Teen daughter of Ky. meteorologist T.G. Shuck lands recurring role on CBS thriller ‘Evil’
For 14-year-old actress Brooklyn Shuck, life on the set of the CBS series “Evil” sometimes imitates life at home ... minus the demonic forces.
“It’s kinda crazy around the house, and we’re just big balls of energy,” Brooklyn said of her role as one of four daughters on the dark drama, which was recently renewed for a second season. “It’s very much like my house.”
Though she plays the oldest of the main character’s four daughters on “Evil,” in real life Brooklyn is the middle child in a family of three girls with Kentucky roots.
Her parents are Angie Coleman Shuck, who is from Pikeville, and former WKYT meteorologist T.G. Shuck, a Lexington native who has been at WHAS in Louisville since 2016.
Brooklyn has spent half her life in New York, where she’s had a successful Broadway stage acting career. Now, she finds herself in a recurring role on a television series that has had some pretty eerie plot lines.
“Evil” follows a skeptical psychologist named Kristen Bouchard (Katja Herbers) as she and a would-be priest (Mike Colter) investigate supernatural occurrences. Brooklyn plays Lynn Bouchard, the eldest of Kristen Bouchard’s four daughters.
While pulling off horror on network television is a rarity, the show has gotten good reviews. The series, which airs at 10 p.m. Thursdays on CBS, had its fall finale Dec. 12 and returns with three new episodes beginning Jan. 9. The season one finale airs Jan. 30, a CBS spokesperson said.
Brooklyn said she’s come to like scary movies more as she’s gotten older, so she’s enjoying those dramatic aspects of the show and seeing how the episodes come together after filming.
“We shot in some creepy locations,” she said.
“Me and my best friend like watching scary movies all the time,” she said, adding that she really likes a good jump scare.
In one episode, Lynn and her sisters play a virtual reality game and are joined by a white-clad girl who leads them to summon demons using a Ouija board.
“That was really wild to be acting with the thing not in front of you at the time,” Brooklyn said.
While her prior television work includes filming 10 episodes of the 2018 NBC drama “Rise,” most of Brooklyn’s previous credits have been for stage appearances.
Since her first Broadway role in the revival of “Annie” at age 7, she’s had roles in “Matilda,” “Tuck Everlasting” and “Les Miserables.”
For the past two years, she’s been an original cast member of shows that won the Tony awards for Best Play.
This year, that was “The Ferryman,” on Broadway, in which she played one of the younger children in a close-knit Irish family. In 2018, she was part of the ensemble cast for the Broadway production of “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.”
Performing seems to run in her family.
Brooklyn’s older sister, Sydney, 16, and younger sister, Raleigh, 13, also have acting credits, and all three girls attend the Professional Performing Arts School in New York.
“It’s like hitting the lottery,” T.G. Shuck said of having three daughters with the talent to be chosen for the small Manhattan school.
It also means schedules can get pretty crazy sometimes.
At this time of year five years ago, he recalled, Sydney was touring with “Annie,” Raleigh was touring with “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” in the role of Cindy Lou Who and Brooklyn was one of four actresses sharing the title role in “Matilda the Musical” on Broadway.
When asked about how she feels about television versus stage acting, Brooklyn said, “I love them both.”
“On TV, it’s like everything’s fresh and new” because each episode brings new material. “It’s really cool how a character gets to expand. I find it super interesting.”
She said she’s looking forward to learning more about her character on “Evil” in the second season. Filming for the first season is still in progress, and production for the second season will likely begin early this summer, she said.
For her dad, coming home from work at WHAS to watch his daughter on network television is “just bizarre,” T.G. Shuck said. He said it was particularly moving to watch her on stage during the Tony awards this summer.
But even better is having her and her sisters home in Kentucky, which Shuck clearly relished during the Thanksgiving holidays.
He shared photos of his girls on Facebook, saying “every moment is precious.”
Brooklyn said she loves being outside when she comes to Kentucky.
“I just love sticking my head out the window and smelling the fresh air,” she said.
And Louisville and Lexington offer some shopping opportunities even the Big Apple doesn’t have: “There aren’t many malls in the city,” she said.
This story was originally published December 23, 2019 at 9:57 AM with the headline "Teen daughter of Ky. meteorologist T.G. Shuck lands recurring role on CBS thriller ‘Evil’."
