As The Hunting Wives continues to find success on Netflix, star Jaime Ray Newman helps break down why we can't stop watching. (Netflix)When The Hunting Wives star Jaime Ray Newman was on a small ferry outside of Vancouver Island last week, she learned firsthand just how much buzz the sexy drama has created.
Newman, who plays fiery, red-haired Texan Callie, overheard a group of friends debating what to binge-watch next. When one of them mentioned The Hunting Wives, two women on the boat who weren't part of the group interjected: "Oh my God, we just finished that. Have you seen it yet?""All of a sudden, the whole boat started talking about the damn Hunting Wives," Newman tells Yahoo. She had changed her hair since the show came out, so she wasn't immediately recognizable. But when a producer she was with pointed her out to the group, they started to freak out. "All of a sudden, I was Julia Roberts on the boat. Everyone wanted selfies."AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementIt's a clear sign of how The Hunting Wives is the show of the moment. Last week, it pulled in over 2 billion minutes viewed on Netflix, according to data analytics platform Luminate. That was more than double its debut week numbers, an impressive accomplishment for a show licensed for only U.S. streaming. It remains in Netflix's Top 10.
Based on May Cobb's bestselling novel, the series follows Sophie (Brittany Snow), who moves with her family from Boston to Texas. As she settles into the small town, Sophie becomes dangerously entangled with a socialite named Margo (Malin Akerman), spiraling into obsession, seduction and murder. Politics, guns and a touch of campy dialogue are thrown in too. Beyond the premise, what's so resonant about this raunchy series?The shock factorFrom steamy scenes to unexpected plot twists, The Hunting Wives pushes the envelope. That's especially true with how the series explores sex.
There's the unconventional marital arrangement between Margo and her husband, Jed Banks - a debauched oil tycoon played by Dermot Mulroney - which allows them both to sleep with other women. And they both do ... a lot. Akerman's character ultimately shares intimate moments with both Snow's and Newman's. There's also a storyline of her sleeping with the son of her best friend, a barely legal teen.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementAside from 2021's Sex/Life, this might be the most risqué original series Netflix has ever released. Up until just two months ago, The Hunting Wives was actually slated to premiere on Starz. As Snow told Glamour, the cast filmed the series believing it would land with a smaller audience and potentially become a "cult classic." But Netflix changed the equation - and with a much bigger streaming audience comes a lot more opinions.
As for the nudity, yes, it's meant to be provocative. "Nobody who puts this many naked people on TV does it entirely for educational or creative purposes," Linda Holmes wrote for NPR, while also pointing out how "everybody seems to be having a transparently great time."Snow told Glamour she didn't find that nude scenes were "gratuitously done, where we're showing this shot of a woman's body for no reason.""It's all part of the story that needs to be told, specifically because of Margo's coercion and power and making these moves on Sophie, the sex scenes need to happen because Margo uses her sexuality and prowess to make sure that Sophie feels like she's finally being seen," she said.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementThis show isn't just buzzy because of the sex, although Episode 7's pegging scene might be the most jaw-dropping moment of them all. "Respectfully, the entire meat of the series is its indescribable, inescapable, horniness," Rolling Stone says. There are plenty of wild antics that make The Hunting Wives an unhinged binge.
In one episode, the hunting wives load up for a boar hunt, and after Callie calmly finishes one off, the women celebrate with a boozy brunch of mimosas, gossip and a game of never-have-I-ever that ends with a manslaughter confession. That abruptly ends the party ... until two characters embark on an alcohol-and-Xanax rager and invite younger men over for a game of spin the bottle.
There's also enough political satire to ruffle both sides of the aisle. Akerman has said her character was inspired by Melania Trump, and an abortion storyline comes with a side of anti-abortion posturing. Critics have called it a "bonkers, bisexual culture-war soap," with each episode going further than expected.
While all that chaos keeps the entertainment dialed all the way up, it's part of the show's charm. This isn't a prestige drama like Succession or The Crown - it's your new guilty pleasure, dripping in scandal and served with a cold glass of whiskey. Beneath the sex, power plays and whodunit murder mystery, The Hunting Wives knows exactly what it is: a glossy, high-octane escape that doesn't take itself too seriously.
Escapism at its f