When actress Jaime Ray Newman was preparing to audition for The Hunting Wives, she felt a wave of excitement she hadn’t experienced in nearly a year. It was the first role she was going out for since the 2023 writers’ and actors’ strikes, and after reading the pilot, she was eager to land the part of Callie, the fierce sheriff’s wife with a crack shot. There was just one catch: her longtime friend Katie Lowes wanted to play her too.
“We both showed up to our trainer in L.A. one afternoon in full hair and makeup — like, full blowouts,” Newman tells Yahoo. “And we look at each other and we’re like, ‘Did you audition for The Hunting Wives?’”
The two actresses go back 25 years. They live two minutes apart from each other in Los Angeles and their kids attend the same school. When Newman learned she was likely getting the role, she braced for the conversation. “I walked up to Katie and said, ‘I think I’m going to end up playing Callie.’ And she goes, ‘No way, they want me for Jill.’”
Katie Lowes and Jaime Ray Newman in The Hunting Wives. (Lionsgate)
The moment was emotional. “We started crying — crying like hot, huge, rolling tears spilling off the cheeks,” Newman says. She and Lowes ended up booking the roles, anchoring the television series alongside stars Malin Akerman and Brittany Snow. It’s that real-life bond between the women, Newman believes, that has helped fuel the success of The Hunting Wives, which now sits in Netflix’s Top 10 TV shows in the U.S. for the third week in a row following its July 21 premiere.
“Everyone came in seasoned and professional,” she says. “That kind of camaraderie — knowing each other and supporting one another — really shines through onscreen.”
Uncharted territory
The eight-episode series is based on the 2021 novel of the same name. It follows Sophie (Snow), who moves from Boston to East Texas, where she’s drawn into an elite clique of female friends led by Margo (Akerman). Callie is Margo’s closest confidante in their inner circle, but quickly feels threatened when Margo grows increasingly interested in Sophie.
The Hunting Wives blends soapy drama, murder mystery and erotic thriller into one, with the last part grabbing the most attention. It’s no spoiler to say the Texas socialites share the same unbridled enthusiasm for sex as they do hunting boars. It just so happens they enjoy doing both of these activities with each other.
“Can you get more fun, hilarious or wild?” Newman laughs. “We just want to give people a great time and give people something to talk about.”
For Newman, she has intimate scenes with Akerman and also with actor Branton Box, who plays her husband, Johnny. When I ask if she had any hesitation stepping into a story that pushes boundaries, she says, “Not even for a second.”
After she was cast as Callie, showrunner Rebecca Cutter asked Newman to read the scripts for the remaining episodes before committing to the series. Cutter wanted to make sure the actress was comfortable filming the racy scene in Episode 7, which involves Newman using a prop to engage in a sex act with her onscreen husband.
“She wanted to know if I was open to it. They didn’t shove it down my throat. They didn’t force me,” Newman says. “I read the whole script, and when I got to that scene, my jaw dropped.”
Now, Newman is no newcomer to television. She has a deep bench of credits, including standout roles in The Punisher, Dopesick and Little Fires Everywhere. She’s also an Oscar winner; her film Skin, which she created alongside her husband, Guy Nattiv, was 2019’s Best Live Action Short Film. But the scene in question was uncharted territory. Newman asked Nattiv what he thought about the scripted scenario.
“He was like, ‘Why not? It’s fun. It’s wild. It’s going to stir discussion,’” she says. “You know, we’re all consenting adults here. Something that also made me feel really good was that Rebecca was like, ‘Johnny and Callie have a great marriage.’ They probably have the best marriage on the show. They have an understanding with each other. They love each other. They respect each other. They’re partners. And what they do behind closed doors is nobody else’s f***ing business.”
Getting intimate
To make the sex scenes as authentic and comfortable as possible onscreen, it started with building trust off-camera. Enter intimacy coordinator Lizzy Talbot, known for her work on Babygirl, Bridgerton and It Ends With Us.
“She’s incredibly talented and makes sure everyone feels safe and respected,” Newman says. “She was a huge part of creating a positive environment for everyone involved.”
Part of fostering a collaborative space meant letting the cast and crew take liberties.
“Sometimes intimacy coordinators can feel too intrusive in a way [where I want to say], ‘Let me have freedom and let me do my thing,'” Newman explains. “[Lizzy] made everybody feel comfortable, free, loose. We went into all those scenes, really knowing what we were doing, but we also felt that we could improvise a little bit within them. So it wasn’t too constricted.”
When it came time to film with Box, Talbot had at least 15 sex toys lined up for them to choose from.
“Branton, God bless him. I love him so much, he’s such a team player,” Newman laughs. “We roll up [to set] that day… I said to Branton, ‘All right, baby, you choose. This is your call.'”
Jaime Ray Newman, Malin Ackerman, Brittany Snow and Katie Lowes in The Hunting Wives. (Netflix)
That confidence extended naturally to Akerman, who Newman says was one of the first people she reached out to once they got a start date for filming. She wanted to talk with the Billions alum about their characters’ dynamic, which ranges from friends to lovers. Newman credits her costar for being “so open.”
“I love that woman. She is a wild, feet planted on the ground, tremendous actress who is game for anything,” she says. “Obviously, she’s gorgeous, but she’s incredibly intelligent, a very deep actress, very interested in script analysis, very interested in how to make the best show we possibly can.”
Bringing that level of commitment wasn’t just about acting — it was also about relying on each other offscreen to navigate the rigors of filming. “I cannot express enough the bond that we all had on this set,” Newman says. That is especially true of her friendship with Lowes.
“We flew back and forth between Charlotte, where we filmed the [show], and L.A. 26 times to see our children together. We are sisters forever now,” she says. “Sharing this wild adventure with one of my closest friends — and seeing the show’s success with Katie — is one of the joys of my life.”
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