[Editor’s note: The following contains some spoilers for Your Friends & Neighbors.]

Summary

In the Apple TV+ series ‘Your Friends & Neighbors,’ Coop is a hedge fund manager that turns to burglary to maintain his lifestyle after losing his job.

The series delves into the complexities of Coop’s double life and the consequences of targeting his neighbor’s homes.

Show creator Jonathan Tropper discusses the inspiration behind the series and the character development in this interview.

The nine-episode Apple TV+ series Your Friends & Neighbors follows Andrew “Coop” Cooper (Jon Hamm) and his fall from grace as a hedge fund manager still struggling to get over his recent divorce from Mel (Amanda Peet). Even though they still love each other, infidelity with his former best friend Nick (Mark Tallman) shoved a wedge between them that makes it feel like he’s watching his former life from outside the window of his former house. To add to that, after being fired and unable to find a way to meet the financial demands of his life, Coop unexpectedly turns to a life of crime, stealing from the homes of his affluent neighbors and uncovering more than just their valuables and their taste in art. And then, his own affair with Sam (Olivia Munn) results in getting caught in a murder accusation that he has to disentangle himself from before figuring out what comes next. From creator Jonathan Tropper (Banshee, Warrior), the series, which has already been picked up for a second season, shows what can happen when a member of the affluent community of Westmont Village, New York becomes desperate to keep up the appearance of privilege and wealth that he’s accustomed to living and projecting. During this one-on-one interview with Collider, Tropper discussed why it took some time for this series to go from an idea to a fully formed project, how this was the kind of TV series he’d always pictured himself doing, why he chose to start the story where he did, what made Hamm the perfect actor to embody Coop, knowing how far down the criminal rabbit hole he wants to take that character, his continued collaboration with Hoon Lee, focusing on Season 2 and a possible Season 3, and juggling with another Apple TV+ series that he’ll be working on at the same time. He also talked about how unsatisfying it was not to be able to finish telling the story he’d hoped to tell with Warrior, though he is grateful for the three seasons they got.
Creator Jonathan Tropper Had Been Thinking About ‘Your Friends & Neighbors’ For A While Before Making It

“Two or three years before the pandemic, I’d been thinking about it.”

Collider: How did this come about? How long had you been thinking about this before you decided to actually start focusing on it? JONATHAN TROPPER: I’d been playing with the idea for quite a few years. I would say two or three years before the pandemic, I’d been thinking about it. I was just busy with other things, and it hadn’t quite crystallized for me, so it took a while. At some point, post-pandemic, as I was wrapping up my last show, See, for Apple TV+, it just came back to me again, really wanting to do a show set in that world. That’s when the idea crystallized and I got to work on it. Did you always have Coop in your mind, or did he come later? TROPPER: No, it was the world and the idea of a falling down story about a guy who seemed to have it all and who believed he had it all, losing it in one fell swoop and what lens he would go to, to keep up appearances and to keep what he thought was his. I’ve read that this was also a little bit inspired by your own life. When you end up doing a TV series that draws from something in your life, do you realize that in the moment? TROPPER: This isn’t drawn from any events in my life. It’s really just drawn from a place that I lived. It’s a show set in Westchester, which is a world I’m very familiar with because I lived there for many years, but the events are completely fictionalized. There’s nothing in this show that actually happened in my life. It’s just more bringing the texture of a world I’m really familiar with, which gives it a sense of authenticity. Do you feel like you’re always mining your own life for stories? TROPPER: Only in retrospect. Never in the moment, but always afterwards.

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With Banshee, you had the opportunity to end that series, but you didn’t really get that with Warrior. Although we have three beautiful seasons of that show, was it hard to end that before it felt like you were done with it? TROPPER: There was definitely something unsatisfying about that. That show was the victim of not one, but two separate acquisitions of HBO by other companies. We were thrilled to get the third season. We never thought we’d get that. And when we did the third season, our intention was to keep it going, so we didn’t give it a fully closed ending. But the industry was changing faster than we could keep track of it. I’m glad we got to do those three seasons. I think it still holds up. Did it feel like you came close to getting a fourth season, or was that something that was never really possible to do? TROPPER: I would say we came close in our minds, but the industry was already contracting at that point. I don’t think it was going to happen unless we were like a Game of Thrones-sized hit.
Creator Jonathan Tropper Explains How ‘Banshee’ and ‘Warrior’ Were His Answer to Having to Wait to Do a Series Like ‘Your Friends & Neighbors’

“This is the kind of thing I always imagined I’d be doing.”

