Based on the bestselling novel, the Netflix series The Hunting Wives follows Sophie (Brittany Snow) as she and her family move from Boston to Texas, where she meets Margo (Malin Akerman) and her seemingly impenetrable circle of socialite friends. Easily charmed and drawn in by Mago’s confidence and fearlessness, Sophie quickly finds herself pushed outside of her perfect suburban comfort zone and directly in the middle of secrets and betrayal that lead to murder and a spiral that leaves Sophie in a very shocking place. In a possible second season, Sophie is going to need to come to terms with who she is and what she really wants is she’s going to piece her life back together.

During this one-on-one interview with Collider, Snow discussed what makes The Hunting Wives so addicting, appealing to shock value while still having characters you fall in love with, not passing any political judgments, feeling safe for the intimate scenes, how she not got comfortable with the guns, wrestling with Sophie’s decisions, what Sophie might need to do to get to a place of truth, and her hopes for a possible Season 2. She also talks about wanting to direct again, her roles in the upcoming Murdaugh Murders and The Best in Me, and that her 2002 TV series American Dreams still holds a special place in her heart.

Brittany Snow Is as Addicted to ‘The Hunting Wives’ as Viewers Are

“I read all eight episodes in one sitting.”

Image via Netflix

Collider: I love this kind of soapy drama, and when you throw in a murder mystery, it just adds to the fun of it. How was this show presented to you? Were all the scripts done? Did you know exactly what you were getting yourself into?

BRITTANY SNOW: I got all eight scripts. They were all sent to me, which is very rare and normally doesn’t happen when you’re in conversations for a show. I read all eight episodes in one sitting. It took me pretty much the whole day, but I couldn’t stop. I knew that it was going to be something really special because it was so addicting. I was scared and nervous about a lot of the things that happened in it, but I usually have a rule of thumb where, if I am very nervous about something and it’s something that I’ve never done before, then I probably should investigate it further to find out if that’s something that I should explore and do. (Show creator) Rebecca Cutter, who wrote the script, is incredible. She’s an incredible storyteller, and she also rides a really fine line of fun and camp and satire with some really intelligent writing and deep characters. You really fall in love with these people, regardless of their antics, and that’s a really rare thing. You’re not you’re not watching anybody thinking, “Wow, this is a very one-dimensional person with one track mind.” Everyone has all these different, really interesting layers.

I have to admit, the one thing I kept thinking was, “Damn, that’s just fucked up.” There was just no other word.

SNOW: Good! It is fucked up. It appeals to the shock value, but also this perverse nature of, can people really do that? Do people really do that? It toys with your mind in the way of, “Yeah, I think probably they do.” That’s shocking to a lot of people who don’t want to put that in their mind.

There are so many interesting levels of what’s going on in this series. When it comes to the politics, it’s part of the story and the world of these characters, but it’s not being made fun of. And with the more intimate stuff, it’s not there just for shock value. Was the tone very clear from reading the scripts, or did you have to have conversations about how everything was going to be handled?

SNOW: The political aspects were all in the script. What I really liked about that is that it wasn’t judgmental and didn’t sway in one way or another. It’s just an observation. The reason it’s done that way is because Sophie is a newcomer into this world, and she’s curious and observing, instead of making quick decisions about anyone, and that actually gets her into trouble. She should probably stick to her morals a little bit better than she does. But she’s in a delicate place in her life, so she’s more open to understanding than passing judgment, which I think the scripts do really well. People can see that we are merely playing these characters in this world, and it is fictional. I don’t know if we’re passing any political judgments, necessarily. We’re just there for a fun ride. And then, in terms of the sexuality and the intimate scenes, I really felt safe because we had a female-led crew, all of our directors were female, and Rebecca Cutter, our showrunner, is a very strong woman who’s supremely intelligent. It was done with the utmost care, in terms of blocking, how it was going to be photographed, and how it was going to be true for people who had experienced these things. It was really important to me that it wasn’t going to be from a male gaze. It was definitely female-forward, female-empowering, and sexually empowering for the women.

