Photo by: The Riker Brothers
We were joined on the Popternative show by Max Burkholder who will soon be seen playing a young John Bennett in the Ted series premiering January 11th on Peacock. A prequel event series to the Ted films, the series is set in 1993 where Ted the bear’s (voiced by Seth MacFarlane) fame has passed and he is back living at home in Framingham, Massachusetts with his best friend, 16-year-old John Bennett and his family.

The comedy series also stars Scott Grimes (The Orville, American Dad!) as John’s father Matty, Alanna Ubach (Euphoria, The Flight Attendant) as John’s mother Susan, and Giorgia Whigham (The Punisher, Sierra Burgess Is a Loser) as John’s cousin Blaire.

When discussing the family scenes throughout the series, Max explains how the cast prepared to create an authentic family feel:

“We set out, I think like 3 days, 4 or 5 hours a day before we started properly filming to rehearse specifically those big family scenes where we really wanted to get those in our bones because we shot them all the way through. These are like, 9, 10 minute scenes that we would do 9, 10 minute takes of. So we really wanted to make sure we had the dynamics down, we had the timing down. That was really important for establishing a family dynamic between the five of us.”

(L-R): Max Burkholder as John Bennett and Ted the bear voiced by Seth MacFarlane in Ted. Photo by: Peacock

Max also touches on the new aspects we can expect from the prequel series:

“You’ve got just a wealth of data to pull from as an actor, two whole movies with Mark Wahlberg as this character […] but it is all new stuff. The show itself is about firsts. It’s about first time watching porn, first time smoking weed, first Halloween without your best friend. It’s about new stuff.”

He also discusses some of his past projects including the 2013 horror film, The Purge. Watch the full conversation with Max below.

Ted premieres January 11 on Peacock with all 7 episodes.

Follow Max Burkholder: Instagram

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