‘The Hunting Party’ Star Melissa Roxburgh Hint at What’s Ahead for Love Triangle & Mystery

Even before this chilling new crime drama premieres, let’s give it kudos for casting. As star Melissa Roxburgh confesses, the first time she faced off against an actor hired to play a psychotic mass murderer in a tense interrogation scene, she told him, “Ooh, if I met you on the street, I would run!”

You can look forward to plenty of running (and shooting and outsmarting) for Roxburgh, who plays Bex Henderson, a former FBI profiler now leading a team tracking down serial killers who escaped when a top-secret prison was destroyed in a mysterious explosion, on The Hunting Party.

David Astorga / NBC

Nicknamed “the Pit,” the facility, which goes boom in the series premiere, was in a converted nuclear missile silo in Wyoming and housed hundreds whose supposed executions had been faked. The series launches with 10 episodes, each of which covers the search for a different killer. In the opening hour, the hunt is on for a maniac who blinds women as revenge on his mother, who locked him in a dark basement. There’s a government cover-up after the explosion, of course, and the inmates must be nabbed fast.

Bex is up to the task. Roxburgh compares her to Michaela Stone, the cop she portrayed on NBC/Netflix’s Manifest (2018–23). “Bex is tenacious, stubborn, strong-willed. I carry a bit of stubbornness, so I can relate.” The actress also connects to the role thanks to college studies in criminology, including a seminar analyzing the likes of Ed Gein and Ted Bundy.

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'The Hunting Party' Bosses Tease Answers About the Pit and Shane's Motives

Still, these are more than your average repeat slashers. The inmates have been subjected to experiments that have further twisted their already creepy minds. (The plot point was inspired by MKUltra, a CIA program that tested psychological torture techniques, in use from 1953 to 1973.) And Bex fears that among the escapees is Eli Johnson (Mark Moses), a killer she helped catch as a teen by listening in on her sheriff dad’s phone calls for clues.

“The prison is a lab that was used [through] many decades by the pharmaceutical industries, the defense industries, the military,” says executive producer Jake Coburn, who runs the show with series creator JJ Bailey. “It’s a government conspiracy that just keeps unfolding.”

Even the president is in the dark, so it’s no surprise that Bex must deal with false information, says Roxburgh: “One thing that drives the mystery is that no one really knows who’s in charge.” Also, the brilliant special agent can’t even be sure who among her squad colleagues to trust.

NBC

Take the prison warden, Oliver Odell (Nick Wechsler, Revenge), who’s put on the team due to his experience with the escapees. He was Bex’s FBI mentor, but his unethical treatment of a suspect drove them apart. “It’s been [five] years since they’ve seen each other and nothing’s been resolved,” Roxburgh says. “Who is he as a person having done what he did?” Flashbacks during the first episode piece together that fateful past operation, which also brought Bex together with her adopted, now-college-age daughter Sam (Kyra Leroux).

No matter how terribly things ended with Odell, “they shared a lot of love prior,” Roxburgh says. And yes, there was romantic tension, which returns. Plus, “everyone loves a good triangle, so we see snippets of that,” Roxburgh reveals. The third side is a prison guard/former military man, Shane Florence (Josh McKenzie, La Brea). He and Bex bond quickly after sharing stories of past traumas. “Shane becomes Bex’s safe place, someone she can trust completely. But he’s got his own bag of secrets,” Roxburgh says.

The team’s de facto manager is the CIA’s Jacob Hassani (Patrick Sabongui, Homeland), who has long hunted terrorists and traffickers. He reports directly to the attorney general, Elizabeth Mallory (Zabryna Guevara). “Hassani is running the day-to-day operations from the CIA perspective. He’s brought in to clean this up,” Bailey says.

Whoever’s in charge has provided a big budget. The hunters’ massive plane doubles as a war room, so they can quickly fly to destinations nationwide where the escaped killers have been spotted. 

They also get a hand from military intelligence officer Jennifer Morales (Sara Garcia, The Flash). Once an ace student in Bex’s officer candidate course in behavioral science at Quantico, “she’s a drop of sunshine in a dark world,” Bailey says.

That world comes through in the series’ big-picture mystery as the team gets clues on who was behind the prison break and why. We’ll learn, says Roxburgh, “how international this goes.” But the more pressing issues come each week as the hunting party does its job. In each episode, says Roxburgh, we’re left to “wonder who’s going to get hurt. And is everyone going to make it out alive?”

The Hunting Party, Series Premiere, Streaming Now, Peacock (Episode 2, Monday, February 10, 10/9c, NBC)

From TV Guide Magazine

What to Expect From 'The Hunting Party's Love Triangle and Mystery

Manifest alum Melissa Roxburgh and the showrunner of NBC’s Hunting Party tease TV Guide Magazine about what’s ahead for the “government conspiracy that just keeps unfolding” — plus, the series’ “good” love triangle. Read the story now on TV Insider.