a day ago
'The Hunting Wives': Malin Akerman talks juicy Texas drama, and the scandalous moment she 'loved and feared'
Based on the 2021 novel by May Cobb, the show The Hunting Wives (streaming on Netflix in the U.S., Crave in Canada) starring Malin Akerman, Brittany Snow, Dermot Mulroney, Evan Jonigkeit and Chrissy Metz, is a twisted Texas drama. To use a description from Akerman, it's "Big Little Lies meets Yellowstone."
Sophie O'Neil (Snow) and her husband Graham (Jonigkeit) have just moved to Texas from Boston, with the first episode taking place as they do go to a party hosted by Graham's boss, Jed Bank (Mulroney). But a surprise to Sophie and Graham, it's an NRA (National Rifle Association of America) fundraiser.
Sophie, an ex-PR professional, isn't particularly comfortable in her new Republican environment, amplified when Jed announces at the party that he's officially running for governor.
Panicking, Sophie runs to the bathroom where she meets Margo (Akerman), who asks Sophie if she has a pad, adding that she can't use a tampon. Margo isn't shy to take her dress off in front of Sophie, getting herself ready to go back to the party. When Sophie tells Margo she just came into the bathroom to take Xanax, she gives an extra pill to Margo, just before she realizes Margo is Jed's wife.
While Margo decides Sophie will be her new best friend, some of the other women she's close to, particularly Callie (Jaime Ray Newman) who has an intimate relationship with Margo, aren't so pleased.
Meanwhile, Margo's riskiest move is her relationship with high-school-aged Brad (George Ferrier), who seems more interested in their hookups than his Christian teen girlfriend Abby (Madison Wolfe).
"I feel so lucky when I get to play characters like this," Akerman told Yahoo Canada. "I feel like I got lucky with Lara Axelrod in Billions and then this one is in the same vein of just this powerful queen bee of a woman who happens to be quite manipulative, quite charming, but you do not want to cross her. And I just think that's so much fun to play."
"These are what we call the juicy parts, where there's lots to do for the characters and some place to go with the arc of their journey. I got sent the eight episodes up front, so I was able to read her journey, which isn't always the case for TV shows, sometimes you just get a pilot. So I felt really excited to get to see what was going to happen throughout the show, which is just such a fun, binge-worthy show, really."
Malin Akerman and Brittany Snow's easy chemistry
With Snow and Akerman's characters getting close quite quickly in the show, getting even closer as the series continues, Akerman highlighted that they had an "easy" time creating the chemistry required.
"We have quite an intimate relationship throughout this show, so it was really important that we got along," Akerman said. "We got really lucky."
"It was very similar to the characters in a way, because I felt like I had Brittany Snow and took her under my wing in many ways, even though she's a fully capable woman, but she'll agree, we've talked about that a lot, and we just said we fell into these interesting roles that parallel the dynamics in the show."
But with such a strong first scene between these two characters, when they first meet in the bathroom, Akerman said she "loved and feared it."
"There's the love of reading that and watching those kinds of shows and characters, and then you go, oh right, but I have to perform it," Akerman said.
"But how lucky am I to get to play this woman who has that freedom, and there is something about that where you go, there's so much power in being secure in who you are and taking that on. So I loved it. But there's always hesitation and making sure that any characters like these are ... not gratuitous, and it propels the plot. It pulls the plot along. ... So as long as that all comes together, I'm happy to jump in."
'If you feel like you're safe on set ... then you're able to do your job properly'
Throughout the series, we dive deeper into the relationship between Jed and Margo. In one interesting scene Margo expresses to Jed that she's concerned about his transition into politics possibly exploding their current lives, and that their open relationship would be received differently for her as a woman, and he's quick to sternly shut her down for suggesting a double standards for women versus men.
"Many things within the relationship are very freeing where you go, this is a relationship that works and they definitely step outside the boundaries of what a monogamous relationship looks like, but at the same time ... there is that controlling element of, he is still the man, and we are in Texas in this show, and there are things that are frowned upon for women," Akerman said. "There's taboos that are put on men and women separately. So it is fun to explore that in this show."
But with so many private, intimate, explicitly sexual moments in the show, Akerman stressed that she felt the set was a constructive and effective environment to explore those elements of the story.
"We had wonderful directors. We have the most incredible showrunner and creator in Rebecca Cutter. ... It's always from the top down," she said. "Safety and vulnerability, being able to be vulnerable is a huge thing for an actor and I think if you feel like you're safe on set and there's respect, then you're able to do your job properly. And that's exactly what they created on this set."
"We had a wonderful intimacy coordinator, which is like having a choreographer, but for intimate scenes. So we all felt like we knew what we were walking into. Every day we have professional camera men and camera women. ... You create an environment and once that environment is created, as an actor, you can walk in and feel like, 'Oh, they've got my back and I know what we're doing.'"
The complex backstory of Margo
For Akerman's Margo, there are a lot of questions about who she was before she married Jed, what her past was and what her road was to get to this point in her life.
"Rebecca Cutter and I, we had lengthy conversations about who she is ... and I think it comes from a past and going, what did she have to do to survive?" Akerman siad. "She's quite the survivor and a lot of times when you meet survivors, they're so in tune with being able to read a room and become a chameleon and understand how to fit in, and how to build themselves up."
While the show does, quite quickly, show us glimpses into the life Margo left behind, the most telling moments are when we see Margo alone, because she is someone who really turns on and evolves around others.
"I always feel like those are the most telling moments in film or television," Akerman said. "I just think, you know, silence and watching people, letting you see their inner dialogue through their eyes without saying anything, conveying what's on our heart, those are really powerful moments and give so much insight."
"Instead of exposition, ... I prefer for audiences to be given that treat of going, oh what was that look? What was that glimpse? Or it's just foreshadowing in a completely different way. ... I do love those moments and I think they're very important, letting characters breathe a bit is way more interesting."
