The Hunting Festival marks Eric McCormackFirst screen role alongside son Finnigan, although neither expected to share a serial killer character.
“I think if you had asked either of us if we could be in something together, we probably wouldn’t have said, ‘Oh, we’re going to play the same serial killer,'” Eric, 62, said exclusively. Us Weekly before the premiere of the second season 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 idea of Jake Coburn and JJ Bailey, who created the show.”
Although Eric booked the role first, it didn’t take long for his 23-year-old son, who he shares with ex Janet Holden, to sign up too.
“Based on the hunch, Finn has done a lot of acting, but none that they would have seen. It was just a gut feeling that they had,” Eric said. we about bringing Finnigan to the show. “‘Why don’t you put your son?’ When I recorded it, I just thought, ‘God, they were right.'”
The Hunting Festivalwhich premiered in 2025, it is a procedural crime against the investigators who come together to track down and capture the country’s most dangerous killers. The twist? Criminals escaped from a secret prison that shouldn’t exist.
In the second season premiere of the hit NBC series, Eric plays the present-day version of the killer Ron Simms while Finnigan appears in flashbacks.
“As a debut opportunity, I definitely had a slight fear of, ‘Is it like Psycho in the ’60s? Am I going to have this permanent (connection) to be the serial killer who goes under people’s beds and injects them with something?’ This is terrifying,” Finnigan shared with Us about her concerns. “That’s a terrifying thing. But what made it a little bit easier to go through is finding the little bits of empathy in such a sad, lonely character.”
He continued: “All things considered, the one thing that kept me going is that what makes him creepier is that he doesn’t necessarily intend to kill people. Or rather, he doesn’t want to kill the people he hangs out with. He just needs connection, and he’s found that through his elaborate, terrifying process that includes having to keep him still, and so that’s helped me keep still, and thus help create the character. dimensional, it also made it even more terrifying.”
The Hunting Festival it 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 in the script that we can add, and what we can bring to it just by being the same DNA,” Eric recalled. “But my favorite thing was realizing that everyone loved this look that Finnigan wore and I didn’t want them to change that look. It created this really wonderful transition moment.”
Looking to the future, Eric and Finnigan want to continue working together.
“I’d love to, maybe it’s a stand-alone movie, or it’s something we come up with together. Something we could live together in some scenes,” Eric said. “A spin-off series (of) father-and-son crime solvers.”
Finnigan called out The Hunting Wives opportunity “So special,” adding, “We were playing the same character without ever being in the same room at the same time. So to be able to have dialogue in the future and to be able to play off of each other would be very special to me in any way.”
The Hunting Festival airs on NBC on Thursdays at 10pm ET and new episodes are available to stream on Peacock the following day.