{"id":29879,"date":"2025-07-22T23:49:08","date_gmt":"2025-07-22T23:49:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/29879\/"},"modified":"2025-07-22T23:49:08","modified_gmt":"2025-07-22T23:49:08","slug":"the-hunting-wives-creator-author-on-book-changes-maga-and-abortion-stories","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/29879\/","title":{"rendered":"‘The Hunting Wives’ Creator, Author on Book Changes, MAGA and Abortion Stories"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tSPOILER ALERT:\u00a0This story contains major spoilers from \u201cThe Hunting Wives<\/a>,\u201d now streaming on Netflix.<\/p>\n

\n\tAuthor May Cobb never expected that her twisty 2021 thriller would be reimagined on screen. But when she met showrunner Rebecca Cutter and brought her to where she\u2019d grown up in Texas, they immediately clicked.<\/p>\n

\n\tCobb says they took Cutter on a tour around Dallas to see the \u201cBeverly Hills of Texas,\u201d which she says is \u201cwhere hunting wives might hang out.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThen two hours east to Longview, my hometown, and we had this magical weekend together where we went to my sister\u2019s log cabin on the lake, which was the inspo for \u2019Hunting Wives,\u2019\u201d Cobb continues. \u201cMy brother-in-law took Rebecca on a tour so she could see East Texas, where it\u2019s not just fishing cabins. These are very opulent, oversized \u2014 and then the next day, we all went skeet shooting. Very much like Sophie, Rebecca hit a clay pigeon on the third try. I was like, \u2018You\u2019re now officially a hunting wife.\u2019 We bonded instantly.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Lionsgate series, which premiered on Netflix on July 21, follows Sophie (Brittany Snow), a woman from Cambridge, Massachusetts, who has relocated to suburban Texas for her husband\u2019s job. Immediately, she meets her husband\u2019s boss Jed (Dermot Mulroney), a right-wing aspiring future governor, and his wife, Margo (Malin \u00c5kerman). Eventually, Margo and Sophie\u2019s relationship becomes obsessive and sexual, as their lives become intertwined.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn the book, Abby, a high school student, is murdered in the woods. Sophie finds out that, before her death, she was brought to an abortion clinic by two of the wives \u2014\u00a0Jill (the mother of Abby\u2019s boyfriend, Brad) and Callie. Jill then killed both Abby and Margo to protect her son. Margo was also having an affair with Brad.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe show took the story in a completely different direction. While Sophie thought Abby had been pregnant and gone to an abortion clinic, it was actually Margo, who\u2019d gotten pregnant by Brad and chose to end her pregnancy (by a doctor who happened to be her dad!). Jill (Katie Lowes), the pastor\u2019s wife, was very publicly anti-abortion in the show, at one point telling Sophie there are no clinics left nearby, adding, \u201cWe made sure of that.\u201d In the end, Jill was murdered as well, with the world believing she killed Abby. Only Sophie knows the truth.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of Steve Dietl\/Lionsgate<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cMy jaw dropped when she told me. It makes so much sense,\u201d Cobbs says of Cutter\u2019s ending. \u201cMy best friend was mad at me when I killed Margo in the book, and she\u2019s still mad at me about it. She\u2019s like, \u2018Rebecca is the MVP.\u2019 I get it. I needed another twist in the book, and that\u2019s the one I came up with. But I thought it was genius. It\u2019s a great twist.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tKeeping more women alive wasn\u2019t the series\u2019 only change; the show also had many more conversations about abortion rights. Cutter read the novel the day after SB8, the Senate bill (also known as the Texas Heartbeat Act) that prohibits physicians from performing or inducing an abortion if a fetal heartbeat is detected, had passed.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI thought, \u2018OK, well, if we\u2019re gonna do this, let\u2019s address some of the realities. Plus, this is kind of a fish-out-of-water story,\u201d Cutter says. \u201cIn the book, Sophie\u2019s from Texas, but in this version, she\u2019s never been there, so we wanted to see if we can put it in a modern political setting and still get away with it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tCobb adds: \u201cI 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\u2019s all gray, especially for someone who lives in Texas. It\u2019s 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe show leans very heavily into what seems to be a MAGA group of women in a gun-loving town. (The first episode\u2019s big party at Jed and Margo\u2019s house is sponsored by the NRA.) But the writers never wanted to take a side.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhen I was pitching this, I was asked, \u2018Is this a show that both liberals and conservatives can watch?\u2019 And I said, \u2018Yes, absolutely, because I love people. I love meeting people that are different from me, similar to me, and I love all my fucked up, flawed characters equally,’\u201d says Cutter. \u201cMy first job is never to be political or put my agenda in it. That might happen at some point, but my first job is to make characters that feel real and have psychological depth and weight. So, if everyone is telling their own truth, then that is what it is, and that\u2019s not controversial.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAlthough Greg Abbott, the governor of Texas, is mentioned in passing, President Trump is never mentioned by name, a conscious choice in the writers\u2019 room. \u201cI didn\u2019t want it to be so specific, but I wanted it to feel recognizable,\u201d Cutter says. \u201cSome people can relate to Sophie and come into it through her eyes \u2014 she\u2019s sort of clutching her pearls by the guns and political talk and all that, but then, you\u2019re going to fall in love with Margo just like she does. You\u2019re going to be on that side. So it\u2019s very humanist. You can fall in love with any of them.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIf we\u2019re saying that they\u2019re MAGA gals, she\u2019s the queen of that,\u201d Cutter adds about Margo. \u201cBut then, she has a really sympathetic, interesting backstory, and you understand why she\u2019s so desperate to be in power. It is an empowerment story for Sophie in some way. In some ways, she\u2019s sort of being sold a bill of goods. There\u2019s a lot of layers to it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of Steve Dietl\/Lionsgate<\/p>\n

\n\tMaking the major changes to the book was a daunting task. Cutter\u2019s favorite thing about the novel was that Sophie was both being framed by Margo and attracted to her at the same time. \u201cI was literally on the edge of my seat. How do you pull off that, because she\u2019s kind of the most obvious suspect?\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s like pulling it off in plain sight, because she comes off as guilty before anyone\u2019s even been killed! She just comes off as a villain. So I was like, I don\u2019t know if we\u2019re gonna pull this off.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAlthough it\u2019s a bit early to talk about a potential Season 2, both are hopeful and the ideas have started ruminating.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI think we\u2019d do a little bit of a time jump \u2014 not a year, but a time. By the end of shooting, I realized that the two engines of the show are the whodunit and the Margo\/Sophie relationship, and tracking how those spines intersect with each other,\u201d says Cutter. \u201cThe first thing I\u2019m thinking about is, where are these two women at the start? Where are they at the end? What are the peaks and valleys of their individual power, of their relationship? So it\u2019s tracking a course for that, and then figuring out what the crime engine is.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSo, Cutter adds, \u201cI think it would be smart\u201d to introduce a new murder mystery. But it\u2019s early stages. \u201cI don\u2019t know whodunit yet or who got done!\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SPOILER ALERT:\u00a0This story contains major spoilers from \u201cThe Hunting Wives,\u201d now streaming on Netflix. Author May Cobb never…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":29880,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[223,88,22917],"class_list":{"0":"post-29879","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-the-hunting-wives"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29879","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29879"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29879\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29880"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29879"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29879"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29879"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}