The Intimate Scenes in ‘The Hunting Wives’ Were All About Connection for Brittany Snow and Malin Akerman

“Malin and I became really close friends because we were so vulnerable with each other.”

Image via Netflix

What was it like to work on those scenes with Malin Akerman? What were the conversations between the two of you like, as far as how you wanted to approach that?

SNOW: We did have a lot of conversations with the directors and with Rebecca about not wanting to make the scenes gratuitous. We wanted them to be real and to be something that people could feel would really happen, but we were obviously nervous about that. We had to really give up our control in a lot of ways and just trust that they would be shot beautifully and we would be happy with that. All we had to do was connect with each other. Malin and I became really close friends because we were so vulnerable with each other in so many different aspects of the script and shooting the scenes. We just really became very close and I relied on her a lot, in terms of my confidence with those types of scenes. She’s from Sweden and she’s just a true blue wildflower. She’s just so confident in herself. I very much relate to Sophie, in a more nervous way. I’m definitely more reserved. Malin got me out of my shell, much like Margo does, and you can see that in those scenes as well.

Margo’s ability to be bold and comfortable in her own skin and to get people to do things reminded me a bit of your Pitch Perfect character, especially with that shower scene in the first movie. Do you think Margo and Chloe might have been friends? Do you think the two of them would like each other, minus the murder?

SNOW: Minus the murder. Oh, that little thing. I don’t think that Chloe as manipulative as Margo. She’s really coming from a flighty place of wanting everyone to get along, and she just doesn’t understand personal boundaries. I think Margo understands everything and understands personal boundaries and understands how to break them. And so, I do think that they would get along, but I do think that Margo would have been manipulative to Chloe. Chloe means well, but she’s not the smartest. It’s so funny because so many people have actually cited that my character, Sophie, is a lot like Kate in John Tucker Must Die because she’s the new girl coming into a crowd and she has to fit in with these girls that she looks up to, in a in a way. I didn’t even make the connection about Chloe with Pitch Perfect and the nakedness of that.

Not everybody is as comfortable as both Margo and Chloe are in their own skin.

SNOW: I’m not. I know. Exactly.

A murder mystery where someone gets shot in a state like Texas where everybody has guns makes it feel like there are endless possibilities for who’s responsible. Are you someone that’s comfortable around guns, or did you have to work a bit to look convincing with one?

SNOW: Oh, a thousand percent, I was completely nervous about all the gun scenes because as you can tell from the scenes, I do not know how to handle a gun and neither does Sophie. Luckily for us, none of the guns and none of the scenes with guns were ever live ammunition. They always were completely empty. There was a lot of CGI and a lot of VFX. We’re reacting to nothing when things are going off. And obviously, the boars are not real. We were not killing animals because it would send me into a cave for four years if I did anything like that. I’m not really used to that. I didn’t grow up with hunting, and I didn’t grow up with guns. It wasn’t very hard to act in those scenes of being uncomfortable. I question Sophia a little bit, how readily she was able to give up her uncomfortable feelings about guns and just hop on in there. I wouldn’t do that. Sophie just wanted to fit in. We all had weapons training, but I never got comfortable with it, as you can see. In Night Agent, you can also very much see, before I die, that I was not comfortable with it. It’s not my thing.

How did you approach understanding the way that Sophie was approaching things, as far as her life with Graham and what she’s doing with Margo. I know that actors never want to judge their characters, but did you want to understand her choices? Why do you think she decided to tell her husband when she did?

