Julie Bowen was hesitant to take on more “mom roles,” but the new Peacock series Hysteria! offered her an opportunity to break free from typecasting.
“I really love working, and I didn’t think that anybody wanted to see me do Claire Dunphy on a show that wasn’t Modern Family,” she told Yahoo Entertainment. “I had to challenge myself to get out of that space and convince viewers to come along for the ride.”
Bowen played the matriarch of an eccentric family for 11 years on the Emmy-winning ABC series. In the 1980s-set show Hysteria!, she plays the mother of a high school musician whose heavy metal bandmates lean into the occult aesthetic during the satanic panic. Their small town is then plagued with mysterious happenings that point back to them.
“[She] starts as a mom, and you think she’s normal, but then we take a real hard left turn,” Bowen said. “For the first two-thirds of the pilot, I thought the mom doesn’t get to have any fun — the kids have all the fun … but then I kept reading.”
Her character does a series of captivating stunts — all but two completed by the actress herself. That’s something she happily gleaned from her time as a sitcom star.
“On Modern Family, I never thought I could tell a joke, but I knew I could fall down,” she said. “I’ve always leaned on physical stuff.”
Hysteria! has its comedic moments, but Bowen said it’s more of a “fun pop thriller.”
“It’s a show about what happens in a small town when everyone is getting misinformation and spreading it like wildfire,” she said. “God bless Peacock for letting us take a really big swing.”
Bruce Campbell, a horror icon best known for his starring role in the Evil Dead movie series, plays the town’s police chief. He is skeptical that recent crimes are supernatural, as some civilians allege.
“I could relate to this character who’s going, ‘OK, there has got to be a logical explanation for this,’” he told Yahoo Entertainment. “But there isn’t always, and this is where the fun begins.”
Campbell noted that many real-life people during the satanic panic genuinely believed “Satan is right outside the door ready to bust in at any time,” which he said must have been “unsettling,” though it’s not what he believes.
“I may be living in ignorance. Maybe Satan is out there. If he is, he hasn’t knocked for about 66 years and I’m hoping to keep him away a little longer,” Campbell said.
Anna Camp plays a parent who contributes to the spread of supernatural rumors. She told Yahoo Entertainment that the satanic panic series feels especially relevant right now.
“People are still talking about censorship of books and music, and we haven’t come that far,” she said. “[The show] provides a place to go back and revisit how we got through it.”
Camp said the way that the high schoolers in Hysteria! clash against their parents has long been a relatable struggle because “every generation is rebelling against the previous one.”
“We’re always coming up with new things in pop culture … that are challenging the status quo,” she said. “I mean, who doesn’t love heavy metal, rock ’n’ roll, messing with your parents and rebelling, right?”
All eight episodes of Hysteria! are now streaming on Peacock.
