Karyn Kusama on Directing ‘The Terror: Devil in Silver’ and the Demons Within | EUR EXCLUSIVE

*When Emmy nominee Karyn Kusama signed on to executive produce and direct the first two episodes of “The Terror: Devil in Silver,” the draw wasn’t the horror — it was the voice behind it. “Honestly, Victor LaValle,” she said of what first pulled her in.

“He is such a wonderful novelist, and I had worked with him before on another one of his books that we were trying to adapt into a television series,” Kusama added.

LaValle, who co-created the series alongside showrunner Chris Cantwell and authored the celebrated novel on which it’s based, brought something distinctive to the material from the start. Kusama pointed to “his sense of humor, his sense of the uncanny and the supernatural and the humanity that he gives every character he puts on the page” as defining qualities that came through clearly in those first scripts.

The six-episode limited series — also executive produced by Ridley Scott — follows Pepper, played by Dan Stevens, a working-class moving man who finds himself wrongfully committed to New Hyde Psychiatric Hospital, a crumbling institution where nothing is as it seems. To build that world visually, Kusama and her team made a grounding choice: shoot in a real place. “We actually shot in an abandoned correctional facility on Staten Island,” she explained, noting that the location’s claustrophobic corridors and seemingly irrational layout did much of the work on their own.

The space itself became a storytelling tool. “It really was a window into the way space itself in a lot of these institutions are designed to keep you disoriented and to keep you feeling off balance, almost like you have no agency,” Kusama said. The result is a disorienting experience for viewers that mirrors exactly what Pepper endures — a man trapped in an environment engineered to break him down.

Stevens, who also serves as an executive producer on the series, carries that psychological weight throughout. Kusama described Pepper as a character who “buried a lot of regret, a lot of guilt about his decisions in the past” and who had long dealt with those feelings through “outward aggression, with violence, with rage.” The arc she and Stevens built together required him to go somewhere harder — inward. “What was required for him for true change and potential escape from this hellscape,” she said, “was a very deep look inward, which in many respects for many of us is the scariest thing of all.”

Surrounding Stevens is a cast that Kusama describes as a dream ensemble. The series features Judith Light, CCH Pounder, Aasif Mandvi, Hampton Fluker, Chinaza Uche, Stephen Root, and Marin Ireland, among others. “Everyone was just wonderful,” Kusama said, adding that the humor on set became essential given the demands of the material and the intense physical environment. “We needed all those actors to just be spot on. And it was an incredible group.”

The show’s title carries more than one meaning — something Kusama embraces as central to the series’ purpose. “What is the devil?” she posed. “And how do we hold that energy in ourselves? How much of it comes from the outside and how much comes from the inside?” For her, each episode is designed to push that question toward the audience — asking viewers to examine the devils within themselves, within their families, and “in institutions, in bureaucracies, in systems that routinely fail many while benefiting a very few.”

Set in the early 2010s and rooted in the landscape of Queens, New York, “The Terror: Devil in Silver” marks a contemporary shift for the anthology franchise, which previously explored a British naval expedition lost in Arctic ice and the haunting of a Japanese American internment camp during World War II. Kusama sees this installment as both familiar and fresh — connecting to the franchise’s tradition of confronting “the uncanny, this unknowable mystery around evil or the supernatural,” while grounding it in institutional failure that she believes will feel “very real and prescient for today’s viewers.”

“The Terror: Devil in Silver” debuts Thursday, May 7 on AMC+ and Shudder, with new episodes rolling out weekly. The series will also air on AMC later this year.

Watch our conversation with Karyn Kusama below.

*This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

MORE NEWS ON EURWEB.COM: Trailer Drops for ‘The Terror: Devil in Silver,’ New Chapter in Horror Anthology Series | WATCH

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