Screen Rant had the chance to chat with Josh Radnor, Kate Mulvaney and Saul Rubinek as they shared the details of their backstories and motivations. The Hunters in question were careful not to spoil the first season for those who haven’t caught up yet, but they were happy to provide more insight into the exciting series.
Talk to me about your characters. I’m obsessed with this show. I just binged it; I’m obsessed.
Something I find interesting about Murray’s character very particularly is that somewhere along the line, he’s lost his faith. Can you talk to me about why Murray continues to do what he does?
Josh Radnor: Well, Lonny Flash is one of the great talents of his generation. One of the great screen actors, stage actors. Yeah, I mean, he’s the grandson of a Holocaust - actually his grandfather died in the Holocaust. He was a great Yiddish theatre actor. He’s got the performing gene; he won a Tony Award when he was 23 and came out to Hollywood to do the movie thing and got sidetracked into the sex and drugs lifestyle. And he’s kind of been spiraling down; his career has really gone off the rails.
And Meyer and Ruth scoop him up and say, “Do you want to kill some Nazis?” I think he looks at it as a way to kind of stay sober and regain some dignity and integrity in his life, and to get his life back on track because he feels a slow death has been creeping up in him. So, that’s why he’s joined the Hunter.
Kate Mulvany: Sister Harriet’s history is filled with spoilers, so I’m not going to go deep into it. But she is a British Catholic nun, ex-MI6. With a very complicated past.
Saul Rubinek: Murray and Mindy are Polish Jews who had a life before the Second World War, a family life, and then ended up in Auschwitz. [They] survived, separately, but survived - which was extraordinary - and then came to America and built a new life.
But their old life, what happened to them, haunts them. And for whatever reason, they’ve agreed to join this group. For their own personal reasons and for reasons of an obligation to the past, maybe. But the questions are difficult for them. And it gets to the point where the past comes and revisits them in the last part of the series, in a way that’s unexpected to them and is really devastating.
Sister Harriet, there’s so many questions. I don’t want to get too spoilery, but does she necessarily trust everybody on her team?
Saul Rubinek: Some of it is spoilers, but certainly. I’ve known Holocaust survivors; my parents are survivors. And many that I’ve spoken to in my life, they can’t believe that they that there is a God that exists that would allow a million children or more to be slaughtered by evil, and that God has a plan that’s beyond our reckoning isn’t a good enough answer.
My father’s line about it was really cool. He’d say, “I’m not really sure if there is a God or not. But if there is, I would take him to court.” And I think that that’s Murray’s attitude.
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Kate Mulvany: No. I mean, immediately, she doesn’t trust anyone. She’s so experienced. She’s a tightly wound kind of timepiece in a way, and she likes everything to go like clockwork. And then she gets Lonny Flash on her team.
Josh Radnor: Lucky her.
Kate Mulvany: Well, look, you know, we can discuss that later. She’s not happy with the team, but she’s very committed to Meyer. And I think part of the joy of playing that character as well is just seeing her kind of dilapidated slightly inside when she has to work with these people, but also fall in love with them. She actually becomes very fond of them. And as I said she has her own history, so that’s why she likes things to run smoothly.
