The Hunting Party: Kiwi actor Josh McKenzie’s humbling experience in local industry prepared him for the US

New Zealand actor Josh McKenzie will always remember what his grandma said to him when he booked his first gig as a teenager.

“I was 17 or 18 and celebrating because I had gotten the job, and then she goes, ‘Yeah, that’s fantastic but this is when the work starts, you do realise you haven’t even started the work yet?’,” he recalled to The Nightly.

“I was like, ‘Holy smokes, you’re 100 per cent right’.”

He has carried those words with him from job to job, including his latest, a starring role in The Hunting Party, a crime procedural on American broadcast network, NBC, which will be available in Australia on Channel 7 and 7plus.

The story kicks off when an explosion at the prison known as The Pit facilitates several inmates to escape. The worst part is it’s not supposed to exist because the criminals it housed were meant to have been killed by death penalty.

Which means when the rogue’s gallery flees, the danger to the community is even more heightened. McKenzie’s character, Shane, is a former guard who teams up with a FBI profiler to catch them all. Like Pokemon, if Pokemon were serial killers.

McKenzie has worked extensively in New Zealand and Australia, including on Shortland Street, The New Adventures of Monkey and Five Bedrooms, but it was his role on La Brea that gained the attention of American audiences.

La Brea was a US series set in LA but filmed in Australia. On that, he discovered the difference of working for the Americans, and the outsized resources they had. When something gargantuan was in the script, there would actually be the budget to film it.

“My first day on that, I turn up to the set in Mount Macedon and there are 40 upturned cars, the giant ruins of the Peterson Museum were all over this gigantic field. Then 350 people just on set doing individual jobs. It was almost a major headspin.

“There’s the little, young me who f**king loves theme parks and all that kind of s**t, and was just like, ‘This is storytelling’. We have created the world, and now all I need to do is find the intimacy within that.”

On The Hunting Party, McKenzie reunited with director Thor Freudenthal, who was helming the first episode, as well as a line producer and the same TV network. It made things feel more copacetic, knowing he had more support.

But he never took it for granted, having spent 15 years being scrappy at home.

“I’ve had lots of ups and downs,” he said. “I’ve been doing this since I was a teenager and (being an actor) isn’t just working on TV shows. It’s also driving trucks, mowing lawns, and all the stuff you have to do in New Zealand and Australia to keep going.

“It’s not like in America where there are unions and minimums and residuals. In New Zealand, you could get the biggest job in New Zealand TV and then as soon as that wraps, you’ve got no money. You’ve got to go wait tables.

“That’s a humble pill to swallow. Our soap opera, the equivalent to Home and Away or Neighbours, you do that for six months, you leave and you still have no money. You’re serving coffees to the same people who a month ago were asking for your photo.

“I’m not in this for the glamour or the red carpets or anything like that. I just, f**k, love what I do.”

McKenzie said that when he is given the opportunity to work, and on something high-profile such as The Hunting Party, his work ethic kicks into gear.

“There are a lot of people out there who work their butts off and never get an opportunity, so when you do, that’s when you really put your foot down. You don’t let up.

“People can get complacent and think the job’s done when you get it, but I have my grandmother’s voice ringing in my ears. I’ll go above and beyond whatever physically the role needs, make sure I manage the expectations of the network and the producers, and do the stuff myself, not wait for the job to dictate what I do. Always stay ready.”

With the crime fighting elements of The Hunting Party, his favourite days on set are when there are stunts involved. McKenzie trained in martial arts and wrestling, which makes it easier to take on.

He described himself as like a Golden Retriever or Labrador, so eager to be part of it.

“I felt for my (stunt double) because I love that stuff so much, I’m always trying to be the one that does it. You’ll see, as the series goes on, there were a lot of opportunities for me to flex that muscle, which was cool,” he said.

But McKenzie stressed that stunts and actual fighting are very different.

“There’s a real art to stunts,” he explained. “I might be able to do something a certain way, but in order to do it safely, competently and have it look good for the camera, you need a lot of guidance from the stunt team to make sure the camera was getting it, and that everyone else was safe.”

As fun as working on those elaborate stunts are, as wonderful as it is to be part of a well-resourced American series, he knows not to get a big head. First, a career as an actor will always be precarious, but secondly, his large family will keep him in check.

“I have people around that would give me a smack around the back of the head.

“I have a lot of things in my life that keep be grounded. My martial arts training, stuff like that. One day, you might walk the red carpet, the next day, you’re going for a roll at the gym and getting choked by a 15-year-old prodigy.”

The Hunting Party is on Channel 7 and 7plus on February 4