Peacock’s Ted series kicks off this week, following the lives of talking teddy bear Ted and his best friend John Bennett. Created by Seth MacFarlane, the new comedy is a prequel to the hilarious films of the same name, with Ted and John having to navigate the tumultuous waters of high school and young adulthood. Starring alongside MacFarlane as Ted and Max Burkholder as John, Ted also features actors Alanna Ubach and Scott Grimes as John’s parents, Susan and Matty Bennett.
PopCulture.com had a chance to speak with Ubach and Grimes ahead of the show’s premiere and they dished on how they crafted their characters, with Ubach noting that classic TV shows were only part of her inspiration for how she played Susan. “Well, you know, growing up, I will say this, I sound like a broken record, but I was a latchkey kid, and so when I would go home, I would have this bottomless bowl of Chef Boyardee, and my babysitters were Mr. and Mrs. Jefferson, Benny Hill, and the entire cast of What’s Happening!!, Good Times, and Wait Till Your Father Gets Home.
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“Those were my babysitters growing up,” she continued, “so that’s going to rub off on a little girl, right? And to me, preparing for this, I thought, ‘I can’t watch All in the Family. I can’t watch any of those characters because I will mimic them.’ I know myself. I’m going to start to mimic them, and then people are going to say, ‘Why is she doing so-and-so? That’s weird.’ And it would take people out of Ted, so I thought, ‘You know what I’m going to do? I’m going to not watch any of those.’ My job is to try and find the nuanced little areas, the nooks and crannies of Susan that people haven’t seen before that seems a little more of a refreshing take on those women that we’ve seen in television, and God, I hope I accomplished that.”
Discussing his approach, Grimes explained that it wasn’t hard to capture his essence because “there’s people like Matty everywhere. It’s the accent that just makes him a little different. Not specifically from the Boston area. Everywhere, there are these people.”
Ubach then chimed in, ” What’s so ironic is Scott is all heart. He is nothing like Matty. He’s just this warehouse of charisma, and a dollface, and quite sexy. And dapper, dandy. But nothing like Matty, so when you actually see him with the curly hair and the outfit and when he’s in full-focused mode, you’re like, ‘Who is that? Who is that?’”
Grimes continued, “The mustache and the hair and the weight kind of helped you kind of point and say, ‘Oh, I feel bad for this guy.’ You had to feel bad for him in a way other than that, ‘Why would she be with him? He would be abusive. You got to make him funny, real, and a little exaggerated.” All eight episodes of Ted Season 1 will drop this Thursday, Jan. 11, only on Peacock.
