Yahoo Lifestyle Melissa Roxburgh Compares Hunting Party Mysteries to Manifest’s, Mourns Loss of NBC Drama’s Super-Cool Prison — Watch Video
If you were sad to see The Hunting Party‘s super-cool, super-secret, subterranean prison get blown up in the NBC drama’s first minutes, know that series lead Melissa Roxburgh shares your pain.
“I know!” the actress laments in the TVLine video Q&A above, after I myself grouse over the loss of The Pit. “I think it’s expensive,” she said of the largely computer-rendered set. “I think that’s the reason they had to blow up the thing and get it out of the way. But I thought it was so cool.”
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Returning Monday, Feb. 10 at 10/9c with its second episode, The Hunting Party is a high-concept crime procedural about a small team of investigators who are assembled to track down “the most dangerous killers our country has ever seen,” all of whom have just escaped from The Pit, a top-secret prison that’s not supposed to exist.
In addition to Roxburgh as FBI agent Rebecca “Bex” Henderson, the cast includes Nick Wechsler (Revenge) as Oliver Odell, Bex’s former partner and The Pit’s warden; Patrick Sabongui (The Flash) as CIA agent Jacob Hassani; Josh McKenzie (La Brea) as former Pit guard Shane Florence; and Sara Garcia (also of The Flash, #Vancouver) as Army Major/intel officer Jennifer Morales.
Why another mystery-based drama for Manifest alum Roxburgh, versus, say, playing a mild-mannered pediatrician on Chicago Med? “I know, I should do something super low-key…,” Roxburgh responds. “But mysteries are fun, and I was drawn to the project because I love the idea of profiling criminals, getting into the psychology of why they do what they do.”
Among those who were serving time in The Pit, “Some got better, some got much worse,” Roxburgh notes. “And of course the ones that got worse have escaped back into the world, so trying to track them down before they [kill] again is a fun chase.”
In the video above, Roxburgh goes on to compare The Hunting Party’s style of mystery to that which Manifest unspooled across four seasons on NBC and then Netflix (“I like that there are no more voices!”). She then she dives into the dynamics between Bex and search party team mates Jacob and Shane.
As for Odell and what he revealed at the close of the series premiere — that the explosion that collapsed The Pit was no accident, but instead a prison break — Jacob this week will tell Bex, “You can’t trust him, he’s full of crap,” Roxburgh previews. “So for a lot of episodes, she goes back and forth and it creates this little trust triangle” with Bex, Jacob and Odell.
“She’s probably more inclined toward Jacob given what Odell did [in the past]” — burning a kidnapper alive! — “but she worked with Odell,” Roxburgh notes, “and has a history with him.” A history that the actress affirms is “very messy.”
Roxburgh goes on to chuckle about having a “college-age daughter figure” on The Hunting Party, and then previews an Episode 2 moment you won’t want to miss, when Bex comes face to face with Eli Johnson (played by Mark Moses), her childhood friend’s father that she put behind bars, for a series of local murders, by using her nascent profiling skills.
“There’s some definite trauma there,” she says. “It’s the first time she’s had to confront properly what happened” when she was just a high school senior.
Want scoop on The Hunting Party, or for any other TV show ? Shoot an email to InsideLine@tvline.com, and your question may be answered via Matt’s Inside Line!
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