‘Hunter’ Cast Reunites at Hollywood Show: After 30 Years, Fred Dryer & Stepfanie Kramer Still Have That Spark
What To Know
- Fred Dryer and Stepfanie Kramer, stars of the classic TV series Hunter, reunited at the Hollywood Show in January 2026, delighting fans with their enduring onscreen chemistry and behind-the-scenes stories.
- The actors reminisced about the demanding production schedule and the camaraderie that helped them cope with long hours and physically taxing work, often finding humor to lighten the mood on set.
- Kramer recounted a dangerous onset incident where an actor suffered a blown eardrum and was later accidentally shot with a prop gun, highlighting past safety oversights during filming.
It’s been 35 years since TV’s Hunter ended, but the show’s beloved crime-fighting duo, played by Fred Dryer and Stepfanie Kramer, still had that same chemistry when they reunited at the Hollywood Show convention on January 9, 2026, and shared some behind the scenes stories from the series, which ran from 1984 to 1991. The duo will be at the Hollywood Show on Saturday, Jan. 10, as well, to sign autographs and pose with fans.
During the panel, more than anything, the pair remembered the fun they had on set.
“I can remember times when we would laugh so hard that we couldn’t film,” Kramer shares. “Literally, we had to stop.”
Dryer laughed, while she continued, “We have so much footage of you completely losing it. And it was funny. … But this guy, which you don’t get to see too often, is an exceptionally funny man.”
Mike Pingel
Dryer said that coming out of pro football, anybody who would hire him had to be a special person. He shared that he was admittedly a little reckless on how he chose to handle other people’s work when it came to challenging scripts, but was able to work with the producers and directors (they had many) to get the series’ tone right.
Mike Pingel
Occasionally, that meant breaking that third wall and adding in his own narration. “My nature is to goof off, because after a while you can only be so serious, so for just a sprinkle you got to break it because you’ve got an entire group of people, extras, everybody, waiting to see what you’re going to do with that,” he tells of his script translations and ad lib. “And so, we started goofing off.”
The laughs certainly were needed as the production schedule was beyond demanding, and the work was physically taxing. For a while they were working 20 hours a day and only getting a few hours of sleep, until an incident that changed everything.
Actor shot while shooting Hunter
Lack of sleep leads to mistakes, and Kramer recalled an incident that could have been beyond devastating, which occurred during a week where the shooting schedule led to three nights of 20-hour days, with little sleep
“It was unhealthy physically,” Kramer shares about some of the long days on set. “I mean, I can remember one show … that glass house, the house with mirrors episode. … We were in a junkyard, which was a common place for us to be, with tons of weapons. And we ‘re hiding behind this car and there’s two guest actors — one was a big, tall guy and the other actor was down on his knees and had his hands behind his back. … Fred and I are far back. The man on his knees is screaming and pleading for his life, and it’s a really powerful scene. … It’s really high tension and one of the actors had his finger on the trigger and he pulled it … and the gun fires. It doesn’t hit the other actor but was close enough to his eardrum and we see the guy stop, and then he just falls over. It was early in the morning, and he blew out his eardrum. So, this poor actor gets sent off and we’re all like, ‘Oh my God.’”
Mike Pingel
Later that same night, Kramer explains, they brought that same actor back to the set to finish the scene. While all guns should be checked and chambers cleared, this was not the case.
“I had some little .22, a little tiny girl handle that was down in a boot,” Kramer shares. “It’s now about 2:30 in the morning. I have to take the gun out and cuff him. And I pulled the gun out and it’s small — it’s really small. I put his hands behind him and there’s pressure on the gun. The gun goes off. There was a load. It wasn’t supposed to be. And I shot this poor man right in the butt. It was in that moment I looked at the prop master, and I went, ‘What the hell?”
Mike Pingel
That was the wake-up call the production team and directors needed to make changes to the filming schedule and restructure how things were done, ultimately, allowing the series and stars to continue for years after.
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