Brittany Snow, left, leaves her old life in Boston and moves to East Texas where she meets the beautiful queen bee Malin Akerman, in Crave’s latest drama, The Hunting Wives.Kent Smith/Crave
What would happen if characters from the Pretty Little Liars and Gossip Girl universes grew up, moved to Texas and formed new female friendships? It would probably look a little something like Crave’s latest drama, The Hunting Wives.
The eight-episode series is based on May Cobb’s novel about socialites, scandals and murder, with plenty of sexy scenes and riffles in between. It all kicks off when former publicist Sophie (Brittany Snow) leaves her old life in Boston and moves to East Texas with her husband and small son. But when she meets the beautiful queen bee Margo (Malin Akerman), obsession and seduction take over, leading to life-altering consequences.
In advance of the July 21 premiere on Crave, Akerman spoke about the changes from book to screen, the responsibility that comes with playing a heinous character and balancing her personal political beliefs with those on the series.
What kind of work did you put in to humanize Margo?
The showrunner, Rebecca Cutter, and I went for coffee many times and sat down to talk about Margo’s background and who she is and where she comes from and why she acts this way. We were trying to depict all of the fun, juicy parts in the novel, but that doesn’t necessarily give you who the character is going to be when brought to life. We wanted to make sure she wasn’t just a caricature, that she was a real person who was grounded. I always feel like no matter how wild the story is – if it’s like a crazy comedy or really dark drama, or you’re a serial killer – you have to find the humanity in it.
It can be a tricky balance between staying true to the source material and making the adaptation its own thing. Were there any particular changes for the TV show you were excited about?
What I liked was that we did the changes with May Cobb’s blessing. There are some twists that are not in the book. So that way, the loyal audience also gets to be surprised. There are some characters that don’t exist in the book as well, which add to it. We got the essence of everything in the end, but I wonder what all the diehard fans will think. I think they’ll be happy, because I know May was really happy, so I trust it.
You and Brittany Snow swapped hair colours for these roles, her character is blond and yours is a redhead. Was that a big conversation in creating the looks of these characters?
That was also a big discussion. At one point I had envisioned Margo as the blonde and Brittany’s character as the brunette. There’s something about that saying that blondes have more fun. It really just comes from blondes getting noticed first. Your eye goes toward that, and then you start seeing everything that’s in front of you. Interestingly, I also changed hair colour for 2009’s Watchmen. And the difference in the way people approach you when you’re blond and brunette really is a whole other animal. This worked great, because there’s an innocence to Brittany, and the blond hair plays into that. Margo has this dark side, and I love that she’s got a little bit of the fiery red in there, in the darkness. Visually, it works for our characters.
Margo has a number of intimate scenes. Was it important to you that they were also integral to the storytelling?
It has to be plot driven, otherwise what are we doing? That goes for everything but especially those types of scenes. There needs to be a reason for them. Otherwise, we’re making a different kind of TV show, which is fine, too, but it’s not what I want to be making. I have no problem with anything that is plot driven, and this was really beautiful because it was set through the female gaze. It’s written by a woman, it’s directed by women. It’s for women. It felt right.
Margo is a manipulator at its highest quality. This women yields power through sex, and when some women decide to take that on and use it, they can get a lot of things for it. I’m not saying that’s a good thing. I’m just saying for this character, it really works well, so she uses what she knows she needs.
The show is ‘set through the female gaze. It’s written by a woman, it’s directed by women. It’s for women,’ Akerman says.Kent Smith/Crave
She’s also the queen bee of her circle, what do you think or hope the show says about female friendships?
I have an incredible group of girlfriends, and girlfriends are so important when you find the right ones. This show depicts the opposite of that and shows the cattiness that also exists. Unfortunately, it’s the other side we see in some women, where jealousy comes through and the cattiness and the backstabbing that usually comes with trying to establish a spot in a social ladder or a place of power.
This show is a bad version of what female friendships should be but I think that’s what’s so fun about it. It’s catty and saucy. It’s why people watch The Real Housewives shows. You watch the train wreck, but you don’t want to be in it.
Do you feel a responsibility to then show the repercussions of the bad behaviour?
It was a big for me. There’s a lot of questions in this. We’re handling firearms, we’re using sex. We’re talking about politics and religion. Everyone’s open to any side of where they stand, but for me it was really important that it wasn’t a promotion for the bad behaviour, that it doesn’t pay off in the end. The bad behaviour is punished. There’s a lot of stuff that twists and turns and, for me, it’s justified. There’s some morality in it that was discussed before I took on the job.
We’ve seen love bombing and grooming with male TV characters in the past, but Margo does that here. Was that something you discussed as well?
It’s manipulation tactics, isn’t it? Whatever your strengths are, that’s where you go. We can get into a lot deeper conversations, but ultimately, what are we in search for when we’re doing that stuff? It’s power over another human being and that is one of the biggest sort of existential questions of, why do we need it? Why do we search for it? Why do we need to be more powerful than another person? Love bombing is just another tactic on Margo’s part, and she’s brilliant at it, so she uses it as a weapon. And I find it quite fascinating to play that.
As you said, politics, religion and guns come up on the series but they aren’t necessarily addressed as issues. Was that a consideration for you?
This show is about these women and a murder that has happened, but of course, the culture that we’re setting it in, in Texas, has two sides of the coin. You have Sophie, who’s coming from Boston and is very liberal minded. And then you have Texas, with very different views on women’s rights and guns and all that. We also see the hypocrisy that comes out.
It is more of a commentary on humanity and how we can say one thing but do the other so easily, and how we all want to sit on our soapbox but at the same time not do anything. It was important, instead of glamourizing certain things that maybe I don’t fall in line with, that this is more of an exploration of what can happen and how far people will go to get certain things.
This interview was edited for length and clarity.