SNOW: That change and that decision that Sophie has when she goes to Graham and tells him, and then she shows up to Margo’s, and all of those decisions, I actually really wrestled with. It was very hard for me to understand, being Brittany, especially when there’s a kid involved. I just can’t imagine that being the decision. But Sophie has lived a lot of her life being in the shadow of not understanding who she is and feeling like being a mother is the only role that she’s going to have, or that she has to offer the world. No fault to Graham, but it’s just his personality that he likes her in that role. I had to make it make sense that she needs to be free from that box that he’s keeping her in. It’s not necessarily about the family, but it’s about the fact that their marriage is not working and probably never did work. I think she’s been running away from how she really feels for a really long time. You see that in the flashback episode, where the safe option was to stay with Graham, but that’s not always the right option.

It really feels like she’s kept herself in a box, as much as Graham has kept her in a box.

SNOW: I think a lot of women do that. I know a lot of women who go through that in their late 30s after having kids, or even in their 40s and 50s when the kids leave the house of. They wonder, “Is this who I wanted to be? Did it all come to the place that I was hoping it would come to? I think she’s really wrestling with that decision because I would have to say that it’s not the life she wanted.

Do you think there’s a world where she can figure things out for herself and not keep those things from the people in her life? What do you think she needs to deal with in order to be able to get to more of a place of truth for herself?

SNOW: I really liked playing Sophie because I do think that she’s not a morally clean character. I do think that a lot of choices that she makes are pretty selfish. She is very used to keeping secrets, and that’s something that I find really interesting about her, but I also don’t relate to. I’m a bad secret keeper. I can’t do that. I just blurt it out. But she’s good at that, and I think that that’s something that she probably hasn’t even wrestled with within herself, as far as why she’s comfortable keeping herself in that box and also keeping secrets from herself. That’s a dark night of the soul situation that we would only be seeing in Season 2. I don’t know how she’s going to get there. Therapy? Maybe a really good therapist and a lot of time.

She’s the one that figures out that Margo killed Abby and used her gun to do so. How do you think she feels about that, knowing that Margo didn’t say anything and really just flat out lied about everything?

SNOW: I think the end is really interesting and I know that we would deal with it in Season 2. There are a lot of questions that didn’t get answered because Rebecca wants to answer them in the next season if we get one. We shot the scene where I am drunk and talking to Abby, that got seen on the trail cam, that showed how I even got there with Abby and what I’m trying to say to her. We improved the scene, where I’m trying to fight for Margo and I’m trying to tell Abby that she got Margo all wrong and we can work it out. It’s really a big blow to her that, no matter what she was doing, even when she was blacked out, she’s always been trying to protect Margo in this way, and then Margo just completely turned around and lied. I think that’ll be a really big question for the next season. I don’t know if you can come back from where Margo and Sophie are, especially because Sophie killed her brother.

By the End of ‘The Hunting Wives’ Season Finale, Sophie’s Life Is a Mess

“She comes back to herself, and she is not a good person.”

Image via Netflix Image via Netflix Image via Netflix Image via Netflix Image via Netflix

The season ends differently than the book does. What was your reaction to learning how Sophie would end up and the place she would find herself in, with the finale?

SNOW: The thing that I love about the character of Sophie, and I feel like what I loved about reading all eight scripts, was that Sophie ends up, at the end of episode eight, exactly where she was probably in the flashback before we even see her. She’s had this full circle transformation of finding herself again, and yet here we are. Her true self is a mess. She’s been holding it so tightly and she’s been so tightly wound, but then, at the end, you see that she can’t hold it together anymore. She’s actually falling apart. She’s got an instinct in her that is really, really messy. She’s more like Margo than she’s not. What I really loved about the character is that she comes back to herself, and she is not a good person.

You made your feature directorial debut in 2023 with Parachute. Have you thought about doing it again soon? Are you itching to do it again? Are you working on anything specific with the hope of doing it again soon?

SNOW: Yes. We haven’t announced it yet, but I am working on something that I’m directing, hopefully this year, with a script that I really love. I would love to get back into that. I’ve been working really hard on the script with the writer and the production company. I’m definitely wanting to direct again. It’s such a different part of my brain that I really love using. It’s so different than just acting and hoping it comes out great. You get to be a part of the process from pre to post and everything in between, and I do really love that aspect of it.

