers like they’re idiots. It’s all very refreshing,” he said. “I want to play that guy again. I want cops to be that guy. I’m playing the cop (that) cops need to be. That’s my whole motivation for playing this guy: How would you like cops to be, especially the guy in charge, the chief of police? They’re lucky to have Chief Dandridge.”
“It was truly an exciting moment when Bruce signed on,” Goodman said.
By the end of the first episode, a supernatural phenomenon happens to Linda Campbell, played by Bowen.
“Linda seems like one thing, then you realize she’s bananas. She’s either bananas or she’s possessed. Either way, it’s a complicated thing to play,” Bowen said.
“With Julie, you can have your cake and eat it too,” Kane said. “She’s this fun, quirky mom. … As the episode goes on, she’s pulled deeper into this thing and crazy stuff starts happening. That final act of the first episode was my favorite moment with her because this announced that this is not Claire Dunphy. We’re not doing that again; we’re pushing her as a performer.
“Julie was so excited about doing stunts. She told us on many occasions she’s very sturdy and can take it. The same goes for Bruce and for Anna. We didn’t ask anyone to give us a flavor of the thing they did before. We cast people we loved so much (in their famous projects) that we wanted to give them the opportunity to do the exact opposite.”
Added Bowen: “I got this script and was like, ‘Oh great. She’s a mom. How fun.’ I love moms. I’m a mom, but I felt this was not worth flying out of town to Georgia and being away from my kids. Then I got to the end of the pilot and was like, ‘She’s crazy!’ Is she possessed? There’s a lot more questions. It’s fun to just stretch again and do things I haven’t done in a while, which I found really exciting.”
Kane said he felt lucky Bowen signed on at the beginning.
“She was the first adult actor to sign on. That gave us such credibility to have a two-time Emmy-winning actor leading this show. Suddenly, it goes from this script from a relatively unknown writer into the new Julie Bowen show,” he said.
It was the quality of the writing that attracted Camp, Bowen and Campbell to “Hysteria!”
“I loved the script; it was incredibly well-written. It was immersed in the time period. It was such a good coming-of-age story, too — the feeling of being in high school again, being in the 1980s,” Camp said. “I talked to Matt who said my character (Tracy) was incredibly pivotal to the series and we’ll learn about why she is the way she is. So I was like, ‘I’d love to do this!’”
For Campbell, the writing is everything.
“A lot of times, I’ll get a script that could make the words interchangeable with every other character because the writing is very bland and just doesn’t have the detail you need. This was different. Every character was pretty distinct and pretty well-drawn,” he said. “It’s quality. It’s not a (expletive) show. It’s a real show that’s playing around with interesting themes. A lot of it is still relevant to this day.”
“Hysteria!” has other Michigan connections, including University of Michigan alumnus Jonathan Goldstein (“Spider-Man: Homecoming”) and Dondero High School alumnus Jordan Vogt-Roberts (“Kong: Skull Island”), who both serve as executive producers. Kane explained why he set “Hysteria!” in Michigan.
“You write what you know. I grew up in Ypsilanti, so that had a lot to do with it. More importantly, when you’re in a small town in the Midwest — somewhere like Michigan — these things don’t ever happen and word spreads fast and paranoia spreads quickly and (everything’s) blown out of proportion and takes up a lot of people’s minds,” he said. “Whether or not something is real doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter if there are people willing to believe it does and willing it into the world. What does it matter if it’s objectively real or living rent-free in someone’s head?”