Posted in: NBC, TV | Tagged: JJ Bailey, nbc, the hunting party

The Hunting Party Creator on Serial Killer Series Inspirations, "Echo"

The Hunting Party creator JJ Bailey spoke with us about researching serial killers for the NBC series, working on Disney+'s Echo, and more.

If there's one thing The Hunting Party creator JJ Bailey and co-showrunner/EP Jake Coburn have been able to successfully pull off in the NBC dystopian crime procedural, it's the subjects of their serial killers from the premiere episode Richard Harris (Tobias Jelinek), the family-obsessed Clayton Jessup (Patrick Brennan), and Brenda Lowe, who uses wolves to help hunt her targets, and we have seven more to go as the team led by Rebecca "Bex" Henderson (Melissa Roxburgh) tries to track them all down from the secret supermax prison they escaped from. Bailey spoke to Bleeding Cool about how he and Coburn devised the killers, some of his favorites, and what he gained from time on the Disney+ Marvel series Echo.

The Hunting Party Creator JJ Bailey on Crafting His Serial Killers for His Team to Chase

Bleeding Cool: What went into the process of the serial killers that you would base the team's targets on, and which among them stood out to you the most?

It's funny because we talk a lot about what kind of serial killers we want to deal with. It always sounds funny to me when I say this, but we want to have fun with serial killers. We want this show to be fun. It's a popcorn-type show where you sit back and enjoy the ride. We start from that place of what's like the scariest thing where it's got a little bit of either weirdness or left of center we can think is a little bit more fun than just some brutal serial killer.

We had a list of, I don't know how many we came up with that in the writers' room, but there was a whole hall covered in these things. Jake and I would think long and hard about which one sort of stood out the most for us and which ones we saw a path forward with, too. Sometimes, there's a false start where you get a cool idea about a serial killer, but then you start to realize there's not much of a story with him or her. It's a cool idea, so sometimes it just took a bit.

I will say episode four coming up is a favorite of mine, not in small part because we got to work with Kevin Corgan, whom I'm a huge fan of, and he absolutely crushed it. And then, episodes nine and 10 are exciting to me as well. Both are structurally different than the other episodes, which were fun to play with, too.

What was the most invaluable thing you learned from when you worked on 'Echo' that helped you with 'The Hunting Party?'

Wow, that's a tough question. 'Echo' got shut down after two days, because of Covid, so we got two days of building it. I will say one of the most valuable things that came from 'Echo' was the production designer we hired on Echo. The moment 'The Hunting Party' got picked up, I was like, "I want Russell [Barnes] for this," and we reached out to him. Fortunately, he was available, came on board, and absolutely crushed it. He designed the silo and the command center. He's a phenomenal talent and meeting him on 'Echo' was an enormous blessing I was able to bring him back for this because he made our show look fantastic.

The Hunting Party, which also stars Nick Wechsler, Patrick Sabongui, Josh McKenzie, and Sara Garcia, airs on Mondays on NBC and is available to stream on Peacock. You can also check out our interview with Garcia.

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