[Editor’s note: The following contains some spoilers for The Hunting Party.]

Summary

The NBC series ‘The Hunting Party’ follows a small team tracking dangerous serial killers previously thought locked away or dead.

The fast-paced season takes place over a couple of weeks, with no moments to breathe.

Viewers will question if Oliver Odell, played by Nick Wechsler, is good or bad, maintaining a sense of mystery throughout.

The NBC crime thriller The Hunting Party follows a small team of investigators led by former FBI profiler Bex Henderson (Melissa Roxburgh) as they track down and capture the most dangerous serial killers, all previously believed to be locked away forever or dead. But when a blast at the top-secret government prison known as the Pit, where experiments were also being done on this rare breed of dangerous individuals, sets them free and Bex is enlisted by her former FBI partner Oliver Odell (Nick Wechsler) to help recapture them as they’re located, it also forces them to address what pushed them apart in the past.
During this one-on-one interview with Collider, Wechsler talked about being drawn to the mystery aspect, trying to discover why all this has happened, the dynamic between Oliver and Bex, the loneliness of his previous actions, not fully knowing whether his character is really a good or bad guy, and whether viewers will get some clarity by the end of the season.
Collider: When this came your way, what was the thing that hooked you? There’s the concept of this covert prison and all these super dangerous criminals and there’s your character who’s a bit of a mystery. Was there one specific thing that really grabbed you with this?
NICK WECHSLER: At first, I think I misunderstood. They hadn’t told me everything about my character, but I was getting direction in my chemistry read with Melissa [Roxburgh] that made me go, “This is more interesting than I realized.” My favorite thing is the mystery of what’s going on with my character, because my character is all mixed up in the mystery of the whole thing. That ended up being an unexpected twist to just a serial killer Pokémon show where you’ve gotta go catch them all.

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A top-secret prison that’s not supposed to exist can’t be a good thing, and then you add on top of that how these are supposed to be the most dangerous killers that our country has ever seen, so tracking down every one of them is life or death. Is every episode going to feel very heightened, in that sense? Are there going to be moments to breathe this season?
WECHSLER: I don’t think there are any moments to breathe. It’s go, go, go. I don’t think I’m blowing anything by saying the whole season takes place over the course of two weeks or so. We’re just moving, trying to get these people back.
It’s just a whole lot of really bad things on top of really bad things.
WECHSLER: It’s like America.
Nick Wechsler Is Letting the Chips Fall Where They May When It Comes to His ‘The Hunting Party’ Character

“He might not be a good guy.”

Image via NBC

This blast hits, all these inmates escaped, and we know that it wasn’t an accident. Someone wanted these killers out in the world. Is this going to be a two-pronged mystery between recapturing these people, and then finding out who wanted this to happen?
WECHSLER: Yeah, that’s exactly it. I wouldn’t even necessarily call tracking them down a mystery, though they have to puzzle out how to capture them. But then, there’s that whole other layer, where you don’t know why someone would have wanted this to happen. How would they benefit? Is my character involved? One of the things that I learned about in my chemistry read was that they wanted some flavors to the character that weren’t in the first episode. I was like, “Oh, right, he might not be a good guy.” We have to see. I like that part of it.

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We start to get to know your character through flashbacks of Oliver and Bex. We know they have this history, but they haven’t seen each other in a while, so they’re learning what their dynamic is in the present. How did you view that relationship? What does he think of her, in comparison to what she thinks of him?
WECHSLER: He understands why she doesn’t trust him and she keeps him at arm’s length. He is champing at the bit to get to a comfortable place with her, but knows that she has every right to feel the way she does. She feels betrayed. She can’t unsee what she saw when he killed that guy. A lot of us maybe have fantasies of at least being able to erase people like this from life. In some ways, it’s defensible. I think a lot of people would feel like, “Fuck that guy,” because he abducted this child, and nobody abducts a child to just hang out with them. He is clearly a bad guy, and I let him burn to death. Once she saw that side of me, she was like, “Oh, God, you have it in you to lose your mind and do this thing.” It was something he shouldn’t have done. Everyone has a right, especially a woman, to not want to be with someone who can lose their cool like that. That’s how I approached the dynamic. She has every right to feel the way she does. She doesn’t trust him. And then, Hassani worm-tonguing and screwing things up for me.
‘The Hunting Party’s Nick Wechsler Still Isn’t Sure Whether Oliver Odell Is a Good Guy or Bad Guy

“Whether he’s good or bad, it puts him on an island alone.”

What do you think Oliver learned from what he did? Do you think it made it so that he wouldn’t do something like that again? Do you think it just taught him how to get away with it the next time? How did it affect him?
WECHSLER: It’s a good question. We don’t know. We won’t know if he’s good or bad. I’m not even sure, having done all of Season 1, if we’ll even know by the end of Season 1. Whether he’s good or bad, it puts him on an island alone. There’s a loneliness to being him. I don’t think that bad people are just bad because of recent events. I think it starts out in childhood. If he has rage issues, these things are with you your whole life and they make you feel different and alone. He did a horrible thing that cost him his job. He lost social standing. He lost the girl that he probably would have had this beautiful romance with, if he hadn’t done it. He lost a whole life he could have had and it was really isolating. It put him in a difficult situation. Does he learn how to maybe get away with it? For the most part, what we deal with, as we get to know him and his situation little better, are some of the ways that it isolated him.

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As the actor playing this guy, what’s it like to not know if he’s a bad guy or not? Did you just try not to think about that?
WECHSLER: We’re still figuring it out, to a degree. Where I come down is, if he’s good then you play him kind of good. If he’s bad, you play him kind of good. Otherwise, if you’re playing him bad, then you’re telegraphing that he’s bad. Either way, I have to play him like he’s not bad, and then let the chips fall where they may. You have to let the writing reveal his badness, rather than playing his badness. That being said, there are looks or little bits of personality or tension that I wanna breadcrumb throughout, so that if you watch again, you can be like, “Oh, I could see how he maybe wasn’t good all along.” For the most part, I had to make the decision to play him good.
While ‘The Hunting Party’ Will Reveal Some Answers, New Questions Will Arise

“A whole other can of worms is opened by the end of the season.”

Image via NBC

Do you feel like audiences will have a better sense of who Oliver is, by the end of the season? Will we still have questions, just a different set of questions?
WECHSLER: Yeah, you’ll have at least one big question at the end. We do get some clarity, but I don’t think it fully answers things. And then, a whole other can of worms is opened by the end of the season.

The Hunting Party

Release Date

February 3, 2025

Network

NBC

Directors

Thor Freudenthal

Melissa Roxburgh

Rebecca ‘Bex’ Henderson

Patrick Sabongui

Ryan Hassani

The Hunting Party airs on NBC and is available to stream on Peacock. Check out the trailer: