The Hunting Party marks Eric McCormack’s first onscreen role opposite son Finnigan — although neither of them expected to share a serial killer character.
“I think if you’d asked either of us if we can be in something together, we probably wouldn’t have said, ‘Oh, let’s play the same serial killer,’” Eric, 62, exclusively told Us Weekly before the season 2 premiere on Thursday, January 8.
The duo enjoyed the challenge. “I don’t think that would have been the answer, but it wasn’t our idea,” Eric continued. “It was this crazy, wonderful notion from Jake Coburn and JJ Bailey, who created the show.”
While Eric booked the role first, it didn’t take long for his 23-year-old son, whom he shares with ex Janet Holden, to sign on as well.
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“Based on the hunch, Finn has done a bunch of acting but none that they would have seen. It was just a gut feeling they had,” Eric told Us about bringing Finnigan onto the show. “‘Why not get your son on?’ When I put him on tape, I just thought, ‘God, they were right.’”
The Hunting Party, which premiered in 2025, is a crime procedural about investigators who are assembled to track down and capture the most dangerous killers in the country. The twist? The criminals escaped from a top-secret prison that’s not supposed to exist.
In the season 2 premiere of the hit NBC series, Eric plays the present day version of murderer Ron Simms while Finnigan appears in the flashbacks.
“As a debut opportunity, I definitely had that slight fear of, ‘Is this like Psycho in the ’60s? Am I just going to have this permanent [connection] to being the serial killer guy who goes under people’s beds and injects them with something?’ That’s terrifying,” Finnigan shared with Us about his concerns. “That’s a terrifying thing. But what made it a bit easier to go through with is finding the little slivers of empathy in a character so sad and lonely.”
He continued: “All things considered, the one thing that kept me going is that what makes it the creepiest is that he doesn’t necessarily intend to kill the people. Or rather, he doesn’t want to kill the people that he hangs out with. He just needs connection and he’s found it through his elaborate and terrifying process that it includes having to keep them still and paralyzed. As much as it helped me create the character and make it more three dimensional, it also just made it even more terrifying.”
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The Hunting Party was a special experience for Eric and Finnigan as they collaborated on the shared role.
“We had a couple of days before either of us shot the show. So we really got to talk a lot about what was in the script, what’s not the script that we can add and what we can bring to it just by virtue of being the same DNA,” Eric recalled. “But my favorite was realizing that they all loved this look that Finnigan brought and I didn’t want them to change that look. It created this really wonderful transition moment.”
Looking ahead, Eric and Finnigan want to keep working together.
“I would love — perhaps it’s an indie film — or it’s something that we find together. Something that we could just live in some scenes together,” Eric said. “A spinoff series [of] father and son crime solvers.”
Finnigan called The Hunting Wives opportunity “so special,” adding, “We were playing the same character not ever really being in the same room at the same time. So being able to have dialogue in the future and being able to play off each other would be really special for me in any capacity.”
The Hunting Party airs on NBC Thursdays at 10 p.m. ET and new episodes are available to stream on Peacock the next day.
