NBC is here with another twisty show focused on a group of FBI agents hunting down serial killers. It’s all about The Hunting Party.
The series does start with a bit of a twist. Melissa Roxburgh’s Bex is no longer part of the FBI, but she was an outstanding profiler back in the day. Now she’s tasked with coming back to the agency to help track down escaped serial killers who she (and most of the world) believed were dead.
Patrick Sabongui plays Jacob Hassani, the man in charge of the task force put together to catch the criminals. Just how much does he know about the entire situation? That remains to be seen.
We talked with both Roxburgh and Sabongui about The Hunting Party. We looked at what drew them into the series and got to learn a little more about their characters.
Melissa Roxburgh and Patrick Sabongui tease The Hunting Party
Hidden Remote: I love the darkness and going into the psychopathy of serial killers, so I was immediately intrigued by The Hunting Party as a viewer. What drew the two of you into it?
Melissa Roxburgh: I thought the pilot was super well written. Who doesn’t love a serial killer story? But it was the dynamics of the past. Every single character, I felt, had this great setup for where it could go, and it all felt so complicated, which is fun as an actor.
Patrick Sabongui: What drew me in, selfishly, was I love the idea of playing a character who is a caretaker but also this bad guy hunter. Somebody who keeps the team together, keeps us on a mission. It just seemed like a really satisfying combination of veterans.
HR: We don’t know a lot about Hassani from the pilot episode. Not as much as what we learn about Bex and a few others. What can you tease about him in the upcoming episodes?
PS: This is more to do with the overarching mystery behind the framework of the show. I think he likes to think he has all the information that he needs and that he is the absolute leader of this team and that he’s going to keep us all on track. As the story moves forward, you realize that some of the information he has is inaccurate or incomplete, so he scrambles a little bit to piece it all together. I think that’s an interesting dimension of it, when you’re a cog in the wheel of a giant government operation like this, you might think you’ve got all the information, but you’re only seeing what they want you to see.
HR: Melissa, with Bex, we have this extremely layered character already. What’s it like for you?
MR: When we meet her, we hear about the fact that she was 15 and she caught a serial killer. That was a very traumatic moment for her. She watched her friend get killed by her dad, so I think that informs everything she does, especially since she was brought up by a sheriff. She’s always had a detective mindset given to her by her dad.
As the episodes go on, I think we realize that she still struggles quite a lot with that moment. But then she uses it for the job, but she can’t catch a break. She dates this guy who burns someone alive. So, what’s she gonna do?
HR: Will we get to see more of her relationship with her adopted daughter, Sam?
MR: I really wish I could say yes. There’s a lot of backstory that gets brought in, but I think we just got too busy. The daughter is there. She’s kind of like this muse for Bex, so she’s there in spirit, but we don’t actually get to see her on screen too much.
But she’s a mom now. She’s taking care of someone, and so whenever there’s a bad guy out there, she thinks of her daughter and what could happen to her again if they don’t catch them.
HR: Can you tease anything about who is really behind the team that you’re just cogs in the wheel on?
PS: I think for me, I keep coming back to this is that when the mission is clear, when there’s a clear target, everything else is superfluous. The well-being of the team, the overarching political connotation of what we’re doing is all secondary. What matters is that there are bad guys out there. We know who they are. We have the technology to find them. We need to catch then and rein them in.
Once that’s done, we can worry about everything else. But that’s relegated to the sidelines for Hassani. He has his family, and as long as there are bad guys out there, his purpose and his next step is very, very clear. He’s protecting his family.
HR: How international could this become? Where would you like to go if it went international? I mean, if I was one of these escaped convicts, I’d be getting a fake passport and getting out of dodge.
MR: I really, really hope the bad guys choose to go to the Caribbean, because yeah! I think season 2 should just happen in the Caribbean.
PS: Maybe in Bali.
HR: For some reason, they all head to Russia. Usually Siberia!
MR: We do see them going into these crates, though, and the crates go somewhere. So, I expect that if we do more seasons that a location change will come up.
The Hunting Party airs on Mondays at 10/9c on NBC. Catch up the following day on Peacock.
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