Chainkeen|'Apples Never Fall' preview: Annette Bening, Sam Neill in latest Liane Moriarty adaptation

The ChainkeenDelaney family has a group chat going.

That’s not a big deal until you understand that the Delaneys are not a real family, but a profoundly wounded TV brood. We're talking get the shrink on speed dial.

But the actors playing them bonded so much in person and in that chat during the extended strike-hobbled filming of the Peacock's seven-part series “Apples Never Fall,” (due March 14 and previewed exclusively by USA TODAY) that they still text each other with adorable frequency.

“That chat of ours went ballistic the other day when we heard about Annette’s Oscar nomination,” says Sam Neill ("Jurassic World: Dominion"), who plays brooding patriarch Stan Delaney opposite Annette Bening’s overly cheery matriarch, Joy. (Bening earned a best-actress nomination last week for her role as swimmer Diana Nyad in "Nyad.")

“Yes, our chat continues as we speak,” Bening confirms with a laugh, still relishing the group lovefest that marked her first recurring TV series role. “We all ended up having a hell of a lot of fun on this. We sort of became a real family. I guess you could say that dysfunctional fictional family was, in real life, super functional.”

That faux family also includes the Delaneys’ four adult kids: lost soul Amy (Alison Brie, "GLOW"); finance bro Troy (Jake Lacy, "The White Lotus"); free spirit Logan (Conor Merrigan-Turner, "Thai Cave Rescue"); and physical therapist Brooke (Essie Randles, "Speedway"). Together, they face a seismic change – from surface bliss to alarming implosion – when Joy mysteriously goes missing. Is she dead, or just escaping the madness?

“Apples Never Fall” is another deliciously twisted creation from bestselling Australian author Liane Moriarty, whose previous books-turned-TV-series include HBO's “Big Little Lies” (2017-19) and Hulu's 2021 project “Nine Perfect Strangers.”

By marrying a whodunit with Shakespearean themes, "Apples" unfolds like a crime thriller bent on grappling with existential themes that are hinted at in the kid-centric title. That mix proved irresistible to series creator Melanie Marnich (an executive producer on FX's recent murder mystery "A Murder at The End of the World").

“When you’re doing a series, you’re committed for quite a while, so you have to love the themes,” says Marnich. “For me, this was all about the powerful way Liane looks at parenthood, at long-term marriage, at sibling rivalries, and all the sacrifices you make for your family, perhaps hoping for a payoff that might not come.”

When we meet Stan and Joy Delaney, they are celebrating the sale of their Palm Beach, Florida, tennis academy and diving into retirement. Their four kids smile for the cameras at the club dinner. But when Joy heads off on a bike ride and vanishes, cracks are revealed in the picture-perfect family.

Stan hides a simmering rage, but is it about his once-promising tennis career or something darker? Joy is so eager to still have purpose in retirement, she welcomes a stranger, Savannah (Georgia Flood, "I Am Evangeline"), into their home. And each kid starts unraveling in their own way, undone by relationship woes and other life crises.

“Buckle up for another Liane Moriarty ride,” says Marnich. “It’s a family drama, it’s a mystery, it’s dark but it’s funny. And oh wait, really it’s about love. So, there’s a lot in there.”

Bening says she was a fan of Moriarty’s work before signing on to the project.

“The great joy of this kind of long shoot is you really live with the characters and the story,” she says. “You can wake up suddenly with a great idea, and bring that to the set and talk about it. I loved doing this, and would do it again.”

In fact, there was more time than the cast ever hoped for to make subtle revisions. After shooting five of the episodes on the Gold Coast of Australia, production halted in May during the Hollywood writers' strike, which cut Marnich out of the picture. The team regrouped to film the final two episodes only in December.

Both Bening and Neill say they were lured to “Apples Never Fall” by producer David Heyman, whose track record includes the Harry Potter franchise and, more recently, “Wonka” and “Barbie.”

“Anything he touches seems to turn to gold, so I felt confident there,” says Neill, who has continued his screen work despite a diagnosis of Stage 3 lymphoma. He says Stan is in many ways his polar opposite, from his demeanor to his tennis skills.

“Stan, it’s fair to say, is an alpha male, which is decidedly not me,” he says with a laugh. As for the tennis scenes, which often show him drilling the ball at family members, he says “there was a bit of an education there. I’ve played, but not at Stan’s level.”

Bening says Neill brought a gravitas to his role that “helped anchor us all. He just has something, an inner life I guess, that immediately shows up on the screen in that look of his. But off camera, he couldn’t be a more fun guy.”

That’s good to know, since “Apples Never Fall” showcases a seemingly malevolent side of Neill's character. But that’s the point. The Delaneys aren’t quite who they seem to be, which makes for good fun in the guessing game department.

“The key question here seems to be, how bad is Stan?” says Neill. “But the bigger question is, how capable are any of us of doing the worst things?”

No doubt a question the family of actors who play the Delaneys will continue to hash out in their group chat.