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The Hunting Party Writer/EP Keto Shimizu on Master/Apprentice Killers

Writer/EP Keto Shimizu (Arrow) spoke with Bleeding Cool about the inspiration behind the latest episode of NBC's The Hunting Party.

Keto Shimizu has been active for nearly two decades since writing her short Razor Man in 2006. Fortunately, her passion for horror and procedurals served her well, predominately in the superhero genre, with her work on The Cape, Being Human, the Arrowverse, and Vixen. Her latest is a departure in the NBC procedural series The Hunting Party, which follows a team of specialists led by Rebecca "Bex" Henderson (Melissa Roxburgh) as they track fugitive series killers who escaped an off-the-books supermax. The writer and executive producer spoke to Bleeding Cool about a few of the episodes she's written in episode two's "Clayton Jessup" and the upcoming episode "Denise Glenn," which airs tonight.

The Hunting Party EP/Writer Keto Shimizu on Embracing "Deep Dark Places" in Her Writing

Bleeding Cool: How did you get involved with The Hunting Party?'

I got involved early in the process when we were developing the show in a "mini" room or development room. This was about a year and a half before the show started. I was brought in because of my friendship and connection with [Jake] Coburn, the co-showrunner. He and I worked on 'Arrow' a decade or so ago [laughs] and remained friends. We also developed together other projects in the past, so he knew I liked to go into pretty dark spaces, and people's psychoses, he knows how much I love horror, and that I'm also good at procedurals because that's what we did on 'Arrow,' essentially.

What's the inspiration behind the 'Clayton Jessup' from episode two, and how did Patrick [Brennan] capture the character so well?

Oh my gosh! Patrick was amazing. The initial inspiration for Clayton was an episode we broke in that development room quite a while ago. The idea came from wanting to tell a story about someone who… started their murder spree as a teenager. Someone who got their hands bloody at a very young age, and thinking then, "What if that person grew up in a way in The Pit?" and "How would they have been frozen in this childlike state, but also how dangerous would that be when it came out? The idea went through so many twists and turns ultimately, but to reach what we ended up with. It was a concept that started in a very dark place, but it took some interesting turns along the way for sure.

Speaking of twists and turns, I was wondering about how you and David [Loong] developed this upcoming episode, 'Denise Glenn'? Was it always having her be the sort of Hannibal Lecter-type play here as far as being the master in prison, and then it became her having an apprentice? Can you speak of Janet Kidder's performance?

The notion of an artist killer came up very early on when we were figuring out the whole concept of this show when we were in that development room. We wanted to do some sort of artistic killer, but we didn't quite know how to crack it back then until later when we had the fuller room, we were in production, and everything was knowing that it came together.

Part of that was I'm a huge fan of Greek mythology. I'm a huge mythology nerd, so when we were still trying to figure out like, "What is this killer's thing? What is it? What do they do? What's this artist killer?" I went, "Well, muses. Where does art come from? It comes from muses. It comes from inspiration." [Josh] McKenzie came into the writer's room, and from there, it gave the story a lot of momentum because suddenly we were like, "Okay, now we can see what this person did in the past and how maybe they didn't come to the project. What if someone else is out there doing it for them?"

Instead, we can have a scenario where we have, as you said, a Hannibal Lecter-type character in custody for the whole episode to allow our two master profilers to go head-to-head with this person, have these mind games, and have these interesting conversations that dig deep into their dynamic, relationship, test the bond between these characters and also get to see [Nick] Wechsler in action. We haven't gotten a chance to see Oliver shine as a profiler, and this is a great case where he and Bex must lean on each other to get the better of this very coy, malicious, and incredibly manipulative person who is sitting at the other end of the table from them knowing they need something from her.

[Denise] has absolutely no intention of giving them anything without having a lot of fun first. It's a juicy dynamic, and again, it allows us to play with this wonderful theme of master and apprentice. Dealing with that, both on Bex and Oliver, the killer and her protégé, was very rich and it allowed for the stories to come together in a very satisfying way.

The Hunting Party, which also stars Patrick Sabongui and Sara Garcia, airs on Mondays on NBC and is available to stream on Peacock.

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