Image via Apple TV+

After doing series like Banshee and Warrior, did this feel like a real change of pace for you, and was that a change of pace you felt like you really needed? TROPPER: Weirdly, this is the kind of thing I always imagined I’d be doing. When I came out to sell television to Hollywood back in 2009 and 2010, I was trying to sell shows like this, but nobody was buying them from me. I sold Banshee as a reaction to the fact that nobody wanted my character-driven, suburban, dramatic comedies. I ended up taking this detour, which was a great detour, and I ended up spending the next 10 years doing heavy action shows. I took great pride in them, and I worked on them every bit as hard as I worked on this one, but it was always my plan to get back to doing this kind of show. This is my first television show without a full-time stunt team, and it’s actually nice. I love the stunt stuff too. At the same time I was working on this show, we were doing the movie The Wrecking Crew, which was a really heavy action movie. I’m always going to keep a finger in it. But it’s really fun to do a show that’s about character and ideas and emotions and comedy and drama and farce and do something that uses different muscles. When it came to Coop, what did you find so interesting about the idea of this rich guy becoming a criminal? And what made Jon Hamm the perfect person to embody both sides of that? TROPPER: Both sides was the key. What I needed for this role, and the reason I could only really picture Hamm, is that I needed someone who could present as the privileged alpha male, full of entitlement, who believes this is all his and who you almost wouldn’t like because it clearly came so easily to him and was handed to him. At the same time, when it all fell apart, I needed somebody you would sympathize with and that you would go along on this ride with. That required an actor who knew how to play both sides of that and also knew how to straddle the line between comedy and drama. Hamm is a great dramatic actor, but he’s also a great comedic actor. He knows how to fuse the two, which is so important for the tone of this show. I really had trouble picturing anyone but him in the role. You introduced us to this character in a pool of blood next to a dead body, trying to get up and slipping in all this blood. What made you want to start the story at that moment, and then go back and work your way forward with it again? TROPPER: The tradition of starting stories in medias res goes all the way back to John Milton and before. It’s a classic way to start a story. For me, it was a way to grab the audience right away and say, “I’m bringing you into what is clearly the middle of a very heightened and absurd story. And now, stick with me while we go back and I show you how we got there,” versus “Let’s start at the beginning and gradually gain your interest and your buy-in, until things get really exciting.” It was like, “Let’s start from the fact that this is where we’re going to land people. Now, let’s go back and see the mess we made to get here.” My goal is always to do something that is not really able to be categorized. Are we a comedy? Are we a drama? What is this show? I really love doing something that exists in its own sphere. When it came to Barney, did you create that character and then think of Hoon Lee, or do you write specifically for Hoon when you’re writing a show? TROPPER: I wrote that character with Hoon in mind. I wasn’t doing it to create a role for him. I needed the role of Barney, but I just always saw him as Hoon, with that sense of humor, with that wit, with that kind of sadness, and that kind of intellectual spark to work as a foil to Hamm. Did you know back with Banshee that Hoon Lee would be like the actor that you would keep returning to? TROPPER: No, I had no idea. It was a gradual process. We got along really well on Banshee. He was a big standout on Banshee. And then, I was doing Warrior, which had a largely Asian-American cast, so how was I not going to write a role for Hoon in that? It just reached a point where I realized, this is a guy who makes everything I write sound smarter. I’ve got to keep him around.

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Lee also talks about how Barney’s electric Rolls-Royce in ‘Your Friends & Neighbors’ is nicer inside than most apartments he’s been in.

