Jeff Danna photo by Rochelle Brodin
The plains of Texas have sexily served prime time soap operas since the positively demure days of “Dallas” to the naked and naughty “Landman.” But no sudser is selling now with quite the sultry camp aplomb of the Starz-to-Netflix “The Hunting Wives.” Based on the hit novel by May Cobb, this hot-and-bothered show is a hot, fun series by way of “Knotts Landing,” “Valley of the Dolls” and “Heathers” as seeming good girl Sophie O’Neill (Brittany Snow) moves with her positively square hubby to Maple Brook, a fiefdom of adultery and murder lorded over by Margo Banks (Malin Ackerman), her swap-happy politico hubby Jed (violin-played Dermot Mulroney) and her pack of skeet shooting Heathers. Soon enough, Sophie falls under Margo’s spell to throw caution, sanity and her legal freedom to the wind in a whirlwind of bad girl, high trash and white trash delight that’s finally brought unabashed sex back to streaming like no one’s ratings business.
One big element that’s pure sultry and erotic gorgeousness in “The Hunting Wives” is its score by Jeff Danna. The Canadian-born bro of composer Mychael, Jeff has no small end of credits in features like “The Boondock Saints,” “Silent Hill,” “Onward” and such shows as “Julia,” “Camelot” and “Tyrant.” But “The Hunting Wives” gives Danna a whole new level of TV popularity, who leaves a southern gothic hot and bothered mark on the genre here with intoxicating style. It’s a beautifully melodic Mint Julep of plucking string instruments and soothing electronics designed to gradually tip good wifie innocence into a dangerous stew. Danna’s scoring is hypnotically evocative of Texas while also singing of exotic and dangerous locations well beyond the queen bee hood. His beyond atmospheric score also impresses with how well its sensual tapestry is knitted together with striking themes, yet all in the key of brewing, luring subtlety that plays the straight woman as such to an arch, show that’s all about the awards of bad behavior in its deliciously evocative, character-based scoring.
How did you become part of “The Hunting Wives?” Were you aware of May Cobb’s book before you started scoring?
I had done the show “Julia” for Daniel Goldfarb, Chris Keyser and Erwin Stoff a couple of years ago. Erwin remembered our collaboration and I met him for lunch one day just as the writer’s strike was ending . He said, ‘I’ve got this book property and this new show runner I think would be an interesting fit for it and I want you to come in and do the music for it. ‘After I met Rebecca, then I learned about the book!
You’ve done a fair number of scores set in Southern gothic locations like “Tideland,” “Leaves of Grass” and “Bad Country.” How do you think “The Hunting Wives” fits with that territory and its “characters?”
Well, there’s something about the Southern geography and heat that can bring about fringe behavior in some people it seems! Or at least fire up the imagination of writers. May Cobb was spending time in Texas and was inspired and wrote up a storm about it.
With so many tones, how difficult was it to find an approach for “The Hunting Wives?” What were the stops and starts like during that process?
Yes, it was a little bit tricky to find the balance between ‘fun and sexy’ and ‘crime drama’ at first. My process definitely started a little more conventionally sexy, but before anyone other than Rebecca myself had heard that, we stopped, looked it over and said ‘Let’s go a little more outside on this.’”
What are “The Hunting Wives’” main themes?
We’ve got a Margo and Sophie love theme, we have a ‘dark enchantress’ theme for Margo, a Sophie theme , a mystery/crime theme and a “Dead Body In The Woods” theme- which is embodied in “Asleep Forever.”
Tell us about the instrumental ensemble.
It’s pretty small, a lot of it is played by myself on my collection of (sometimes) unusual or archaic instruments. We did a bunch of prepared piano noises as percussion and then I used a conventional piano, cello, harp and upright bass.
One thing I enjoy about “The Hunting Wives” score is how mesmerizing it is. Did you go for a hypnotic quality as such?
