‘The Hunting Party’: What to Expect From Kelsey Grammer’s Cult Leader & Serial Killer

“Across the board, they’re playing roles that you’ve never really seen any of them play,” executive producer JJ Bailey says of The Hunting Party‘s guest stars. He’s right. After all, on the NBC drama in its second season alone, Eric McCormack, Niecy Nash-Betts, and Josh Dallas are among those playing serial killers. Dallas’ episode, which reunites him with Manifest costar Melissa Roxburgh (who leads the series as ex-FBI profiler Rebecca “Bex” Henderson) is still to come. Also fitting that bill? Kelsey Grammer, who guest stars in the Thursday, February 26, episode.

Grammer plays cult leader and serial killer Noah Cyrus, one of the prisoners of The Pit, a secret prison that the world had no idea existed. In fact, the public thinks the serial killers who were kept there are all dead. An explosion to kick off the series in 2025 led to a mass escape and Bex joining a new team.

Ralph Bavaro/NBC

When Cyrus resurfaces, it’s been two decades after his “death,” and he goes to see one of his followers. It then becomes a race against the clock for the team — Bex, the CIA’s Hassani (Patrick Sabongui), Pit prison guard Shane (Josh McKenzie), and intel officer Morales (Sara Garcia) — to stop his plan, but everything isn’t as it seems. TV Insider can confirm that’s certainly true, based on the Bex and Cyrus scene we watched being filmed on the show’s set this past fall.

According to Bailey, Grammer was “perfect” for this role. He and executive producer Jake Coburn add, “The gravitas that Kelsey brings to every role he plays was part of the draw for us. This is a character who needs to be both alluring and dangerous. He had to have the kind of charisma and warmth where you would believe people would fall under his spell. Kelsey manages to walk that line very well. Also, seeing him play a cult leader with a messiah complex was such a contrast to Kelsey’s iconic role on NBC as Frasier Crane, we knew it would be endlessly watchable. And it absolutely was. Kelsey crushed it.”

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When we asked the cast which of the early Season 2 episodes’ serial killers is the most disturbing for their characters, Sabongui pointed to Grammer’s.

“There is something about Kelsey’s. I think Hassani has a personal vendetta against these characters that brainwash people and bring them into their system of beliefs to their own detriment. And so this killer does that,” he explained. “He’s a cult leader. There’s something personal. So even though I may not have more interaction with him [than others], I think he takes that personally to a certain level and has the most disdain for those characters.”

The Hunting Party, Thursdays, 10/9c, NBC