The Hunting Party Season 2’s serial killers are scarier and quirkier than ever before.
In a first, father-and-son duo, Eric and Finnegan McCormack, will play the serial killer Ron Simms in The Hunting Party Season 2 premiere. He kills women while on dates with them, and Bex and her team must stop him before he kills again.
Finnegan plays Ron in flashbacks, while Eric plays him in the present time, which worked well.
TV Fanatic chatted with the father-and-son duo about Ron Simm’s quirks, including his fascination with bunnies, and the fun of working together.
Check out the interview below.
What can you tease about portraying serial killer Ron Simms? Why did this character appeal to you?
Eric McCormack: Over the course of 20 years, he gets three inches shorter, that’s for sure. That’s unexplained. He’s a damaged guy who is just trying to make connections in the world, but not in a very healthy way.
Finnegan McCormack: Despite being a serial killer, there’s some crazy component that he may potentially not even want to kill as he does, but it’s just the system he uses to get the connection he needs.
That’s the freakiest part about him, is that you have this small bit of empathy for somebody who is so lonely, and yet it’s so hard to maintain it with how monstrous he is as a person. So, it’s that dichotomy.
It is indeed. And what was it like having both of you portray him in different timelines?
Eric: What I loved about it was that it wasn’t something that the writers just came up with. It almost felt like on a whim, like, why?
Why wouldn’t this be your son? And that it was a gift that was handed to us once Finn did his audition, and they went, yep. Our hunch was correct. It was just a thrill, and it happened so suddenly.
Finnegan: Getting to create the character with my dad and develop him over the course of a couple of days before shooting was really special for me.
He is the same character, and he has aged a couple of decades’ worth. He still maintains some core values and core insecurities. That’s what we wanted to tackle.
It was so fun watching it.
Finnegan: Fun and terrifying. It was so scary, I don’t even want to watch it, but it was great.
Why do you think Ron wants to kill women he’s attracted to and falling for?
Eric: As Finn was saying, I don’t think he does. What started as a terrible idea: that if Ron immobilizes them for a little while, they’ll hear who he is.
I think that’s the creepiest part, that we get to see both in how I portray him later on. But what Finn does initially is, once they stop running from him, he’s just a sweet guy who wants to watch TV and eat popcorn with them.
I think the death part came almost as a shock to him early on. Finn has this beautiful moment as a younger Ron, when he’s sad. Ron’s almost horrified, wondering, “Why did I do this again?”
Finnegan: He’s not a Hannibal Lecter. He’s not this mastermind who has figured everything out.
He is just an extraordinary human being who, through loneliness and trauma and other things, has created this horrific system by which he tries to connect with human beings, the byproduct being that they die.
That’s what makes him so scary, is that he genuinely isn’t thinking about being evil and hurting and being a sadist or something. He believes this is right. This is the way to do it, and that’s scary.
He thinks this is the way to woo women.
Finnegan: Apparently so, and it all goes wrong.
What is his fascination with bunnies? Did you actually film with live bunnies, or are those CGI?
Eric: They’re real. The writers had a whole bunch of fascinating notions because they had to make all these serial killers different week to week.
So, I like this notion that, with our guy Ron, animal therapy was tried early on, like going to puppy yoga, except they handed Ron a bunny. And that’s a beautiful scene.
That was the one day we got to work together, when they showed young Ron.
That was the first time Finn had ever touched a bunny. And it’s a beautiful moment when you can see Finn changing, and later in the episode, you see me with 20 years’ worth of petting bunnies.
It worked, and it became a crutch for him.
I can’t wait for people to see that. To wrap up. Who was your favorite actor to work with during this season’s premiere?
Eric: My favorite actor was my son, and everyone else is tied for second.
I know Melissa from Vancouver, and she guest-starred on a show I did called Travelers on Netflix in 2018. So, going back to guest-star on her show was terrific. And she’s a great number one on the call sheet.
The Hunting Party Season 2 premieres on Thursday, January 8, on NBC at 10/9c and streams the next day on Peacock.
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