A new arrival in a small Texas town finds her life consumed by obsession, seduction and murder in The Hunting Wives
Novelist May Cobb struck gold with The Hunting Wives, her bestseller about Sophie O’Neil, who abandoned a successful but stressful career in Chicago to settle down in a small Texas town with her husband and young son. The perfect life in an idyllic rural community that she envisioned, however, soon gives way to the realization that she misses the action, leaving Sophie feeling bored and restless.
That’s when she meets Margo Banks, an alluring socialite who is part of an elite clique secretly known as the Hunting Wives. Sophie finds herself completely drawn to Margo and swept into her mysterious world of late-night target practice and dangerous partying. As Sophie’s curiosity gives way to full-blown obsession, she slips farther away from the safety of her family and deeper into this nest of vipers.
The discovery of a dead teenage girl in the very woods where the Hunting Wives meet sends Sophie’s life spiralling out of control as she finds herself smack dab in the centre of a murder investigation.
Starring Pitch Perfect alum Brittany Snow as Sophie and Billions’ Malin Akerman as Margo, The Hunting Wives comes from exec producer Rebecca Cutter (Starz’s Hightown), who serves as showrunner.
Also in the cast is This Is Us alum Chrissy Metz, who plays Starr, a proud working-class mom who’s active in her church. Even though Starr’s daughter, Abby (Madison Wolfe), is dating high school basketball star Brad (George Ferrier of Netflix’s Sweet Tooth), Starr isn’t welcome in the high-society world of the Hunting Wives. This results in clashes with Brad’s mother, Jill (Katie Lowes of Scandal fame), the wife of a minister and queen of the mega-church who is overly invested in her son’s life.
Brad, however, has some secrets of his own, including his “emotionally incestuous” relationship with his mother, and his clandestine affair with one of his mom’s best friends.
According to Lowes, fans of the book are in for a few surprises along the way.
“There are a lot of similarities to the book, and then not. But May Cobb — the writer of the book — was on set with us all the time,” Lowes told Us Weekly.
“She’s so psyched about it,” Lowes said of the author. “If you read the book, you know it is the perfect greeting ground for just amazing water cooler drama. It’s great.”
The impressive cast also includes Dermot Mulroney (My Best Friend’s Wedding) as Margo’s husband, Jed, and Jaime Ray Newman (The Big Cigar) as Callie, wife of the town’s powerful sheriff, and Margo’s second-in-command in the Hunting Wives. Described as being “deeply in love with Margo,” Callie becomes consumed with jealousy when Margo takes a shine to newcomer Sophie.
Interviewed by MovieWeb, Snow shared her conviction that viewers are going to be sucked into all the twists and turns. “I think that people are going to be really surprised at how silky and salacious and sexy this show is,” she teased. “It’s definitely unlike anything I’ve done before, and it’s stretching me in a way that it’s really cool because my character has the biggest arc in terms of who we think she is and who she turns out to be. Yeah, there’s a lot of scenes in this show. It has such a great cast.” The Hunting Wives
The Hunting Wives, streaming Monday, July 21, on Crave