INTERVIEW: On ‘SurrealEstate,’ Tennille Read gets more than she bargained for
Photo: SurrealEstate stars Tennille Read as Megan Donovan, the owner of a haunted house. Photo courtesy of Derm Carberry / Blue Ice Pictures / Syfy / Provided by press site with permission.
SurrealEstate, the new hit Syfy series, follows Luke Roman (Tim Rozon) and his team of specialists — known as the Roman Agency — as they investigate things that go bump in the night. Their chosen terrain are paranormal and haunted houses that no one wants anything to do with, which makes them opportunistic cases for Roman and company.
On season one of the show, which is currently airing Fridays at 10 p.m., Tennille Read plays the character of Megan Donovan, a woman who has inherited a Victorian mansion that is right up Roman’s alley.
For Read, an actor known for Workin’ Moms and Good Witch, the experience of acting in SurrealEstate has been a welcome one. “It was a lot of fun to shoot, so it’s nice to finally see everything come together,” Read said in a recent phone interview. “I auditioned for the role of Megan last July of 2020, and it was a self-tape. So I had few scenes, but I taped myself and then sent it off to casting. And I didn’t hear anything from anybody for about three weeks, and then I did get that call that we all look forward to. It was an offer to play Megan on SurrealEstate, so I was overjoyed because I had loved the writing that I had seen in the scripts that they had given me to audition with. And I thought the concept of the show was quite original, and the writing had a way of bringing so much humor.”
Read said she appreciates that Megan is so skeptical about the world of the paranormal, especially since that stands in stark contrast to the Roman Agency’s specialists who live and breathe everything that’s haunted. She finds the character pragmatic and cynical, but also kind and filled with heart.
“I think it’s an interesting character to represent,” she said. “And when things start occurring there that are out of her belief system, it’s really fun to react and craft that kind of horror. … The actual house we shot in had so much character to it already that it was easy to let my imagination kind of riff off of it in a way. Obviously with lighting and they had lightning happening outside of the windows to portray a stormy night, things like that helped, but otherwise this really old, kind of creepy-looking house became a really excellent scene partner that my imagination could kind of run wild with and make spooky things just easy to react to.”
Read and the rest of the cast filmed the inaugural season of SurrealEstate during the COVID pandemic, which made some activities on set a little more difficult. She found that everyone was careful and clean, and sometimes days ran a little longer because there was constant wiping down of surfaces. Masks also had to be worn at all times, except when the director yelled “Action!”
“More touch-ups had to happen because the masks were covering our faces, and we only dropped our masks when the camera was rolling,” Read said. “There was a lot of nose touch-ups to powder, but other than that, it became quite normal to be honest. And everyone was quite cooperative about it, so once we found a groove, we all just flowed with it.”
The horror genre is a bit of a new phenomenon for Read. She identifies as a scaredy cat who doesn’t normally step foot into the world of ghosts, witches and demons, but she has decided, because of her role on SurrealEstate, that she needs to conduct a little more frightening research.
“I have decided that now is the time to be friends with that genre,” she said. “So I’m going to start watching. The first film that I watched in a long time that was scary was Midsommar, and that’s the first of a lineup of other horror films that I’m going to find a way into. I’m going to make peace with the genre.”
As far as real haunted houses, this is what Read had to say: “I would say that I am a believer, but if I were in that position of having a haunted house, I might be more on the skeptical side so that I didn’t have to deal with it, if that makes sense. It’s kind of easier to believe in when it’s at arm’s reach as opposed to like right in your face.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
SurrealEstate, featuring Tennille Read, is now playing on Syfy Fridays at 10 p.m. Click here for more information.
