The Hunting Party Creator Teases a United Bex, Hassani & Odell Front Going Forward
The Hunting Party creator unpacks this important turning point in the series.
This story contains spoilers for The Hunting Party Season 1, Episode 5, "Roy Barber."
Who doesn't love a great twist?
In this week's episode of NBC's new procedural The Hunting Party, Special Agent Rebecca "Bex" Henderson (Melissa Roxburgh) and CIA agent Jacob Hassani (Patrick Sabongui) are on the hunt for the Pit escapee Roy Barber, aka the Couple Killer. But their investigation ends up providing some unexpected surprises about their subject of the week.
RELATED: Who Does Matt Frewer Play in The Hunting Party? All About His Eerie Doctor Role & More
In our exclusive NBC Insider post-mortem, creator JJ Bailey explains how the character evolved even in the writers' room, his favorite Roy Barber moment, and how this episode finally connects to separate story paths heading into the second half of the season.
Roy Barber was created with a twist in mind
Bailey said that when they were initially planning this episode, it was executive producer Jake Coburn who initially had the idea of making Roy Barber a sketch artist killer.
"He wanted somebody that the police missed and was operating under the radar," Bailey explained. "He found the irony of somebody sketching suspects who was actually the killer so fascinating. But we wanted to do something that was going to appear one way and really ended up being something different that Bex could solve.
RELATED: Is The Hunting Party's "Dr. Darkness," Ezekiel Malak, Based on a Real Killer?
"A lot of our cases are, 'This is what the killer used to do, and this is what they're doing now. And why are they doing that?'" Bailey continued. "We wanted a case where the difference was Bex was actually solving a mystery that was overlooked in the past. Even though they caught the guy, they had it wrong. And so we wanted to change the structural flow of the episode in that way, and it was really fun."
Bailey praised their guest actor of the week, Leif Gantvoort, who played Barber so distinctly. "He was fantastic! On set, Jake had asked Leif when he was sketching that picture to hold it up and say, 'Mom. But the way that he did it, I was like, 'Oh my gosh, this guy's crazy!'" he said, laughing. "It's a great little moment that wasn't scripted."
Bex and Hassani's investigation collides with Odell's side mission
As the midseason episode, Bailey said "Roy Barber" was planned to majorly connect the plot lines of Bex, Hassani, and Odell (Nick Wechsler).
"We definitely always saw two tracks in terms of investigations, like what Bex and Hassani were investigating and what they were looking at made Odell look really dirty," he said. "And then to realize around the midpoint of our season that Odell was actually conducting an investigation of his own, and we wanted to bring those together. The first half of the season, they're [all] really isolated. They're sort of casting suspicion on each other. And then we wanted to bring them together and play the season with them on the same page."
RELATED: Melissa Roxburgh Sizes up Bex's Romantic Options on The Hunting Party
Up until this episode, Bex has been struggling with her former romantic history with Odell and his now increasingly suspicious actions in the wake of the explosion at the Pit, which was under her supervision.
"Bex has had to wrestle with this guy that she cared about and she believed him, even when he did this terrible thing. But is he actually capable of this other thing?" he said, referring to what Hassani has implied about Odell's part in the explosion.
"A premeditated attack on this facility...could he really be involved in that?" Bailey continued about Bex's concerns. "She doesn't want to believe it, but she also can't tie together the evidence that Hassani is providing. So putting her in that place and then bringing the two investigation lines together was really fun for us."
The episode that changed the look of The Hunting Party going forward
If you were picking up that this episode has a different energy to it, Bailey said that is due to the dynamic directing of Glen Winter.
"I think he infused a bit more genre into an episode that could have felt very different. With opening and the way he moved the camera, the way he captured Roy before you know it was Roy at this rest stop, I think he did such a phenomenal job of really telling the story in a visual way," he said.
Bailey added: "If you watch Episodes 1 through 4, there's a little bit of a shift in how he captured things visually in Episode 5, and I think it was a transition for us. We went into the rest of the episodes telling [directors] to watch Episode 5, especially with how to shoot our command center. It's a tough space, but he crushed it, and taking that into the rest of the season is super helpful."
New episodes of The Hunting Party air on Mondays at 10/9c on NBC and stream next day on Peacock.
