Showrunner Natalie Chaidez and Stars Britne Oldford and Julian McMahon Talk HUNTERS

Creatures look to spread terror and fear amongst the Earth's population in Hunters, a new series from Syfy. Ahead of the show's April 11th premiere, Daily Dead had the chance to participate in a conference call with showrunner Natalie Chaidez and stars Britne Oldford and Julian McMahon, who discussed working with The Walking Dead executive producer Gale Anne Hurd, collaborating with "the Greg Nicotero of Australia", and more.

On incorporating practical effects into the show with the help of the "Greg Nicotero of Australia":

Natalie Chaidez: And also, Jaime, just to follow up, Gale Ann Hurd has a long tradition of working with practical effects, coming up in the Roger Corman camp.

And that it were—early discussions between Gale and I [were] about grounding this really firmly in practical effects, and not only creatively helping the show, but give it a tactile and a visceral feel that sometimes is lost in the effects. And we hope we provided that. We went to the body horror of the season.

And like Britne said, we had a terrific prosthetics producer named Justin Dix who really is the Greg Nicotero of Australia. We have him in-house in our Melbourne studio and he was building the Hunters' effects from the ground up. We had a full-on prosthetics lab in addition to creepy creatures, and just a bunch of other cool toys I wish you guys could have all seen.

On the series' focus on the fears of modern day terrorism:

Natalie Chaidez: These terrorists are the monsters of our time. And science fiction has always been a way to explore relevant social issues in a way that is palatable and to deal with our fears.

And we’re living in a time when we’re scared of going out in public. We’re scared of who is beside us. We’re scared of what might be coming at us.

And the show is really about that fear and how it’s something as a monster. And also wrestling with some of the larger issues that those fears create in our culture.

Julian and Natalie on exploring the physicality and mannerisms of the show's creatures:

Julian McMahon: So we were really starting from scratch in regards that, like, who are these creatures, where are they from, what do they look like underneath the human, the skeletal structure? How will they walk if they were on their planet?

All of those kinds of things were very interesting and kind of expected for me to be able to delve into as an actor. And you know, even the clicking noises of the sounds that they make to communicate.

And it was only that kind of stuff that I spent a lot of time on, you know, how do they move? We decided that they move kind of very, very much from that the center of their groin, just simply because of their structure… And their chest was maybe back a little bit.

And I thought that stuff was really interesting and really kind of fun to explore and examine. Hopefully, we got some of that across on the delivery of it.

Natalie Chaidez: Well, look, this is the big joy of this project. The [Alien Hunter] books were really the jumping-off point. I began a relationship with the scientist named [Seth Borowitz]. He’s a former Brown University neurologist, and he was really fundamental in the development of the creature.

We started from the ground up. We started by talking about their planet, what kind of gravity it would have, how that would affect their anatomy, how that anatomy moves through space.

We came up with sort of leaning into the world of sound because I wanted to do an alien world that was different from other alien worlds that we’ve seen. We all kind of think of lights in the sky when we think of an alien show. And I wanted to do something really, really different.

I thought about conspiracy movies of the ’70s and how important sound was. And that led to creatures that were sound-based and lived in a very auditory world. That led to the development of our sonic weaponry, and the idea that the aliens, the hunters themselves, are communicating their, you know, they have a language that’s like dolphins or like bats.

And their click language, which we spent literally months from the development with our sound designer, is embedded inside music, and they're using social media much like the bad guys and terrorists of our time.

So, really, it was a two-year process, the development of the world, all the way from anatomical pictures, all the way through, like Julian and Britne said, hiring a movement coach to work with our actors that play hunters on how a creature from a sound-based [world] would move.

Natalie on working with Hunters executive producer Gale Anne Hurd:

Natalie Chaidez: I would say the most exciting for me was working with Gale Anne Hurd. No offense to all the terrific cast and crew, but I was a huge fangirl.

I was so thrilled when I first met Gale. She is someone who is responsible for some of my favorite movies of all-time, The Terminator, Terminator 2 and Aliens. [She] created some of the most iconic female science fiction characters in movie history. And so, really, for me, the opportunity to learn alongside and work alongside a pioneer, not just for women but for science fiction, is something that—it was an incredible experience and I’ll treasure it for the rest of my life.

Britne on the strengths of Regan: 

Britne Oldford: First off, I just have to say that I think Julian’s character McCarthy is such a spectacular, devious, amazingly performed creature. And the few scenes that I get to work with you, Julian, they were some of my favorites.

But yes, Regan, I love her because she was a strong character. She’s a strong woman and I’ve been very fortunate in the five years that I’ve been acting to play a string of fairly strong female characters. And that’s a great representation as well of the people behind the production, Natalie and Gale Anne Hurd.

And she’s strong. She’s intuitive, but she’s still incredibly sensitive to her surroundings and the people around her. And I think that’s a very complicated role.

————

"Premiering Monday, April 11th at 10pm ET/PT, HUNTERS follows Baltimore FBI agent Flynn Carroll (Nathan Phillips, “Wolf Creek”) whose wife suddenly and mysteriously goes missing. His search for her leads him to a highly-classified government organization – the Exo-Terrorism Unit (ETU) – who track and fight alien terrorists. Britne Oldford (“American Horror Story”) plays Regan, a valuable ETU operative keeping secrets of her own. The series also stars Julian McMahon (“Nip/Tuck”) as the dangerously unhinged terrorist, McCarthy."