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

The Hunting Party Creator on Wanting a Different Kind of Procedural

The Hunting Party creator JJ Bailey spoke with us about what inspired the NBC series' premise, casting Melissa Roxburgh, and much more.

The premise of chasing fugitives is as old as television itself from Westerns, contemporary crime dramas, and even dystopian sci-fi. Creator JJ Bailey is bringing that together in the sci-fi crime procedural The Hunting Party, which follows a small team of investigators led by Rebecca "Bex" Henderson (Melissa Roxburgh), who are assembled to track down and capture the most dangerous killers ever seen, all of whom have just escaped from a top-secret prison that's not supposed to exist. Bailey spoke to Bleeding Cool about working with co-showrunner and EP Jake Coburn, why The Manifest star was perfect for Bex, and casting.

The Hunting Party Creator JJ Bailey on NBC Series' Premise and Casting

Bleeding Cool: What's the inspiration behind 'The Hunting Party?

Good question. It came out of a desire to do a procedural that felt different. Jake Coburn, my co-showrunner, and I wanted to do something with serial killers, and we got excited about a conspiracy thriller angle into that. As we started thinking about, what would the coolest sort of serial killer thing be? We thought, "What if serial killers were on the loose who everybody knew but weren't supposed to weren't supposed to exist anymore? They were supposed to have been killed in executions or died in prison." Suddenly, the world realizes they're back out there and snowballed from there. We got into the creation of The Pit, and we built the mythology from a desire to have a nontraditional procedural show where we're going after people every week but infuse this sort of larger conspiracy thriller mythology into it.

What made Melissa Roxburgh perfect as Bex and how does she drive the series?

Melissa is so awesome. She's got a great story from her side is fun. We were down the road a bit with casting the role, and she was traveling. She originally wasn't going to self-tape, because she heard from her people that we had already found somebody, and then she submitted a self-tape. We saw it and we were blown away.

We thought from what we had seen on 'Manifest' and what we knew of her, we thought, "She feels a little young and I don't know if she had any sort of like the weighty presence for it, but then we watched this tape and we were like, 'Oh, my gosh! that's Bex right there!'" It was one of those almost ineffable things where you see it and you realize that's the character. When she comes on camera, you want to listen to what she has to say.

It's a role that has to do a lot of talking, and Melissa can carry that weight, but then you put her on the tail of a serial killer, and you believe her when she's kicking at a door, or she's running around the gun. It's it from my perspective, and it was hard to find somebody who had both of those qualities who let you in at the same time because a lot of people can sort of play tough, but then there's a wall between you and them. Bex needs to be tough, but she also needs to let you in, and Melissa has that uncanny ability in her real life as well. She's a fantastic collaborator. It's been somebody that we've been fortunate enough to work with.

How did the rest of the cast come together with Nick [Wechsler], Pat [Sabongui], Josh [McKenzie], and Sara [Garcia]?

It was the traditional audition process that the world has turned into these days with these self-tapes and stuff. We have a lot of submissions we must look through. Our casting directors will cull them down for us and highlight people. Everybody who we cast was one of those highlighted people our casting director saw something in, but I'll speak first for Josh. Our director, Thor Freudenthal, previously worked with Josh on 'La Brea' and as soon as his audition tape came into the mix, Thor was telling us, "You got to pay extra attention to this guy. He's amazing!"

[Josh's] audition tape was great, but it was when we did a chemistry read. Doing them over Zoom, as you can imagine, is not the most amazing thing. When we did one with Melissa and Josh, it was instant. We saw, "Oh, man! These two need to be on camera together, not in separate rooms," because he was auditioning from Australia, and we were like, "Get him here now!" As soon as we saw that, we were like, "He's our guy!"

Patrick, same sort of thing. Jake remembered him from 'Homeland' and was excited about what he had done there. When he auditioned, we immediately got, we had Hassani (with him) in mind for what we wanted the character to be. When Patrick gave his read, we were like, there's something more here where he's got a little bit of that "Papa Bear" energy. He can be this spy and this badass guy, but he has a little bit of that father figure energy, which, when we were thinking about Melissa and Josh, that's the perfect pairing. He put that third person in there who feels like they can put their arm around the other two and sort of help usher them if they need. Patrick had that in spades.

Nick, I will say from the get-go, we gave him an audition scene that wasn't in the show. We wrote this scene because the pilot didn't have a lot for him. We gave him an audition scene we wrote that was an interrogation, and he crushed it. It made me want to put the scene in the show somewhere because he embodied the role in such a great way. Sara came on and was such a joy that as soon as she came on camera, we were like, "That's the little drop of sunshine that this dark show needs" and so she won that role for herself as well.

The Hunting Party airs Mondays on NBC and is available to stream on Peacock. You can also check out our interview with Garcia.

Enjoyed this? Please share on social media!

Stay up-to-date and support the site by following Bleeding Cool on Google News today!