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Bruce Campbell on What Drew Him to Peacock's Hysteria!: "Horror Comes in Many Flavors..."
The Evil Dead alum is back fighting the forces of evil...except this time, he doesn't "believe in all this crap."
Bruce Campbell doesn't believe in the occult, but the jury's still out on extra-terrestrials. Despite his general skepticism of the supernatural, the actor has spent over four decades as an evil-vanquishing icon, and he's about to dance with the Devil yet again in Peacock's new horror-comedy series: Hysteria!
Set against the Satanic Panic of the late 1980s, the show takes place in the small Michigan town of Happy Hollow, where strange and eerie events begin to take place following the disappearance of a star high school quarterback. Caught in the middle of the town's rising insanity is Chief Dandridge (Campbell), a level-headed cop who, like the actor who plays him, doesn't buy into the fire and brimstone-fueled furor. "We didn’t hire Bruce to be Ash Williams," explains creator, showrunner, and executive producer Matthew Scott Kane. "Everyone that came onto the show, we used against type."
RELATED: Hysteria!: The Cast and Characters of Peacock's Satanic Panic Series Explained
USA Insider recently caught up with Campbell over Zoom to learn more about his role as the one of the few voices of reason amidst Happy Hollow's gradual meltdown...
Bruce Campbell talks Hysteria!, UFOs, '80s nostalgia, and the allure of Satan
What first attracted you to the show?
Bruce Campbell: Good characters, good writing. That’s all any actor can really hope for these days. And I can smell a rat these days, so it was good; it was nice to have strong material because you’re not anything without a good script.
The ‘80s are so popular right now. What do you think is the reason behind the current nostalgia for that specific decade?
Every 30 years you gotta get nostalgic — that’s how it works in America. In the ‘80s, we were nostalgic for the ‘50s; in the ‘50s, we were probably nostalgic for the ‘20s. Hollywood only has a file drawer that’s 30 years deep, so they just keep going back to the same file drawer. Eighties nostalgia isn’t really something you get too nostalgic about — at least in my world. I was raising my young kids at that time and there wasn’t anything nostalgic about the whole thing.
How did you approach the character of Chief Dandridge?
He doesn’t believe in all this crap either, so he’s like me. I don’t believe in all this crap. I’ll believe it when I see it. I believe in UFOs, because I think I saw once, but [when it comes to] supernatural/Satanic stuff…I’m not sold yet.
You’re no stranger to the horror genre. How would you say this compares to what you’ve done in the past?
Horror comes in many flavors. You have torture porn, you have psychological horror, you have visceral horror, you have guy with a mask and a machete-type horror, lunatic escaped from asylum-type horror. So this plays with your mind, which is the good kind of horror because you go, ‘Is that real or is it not real?’ And my character has to grapple with the same thing — is it real or is it not real?
What about the Satanic Panic topic really fascinates you?
How real they took it. This was during the birth of the moral majority. Christian fundamentalism was kicking up, the mega-churches were starting to get bigger and bigger. I think it’s a natural society reaction. Whenever society is pushed and pressured, it always pushes back. And so, I think this was a natural reaction to the Reagan era, ‘Just say no to drugs' [mentality]. Everything was black and white; there are good guys and bad guys; there’s angels and devils. And so, I think if you’re promoting that narrative, people are gonna eventually go, ‘Oh, so you’re telling me I have to do all the Biblical stuff…? Satan’s more interesting to me!’ As an actor, I’d actually rather play Satan than an angel. Satan at least has personality.
All eight episodes of Hysteria! are now streaming exclusively on Peacock. Episodes also air weekly, every Thursday night at 10:30 p.m. ET on USA Network.
