Jeff Heller
In Peacock’s new pop horror series, HYSTERIA!, a beloved varsity quarterback disappears during the “Satanic Panic” of the late 1980s. A struggling high school heavy metal band of outcasts then realize they can capitalize on the town’s sudden interest in the occult by building a reputation as a Satanic metal band, until a bizarre series of murders, kidnappings, and reported “supernatural activity” triggers a leather-studded witch hunt that leads directly back to them.
HYSTERIA! stars Julie Bowen (Modern Family), Anna Camp (Pitch Perfect) and Bruce Campbell (The Evil Dead), and is produced by Matthew Scott Kane (American Horror Story, Stitchers) and David A. Goodman (Family Guy, The Orville). We spoke with the producers about the inspiration for the series, maintaining the tone of the show, and what frightens them the most.
Can you talk a little bit about the inspiration for the story?
Matthew Scott Kane: Yeah. A couple of years ago when I was first thinking about this, one of my overarching anxieties, I guess, was the fact that things like facts and what we’ve accepted as objective reality were starting to become a little bit more malleable, and they didn’t feel as reliable as they did once before. People stopped trusting institutions. We didn’t know who to trust in terms of news and all of that kind of stuff. And so rather than write about that happening in the present day, which would just be depressing for everyone, I wanted to take a step back and take it back to the satanic panic, where I feel like very similar things were happening back then, except now we get to do it with heavy metal music, and John Hughes movies, and video nasties and all of the fashion and the decor of the time and just enjoy that kind of timeframe and time period.
I never lived through the 80s, but I did grow up in southeast Michigan in the 90s. So, essentially I did kind of feel a lot of it because fashion and furniture don’t really catch up that quickly up there. So, it’s like I was kind of living in 1989 my first couple of years. But that’s where it all kind of came from.
It’s interesting because you mentioned the misinformation at the time wasn’t much different than it is now, despite the fact that we have the internet. I saw some parallels there.
Matthew Scott Kane: Yeah. You know, the show is a lot about people who use fear to their advantage. In this show, obviously, you have people like Dylan and Jordy and Spud who are using fear to their advantage to get people to come to see their band, buy their shirts, buy their demos, all that kind of stuff, while not realizing that this fear they’re selling is affecting an entire town of people. And it’s every bit as much about who are the people who are dealing with fear and who are the people who are dealing with it.
David, your background does not necessarily scream horror. So, can you talk about your involvement in this project?
David A Goodman: Luck? You know, that was actually something John Daly, one of the executive producers, pointed out in my job interview. I came to the project after Matt had written the pilot and I was really drawn to it. One of the best pilots I’ve ever read. The thing that I connected to it was the fact that you’re seeing this teenager make some really bad decisions. And then you’re also seeing a bunch of grownups make some really bad decisions. And the universality of that really, really grabbed me along with the horror, the comedy, the high school piece of it.
I had done a high school movie recently called Honor Society, which Matt had read, and that was sort of my entree into the high school of it all. But my career has always been about who I am working with and how, especially when it’s a creator with a really strong vision, which Matt had and showed in that first script. And how do I help facilitate that? How do I help? What are the ideas that I can contribute to that to help bring not just the pilot to life, but this series to life? And it’s been a really exciting project for me to be involved in because, as you say, it is nowhere on my resume.
There’s a lot of humor peppered into the storyline here. Can either of you talk about balancing the horror and the humor?
Matthew Scott Kane: Yeah, of course. One of the most influential films and scripts on me as a writer was Kevin Williamson’s work on Scream, where the lesson I learned is that you can be a funny horror movie without being a horror comedy. You can let your characters be funny. That will help you like these people, get a sense of who these people are and have you root for them. But you probably shouldn’t be making jokes when the killer is chasing you up the stairs.
You want to feel that thrill of, “Oh no, this witty, smart person that I like and am rooting for is in danger.” So, we want to use humor as a way to humanize these people and make you feel like you are friends with them and know them, so that when they get put through the wringer, and they almost all will, you’ll feel that.
One last question for you both. What frightens you the most?
David A Goodman: Cancellation.
What a great answer.
Matthew Scott Kane: I am deathly afraid of heights. Which is wild because I’m a huge rollercoaster fanatic.
Well, that seems oxymoronish.
Matthew Scott Kane: Yeah. I’m a very masochistic person in that way, I guess.
You can watch our interview with Matthew Scott Kane and David A. Goodman below.
All episodes of Peacock’s pop-horror series HYSTERIA! are now available to stream.
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