I love the character of Lou, and the relationship between Lou and Coop, because it’s one of the only characters that can really call him on his bullshit. Was that a character that always existed? How did that character come about? TROPPER: I had the benefit of writing the first three episodes before we really went into a writers’ room. To me, it was about this guy stepping into a world he knows nothing about. It’s almost like Alice in Wonderland. He’s walking into a world where he thinks he can handle himself, but he knows nothing. And the surprise was, “Hey, guess what? That’s a Hungarian grandmother over there, but she’s way more dangerous than you.” It’s just the notion of, “Up is down, down is up, and you don’t belong in this world.” Because you have this character that’s off on his own and making these decisions, did it feel like the voice-over was something that became important? Was that tricky to figure out? TROPPER: Yeah. We spent a lot of time on the voice-over. We rewrote it a lot. It was something I wanted as a tonal characteristic of the show. I’m a big fan of the film noir movies of the ‘60s, the detective stories with Philip Marlowe and Sam Spade. When voice-over works best, it’s not explaining the plot, it’s giving you texture and it’s taking you in a different direction than what you’re seeing on the screen. That was the thing I wanted to do with Coop. That was always part of the plan. I wrote that very early, when I was writing the first episode, and then it became about fine-tuning it to make sure you’re not using it to explain plot holes and that you’re really using it for what it’s there to be, which is added texture and character, but never a crutch. You’ve created some really great female characters, and this show has done Sam and Mel and Coop’s sister. What did you want from those characters? TROPPER: Even if your first thought of characters has to do with being in service to your protagonist, you immediately have to start treating them as the stars of their own show. Mel and Sam are very different characters. Mel is a female version of Coop, in that she also did all the right things, she followed the path, she went to the right schools, got married, got her degree, became a therapist, had her beautiful family, and it’s all gone wrong for her because she took her eye off the ball, just like he did. She’s a really interesting counterpoint to Coop in that they’re butting heads, but they’re guilty of the same thing. Sam is very different. Sam was a waitress. She didn’t go to college. She didn’t think about any of this stuff. She married a guy who brought her into this world. She should have an outsider’s perspective on this world, and yet she got sucked into it too, with the consumerism and keeping up with the Joneses and everything that had never been part of her life in South Boston. These three different characters all dealing with the same existential crisis, which is, “What is this world we live in? What is all this stuff? Why am I so unhappy?” With the three of them, you have three different lenses to look at this neighborhood and feel different things about it.
Season 2 of ‘Your Friends & Neighbors’ Will Be Taking Some Unanticipated Turns

“Now that we’re well into writing Season 2, we’ve discovered some new stuff.”

Image via Apple TV+

Did you always know how far you wanted to take Coop down this criminal rabbit hole in the first season? Was that something you played with along the way, or were you pretty clear on just how far you wanted him to go? TROPPER: I knew exactly where the first season ended. I always did. I would say that, now that we’re well into writing Season 2, we’ve discovered some new stuff. I hadn’t thought all the way through Season 2, and we’ve certainly gone in a direction I may not have anticipated when I was writing Season 1. But Season 1 was pretty well mapped out in my mind, from an arc perspective. Do you feel like you’re at a point where you’re seeing Season 3 now as well? TROPPER: As we’re finishing up writing Season 2, we are talking about what the elements are that we think would carry over into a Season 3, if we’re lucky enough to get one.

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Hamm also talks about starting off the series slipping around in a sticky pool of blood.

Do you currently have other projects in development? Are you someone who always likes to work on things, or are you trying to stay focused on the thing that you’re working on now? TROPPER: I have another show shooting in L.A., called Lucky, which is a limited series for Apple TV+. I’m developing treatments for two or three other shows that I’d like to try to get going. I’m always writing one or two features as well. I need to be very busy to feel productive. Is that also because of the state the business is in right now? TROPPER: I don’t know if that’s the state of the business. I find that if I’m only working on one thing, I become unproductive. If I get tired of working on this script, then I just stop and do nothing. But if I’m working on three or four projects, when I need a break from this one, I’ve got that one. I’m also at a point, right now, where I feel like I’m getting some stuff made, and obviously, I want to keep writing good stuff and getting it made while I still can. You directed the finale of Your Friends & Neighbors. Was that your choice? Is that just how things had to be, as the showrunner? TROPPER: No. The truth is that the best thing for a showrunner is to direct the opening part of the season. I work so heavily in post-production with the editors that if I start directing things too late in the season and I disappear, it slows down post-production. The finale wasn’t ideal for me to direct, but it was the one I really wanted to direct. I just dealt with the problems that came with not being so available to post-production while I was directing. But that was the one I chose to direct. Will you direct earlier on in Season 2? TROPPER: I would, but with the other show I’m doing, I felt it would be irresponsible for me to direct, so I’m not directing [in Season 2].

Your Friends & Neighbors is available to stream on Apple TV+. Check out the trailer: