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The Hunting Wives took a lot of inspiration from May Cobb’s novel — but there were also some surprising changes.
Netflix released the first season in July 2025, which followed Sophie (Brittany Snow) after she relocated from Boston to an East Texas town. Sophie ultimately found herself drawn to prominent socialite Margo (Malin Åkerman) and joined a clique of wealthy, conservative housewives with a passion for guns and cocktails before becoming a suspect in a murder.
In addition to Åkerman and Snow, the show also starred Katie Lowes, Dermot Mulroney, Evan Jonigkeit, Chrissy Metz, Jaime Ray Newman and George Ferrier. After the show premiered, showrunner Rebecca Cutter and the cast addressed why The Hunting Wives didn’t fully stick to the source material.
“[Creator] Rebecca [Cutter] and May Cobb have a really great relationship. They’ve been talking through a lot and May was kind of like, ‘Go for it.’ She was on set and was really elated to see her characters come to life and really loved the direction that Rebecca went in with the characters and the changes,” Åkerman exclusively told Us Weekly that same month. “It’s fun to have some of the changes from the book so that people who are fans of the story can go along and be surprised as well. Hopefully it’s not too far gone where it doesn’t veer too far off the book so that they know the characters.”
Åkerman continued: “I read the scripts before I read the book so my bias might be the other way around. But again, I just feel like we get the essence of the characters. We get the world and I hope that fans will like it who’ve read the book.”
Keep scrolling to see what the show’s cast and showrunner said about the onscreen shakeups:
Shaking Up the Onscreen Deaths — And the Killer
Lowes, whose character killed Abby in the book, teased the changes before the show revealed that Margo was the murderer.
“There are a lot of similarities to the book, and then not,” Lowes shared with Us in June 2025. “But May Cobb — the writer of the book — was on set with us all the time.”
Lowes recalled getting Cobb’s “blessing every which way,” adding, “She’s so psyched about it. If you read the book, you know it is the perfect greeting ground for just amazing water cooler drama. It’s great.”
Controversial Romance
During an exclusive interview with Us, Åkerman explained why her character’s love interest, Brad, was 18 in the show after the book was more ambiguous about the high school student’s age.
“The controversy is what appealed to me. [But] the boy that [my character] has moments with is 18. He’s supposed to be of age so that we don’t cross into that border,” she explained in July about how the show was cutting it “real” close. “That [underage] element wasn’t thrown in there. That can be a really different conversation. So he is of age — technically — but he is very young. He’s just of age. He also happens to be her best friend’s son.”
Åkerman continued: “That — for me — is more of the controversy. But I’m not trying to tell a story through Margo where I hope people aspire to become her at all. As we continue to watch, you might change your mind on how you feel about her. But I love all of this stuff and anything that’s plot driven and that moves the plot forward, I’m happy to explore even it’s gratuitous.”
Sophie’s Drinking
“There are some changes for sure in Sophie’s character and of who she is. In the book, she drinks a lot,” Åkerman told Us about how the show offered more context to Sophie’s initial sobriety. “In our show, she doesn’t drink as much and there’s a plot to that and there’s a reason for that.”
Making a Statement
Cutter explained to Variety why The Hunting Wives presented a larger conversation around abortion, saying, “I thought, ‘OK, well, if we’re gonna do this, let’s address some of the realities. Plus, this is kind of a fish-out-of-water story. In the book, Sophie’s from Texas, but in this version, she’s never been there, so we wanted to see if we can put it in a modern political setting and still get away with it.”
Cutter continued: “I think the conversations were more just about the sensitivity of it all, and not trying to pick a side. We wanted to show the nuance of everything as well, because there really is no black and white. It’s all gray, especially for someone who lives in Texas. It’s an astonishing spectrum here. It was the overall feeling of being sensitive, not mocking anything, not drawing some hard line in the sand, but also not shying away from it.”
Keeping Margo Alive
Show fans might be surprised to know that Åkerman’s character wasn’t meant to survive.
“My jaw dropped when she told me. It makes so much sense,” Cobbs told Variety of Cutter’s ending where Margo survived. “My best friend was mad at me when I killed Margo in the book, and she’s still mad at me about it. She’s like, ‘Rebecca is the MVP.’ I get it. I needed another twist in the book, and that’s the one I came up with. But I thought it was genius. It’s a great twist.”
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