Michael Aaron Milligan prepared for his full-frontal scene on The Hunting Wives weeks in advance — and it was surprisingly physically demanding.
“I was so excited to put myself out there and put myself forward by just really showing up in a much different way than I’d ever had before. I’m like, ‘I’m going to be nude, I’m going to be holding a gun and it’s going to be dangerous,’” Milligan, who played Kyle in the hit Netflix series, exclusively told Us Weekly. “For my preparation, it was just trying to free my mind.”
Milligan, 45, tried not to stress about stripping down on screen.
“I didn’t want any anxieties. But everyone made me feel so incredibly safe and so the preparation was just, ‘Let’s just roll with it,’” he recalled. “But for me, I needed to feel really, really strong. I really was doing, like, hundreds of push-ups. I would do, like, 100 to 200 push-ups a day leading up to it. Like, a week out, I was really trying to feel my best.”
Based on May Cobb‘s novel of the same name, The Hunting Wives, which premiered in July, followed Sophie (Brittany Snow) as she found herself wrapped up in the orbit of socialite Margo Banks (Malin Åkerman). Sophie befriended Margo’s circle of housewives, but their dangerous secrets led to a shocking murder where Sophie was the prime suspect.
Milligan, for his part, played Margo’s brother, whom she kept a secret while trying to hide her lower-class upbringing. Kyle’s arc concluded with a shocking twist at the end of the season, which was a departure from Cobb’s book.
Before filming the surprising conclusion, Milligan was thrilled by the opportunity to bring such a scene-stealing role to life.
“I dove in during the audition. For the audition, I had my shirt off,” the actor recalled of his approach. “I just wanted to throw that in there. But the audition, I just felt so dialed in immediately when I read Kyle and I read the two scenes that were required. I felt it in my bones. I was like, ‘This is good. I need this part.’ I would have done anything for it. I just felt like I was able to just hit the ground running.”
Milligan took the screen time that he had to offer layers to his character, saying, “I was like, ‘This is a wild man.’ He’s got some room for improvement but he can be as wild as he wants to be. He’s clearly on drugs. But to be Margo’s brother, I loved that — from his perspective — he gets to put her in her place.”
After working on other shows including Outer Banks, The Rookie and FBI, Milligan enjoyed pushing boundaries on The Hunting Wives.
“I didn’t have any really big challenges. I knew that I should keep my wits about me because he’s a drug addict,” he recalled. “What worked for me was louder, faster and funnier. One of my [acting] coaches used to say that all the time. I think it’ll always serve you well if you just are louder, faster and funnier.”
The Hunting Wives is currently streaming on Netflix.
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