Eric McCormack and Son Finnigan McCormack Play Serial Killer Ron Simms in ‘The Hunting Party’ Season 2 Premiere [Interview]
Like father, like son.
Will & Grace star Eric McCormack and his son, Finnigan McCormack, teamed up to play serial killer Ron Simms in the season 2 premiere of The Hunting Party (airing January 8 on NBC). The pair chatted with Showbiz Cheat Sheet about how the unique casting came about and what they did to prepare to portray the unsettling character.
Ron Simms wants ‘connection,’ Eric McCormack says
In The Hunting Party, a team of investigators led by former FBI profiler Rebecca “Bex” Henderson (Melissa Roxburgh) are tasked with hunting down serial killers who’ve escaped from a top-secret government prison known as The Pit.
Season 2 kicks off with Bex and her colleagues searching for Simms, aka the “Boogeyman” killer, who has wasted no time in getting back to his old tricks following his escape. The socially maladjusted Simms is desperate for love – so desperate, that he’ll stop at nothing to make sure that women never leave him, including injecting them with a fatal paralytic drug.
“The first thing I had to do when figuring out this character was just wrap my head around what’s going on in his brain when he’s doing this,” Finnigan told Showbiz Cheat Sheet. “Is it maniacal? Does he have fun with the fact that he’s killing? The weird thing that we had to come to realize is that he doesn’t necessarily want to kill any of the people he kills. There’s a sense of, he just wants stillness.”
“He wants connection,” Eric chimed in.
The character’s awkwardness comes through in a scene where a young Simms (played by Finnigan) makes a clumsy attempt to connect with a woman at the DMV, where he works.
“It comes over as creepy, but we realize that he’s been doing that his whole life. He doesn’t know how to do it,” Eric said.
To make social interactions easier, Simms models behavior from old Hollywood films.
“It’s learned from movies. By the time it gets to be my age, he’s able to charm because he’s stolen everything from somebody’s behavior on screen,” Eric said.
‘The Hunting Party’ producers had a ‘hunch’ about the father-son casting
Casting a father-son duo to play older and younger versions of the same character might seem like an obvious choice. But Eric said that when he was approached about the role, it didn’t immediately occur to him that his son could be involved. Instead, he worried he’d have to play Simms as both ages.
“What was great is that it wasn’t my idea. It wasn’t his idea. It was the producer’s,” he shared. “When I [said], ‘Please God, don’t make me play myself 20 years ago, nobody wants that,’ they said, ‘No, we’ll get an actor.’ I said, ‘who?’ They said, ‘What about your son?’ And I loved that.”
“It’s not like Finn and I famously are out in the world together looking the same,” he continued. “We don’t … they said, ‘No, it’s just a hunch.’ They literally said, ‘It’s just a hunch we have.’ And when I put him on tape, they within hours were like, ‘This guy’s great.’ So that was exciting for me.”
Finnigan said he was “tremendously grateful” to have The Hunting Party role land in his lap.
“This opportunity had a turnaround of less than 12 hours,” he said. “It was like, I heard about it, the next day, did a little tape, and then three hours later I have to figure out my next week with filming, and that was really cool.”
Finding the ‘through line’ of their ‘The Hunting Party’ character
Once the casting was finalized, the pair worked together to “put together the character” and “figure out what we want to be the through line,” Finnigan said.
“We were almost trading off discoveries of who this guy could be,” Eric added. “And also because of the nature of this show, all the clues are there on the page. These people are constantly psychoanalyzing who their bad guy is.”
In the case of Simms, that’s a killer whose desire for connection is somewhat relatable, until it goes completely off the rails.
“The writers wrote a real turn for him where he goes from perhaps being his empathetic, slightly understandable to being just a monster,” Eric said.
With one shared role under their belts, would the McCormacks be interested in working together again? Definitely, they said.
“Nothing would be cooler than to have an opportunity like this again in my career,” Finnigan said.
“[In The Hunting Party], we’re playing the same guy, which is a very cool and unique experience,” Eric added. “I’d love to do something in the future where we were, if not father and son, then at least in that relationship.”
The Hunting Party Season 2 premieres Thursday, January 8 at 10 p.m. ET/PT on NBC. Episodes stream the next day on Peacock.
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