Melissa Roxburgh isn’t easily “spooked,” but her new NBC series The Hunting Party had one scene that she wasn’t expecting to affect her.
During an exclusive interview with Us Weekly, Roxburgh, 32, referenced a scene where she had “duct tape over” her mouth, adding, “It wasn’t necessarily scary other than I couldn’t breathe. But we were rolling and so I had a freak out and you can’t yell cut and you can’t yell for help.”
Roxburgh had a “moment of panic” while filming the scene. “You can’t really do anything but I couldn’t breathe,” she recalled. “But as far as the killers [on the show] go, I think the only time I was ever like, ‘I don’t want to see that’ is episode nine. It is dark and it’s gross.”
The Hunting Party, which premiered earlier this month, 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.
NBC’s newest series marks Roxburgh’s return to the network after she previously starred on Manifest.
“I was open to anything after Manifest since that was so specific. It was very sci-fi and there were so many extraordinary events happening in that show that I was like, ‘Anything else will be different,’” she noted. “So when this came up, I thought it was cool. I do love profiling and I love psychology. So this character obviously does that full-time for a job and she does it for very interesting and unique killers.”
Roxburgh is playing Rebecca “Bex” Henderson, an ex-FBI agent recruited to the task force due to her reputation as a profiler who caught the world’s most dangerous serial killers. The opportunity intrigued the actress, who was already a fan of true crime before signing onto The Hunting Party.
“Who isn’t right? I grew up watching Criminal Minds,” she told Us. “And so you want to know why people are motivated to do what they do. You want to know how they got there and why they’re doing what they’re doing. Who doesn’t love a serial killer story?”
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The Hunting Party introduces a lot of twists and turns as the season progresses. As the star and fan of the show, Roxburgh was often conflicted about how much she wanted to know about where the show was going.
“I kind of go back and forth. There are some days where I’m so overwhelmed by what’s currently happening in the scripts and making sure that I have my lines down or trying to understand it,” she explained. “Then there are some easier days where I’m like, ‘I’m going to go be nosy to the showrunner now because I want to find out what happens.’ As the series went on with the mystery, I did start to get a little more curious.”
The Hunting Party airs on NBC Mondays at 10 p.m. ET and new episodes are available to stream on Peacock the next day.
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