I think partly that’s about the inherent, ringing quality of some of these stringed instruments I play. And I think I’m always looking to write music that has some kind of transcendent characteristic to it. Partly because that will make the scene a little bit special perhaps, and partly because as film composers we are supposed to be telling the story that isn’t on the screen – the story that’s in the air around the characters. So the more airborne the music is , the more it can sink into the show and into the characters. That’s my theory always. Not every filmmaker is comfortable with music that’s a little bit different, so that’s part of the chemistry on this show as well. Rebecca is down for it and encourages it!
Another element I like is how the exotic, plucking music could just as easily play Eastern Europe as much as it does Texas. Was that something that struck you?
I’m just always trying to find a slightly different way in on things with the music, if I can. I knew I had some Croatian instruments that were sort of halfway between a mandolin and a santoor. Halfway between Texas and the Near East and I thought that would be just enough “pluck” to sit in the geography of Texas, but somehow tell a story that was a little more deep and not as obvious.
There’s more than an element of soap opera camp to “The Hunting Wives.” Did you want to acknowledge that self-knowing humor?
Not with the score no, the score was there to talk about Margo’s power, Sophie’s loss and lostness, a terrible crime having been committed, etc.
Tell us about capturing Sophie’s character.
When we find Sophie, she’s lost from the things she’s experienced in her life and then struggling with being transplanted into Texas. Then she meets Margo and there’s a little bit of Infatuation going on as well. So I started by trying to sum all that up with that main theme from “Sophie meet Margot.”
How did you want to play Margo. Did you see her as a villain or someone more complex than that?
She IS very complex. The main thing I wanted to try and do with her music was to wrap her in a darkly magical cloak, a cloak of power that spread out and developed the people around her in a way they couldn’t understand or even something necessarily be aware of. Brad, Sophie, her husband…they are all under her spell. The first place I wrote that was for the cue “Mrs. Banks.”
What was your favorite storyline to score, and why?
I like any approach to scoring where I can return to themes that are established, and then start to adapt them to them that moment. “The Asleep Forever” theme was one I liked, but I only got a chance to play that once fully, and not often after that. Not yet anyways!
“The Hunting Wives” really brings sex back to streaming. As a viewer is that something you missed, and how did you want to play the sensuality here?
We decided that the music wasn’t going to do the sexy part in an obvious way, and that it was going to do the Magic of Margo and the Infatuated Sophie idea. At some point there were straight up sex scenes that had to be scored and I tried to handle those in a pretty restrained way. But whenever it was possible, I was trying to somehow be more ethereal and darkly magical when it came to sex. Not grounded.`
As a male composer, is it difficult to capture the sound female-driven characters like “Julia” and “The Hunting Wives?” Or do you think a composer can be universal no matter what the sex or the subject is?
I never thought about it, to be honest. The situations, thoughts and emotions of these character are pretty universal. Gender-free as they say! We’ve all had some or all of them, and I was just trying to tap into that.
“The Hunting Wives” has turned into a big success for Netflix, though the show was originally supposed to be on Starz. How important do you think the Netflix brand is to the ratings, and why do you think the show is as popular as it is?
I think the reach of it was enormously expanded by Netflix picking it up. It seems a little outside the normal order of a Netflix show – if there is such a thing – but it has really resonated with people in a way that we are all a little bit stunned about. Buvery happy too, of course!
Where do you see the show and your music should “The Hunting Wives” likely get another season?
Well, I will leave where the show goes up to the great Rebecca Cutter! But musically, because we have a somewhat original approach going here, I think we would want to keep that and maybe add a couple of elements that are new and tied into whatever the new story is
Sex and sin streaming Texas-set soaps like “The Hunting Wives” and “Landman” are really having a moment. What do you think it is about that state and its populace that attracts viewers?
It seems like Texas has always held a mythical place in the American imagination. From the food to the music to the geography…the historic mingling of cultures… and the Larger Than Life characters that frequent its arts, culture and history. There’s something enchanted going on in Texas, it seems. And in the case of “The Hunting Wives,” there’s something else dark underneath that.
Watch “The Hunting Wives” on Netflix HERE, with Jeff Danna’s score available on Lakeshore Records HERE. Visit Jeff Danna’s website HERE
Special thanks to Jeff Sanderson at Chasen Communications