Does it feel very different to approach it for a second time? Now that you’ve completed a film and you have that knowledge that you didn’t have going into that one, does it feel differentl, all the way through? Does it feel like a different experience already?

SNOW: Oh, definitely. Even in the prep process, I know so much more about what I want and how I can be sure of myself. A lot of things that happened on the first movie, I would have gut instincts, but I really relied on other people because it was such a collaborative effort. Because it was my story and it was about something that I went through in my early 20s, I relied on a lot of people to help me. I didn’t want it to be all about me and have this narcissistic film that is just only one point of view. With this, I can really understand what I want because I’ve done it before, and I know that my gut instinct usually is the thing that I should end up with. That trust only comes with experience, so it’s very helpful.

You have two other series coming up, with Murdaugh Murders and The Beast in Me. When you signed on to do something like Murdaugh Murders, did you know about that story? Are you a true crime person?

SNOW: Oh, definitely. I am a true crime junkie. I am just like so many other women who listen to it before I go to bed and people are very worried about me because that’s how I relax. I love true crime. I love figuring out a mystery. I was very aware of the Murdaugh Murder podcast and of Mandy [Matney]. And so, when I got the call that I was going to meet on it, I was so incredibly excited because I’ve already been very aware of the story and followed her work and what a pioneer she was within the story, but also for women in journalism. It was a huge honor to play her, and I’m very excited about that. From Mandy’s lens, it tells a different story than what we’ve seen in other documentaries or what people think they’ve they know about the story. It’s a different side of the story that’s really helpful, about what you have to go through to be a whistleblower in a way and stand up for justice and truth. It’s just as scandalous and salacious as the murders itself, that there were so many people trying to silence her and cover her up. I think people will be really interested to see that perspective as well.

You also have The Beast in Me with Claire Danes and Matthew Rhys. What attracted you to that project and who are you playing in it?

SNOW: I play Matthew Rhys’ wife, Nina. I read a couple of those scripts, and I was basically begging to be a part of it. It’s so well done. It’s prestigious. It’s really beautifully shot. It’s beautifully told. I was just happy that they wanted me to be a part of it because it’s a huge honor to get to work with Matthew and Claire. They are legends, and they really, really embody people that I look up to, in terms of their personalities and how they conduct themselves on set. They’re really top notch, fantastic people. It’s a very interesting story. It’s very scandalous and juicy and crazy. I know that I keep doing murder shows, but I’m really, really proud that each one of them are told very differently with very different perspectives and different ways of filmmaking, which I think people enjoy.

Brittany Snow Remembers Her Time on the TV Series ‘American Dreams’ Fondly

“That character will always be this symbol of me becoming an actress.”

Image via NBC 

The first time I remember seeing you and your work was in American Dreams, which you did more than 60 episodes of, over three seasons. What did you learn from that experience? Does that project and character hold a special place in your heart, after living with her for as long as you did?

SNOW: Sure, I really grew up on that show. While Meg Pryor was growing up on American Dreams, we grew up together. That character will always be this symbol of me becoming an actress. I was 15 when I got the pilot, and I was 18 when we finished, which are really influential years that shaped who I became. I think back to it a lot. I actually just went to the birthday party for my friend Vanessa Lengies, who played Roxanne. We’re still all really close and in touch. Those relationships really solidified us as people and actors. I think of those times fondly.

It must have also been hard to say goodbye and let it go, after that series was done.

SNOW: I was so young at the time that I had no idea. I knew it was an incredible show, but being 16 and 17 years old, I had no idea the impact that it was going to make on so many people’s lives and how it was going to carry with so many people for years. I remember the show ending and being like, “Oh, maybe I’ll do another show like this.” And there’s never been another show like it. I was pretty naive to think that anything that special could come along again. I’m just so grateful that I got to be a part of it. It was really that special.