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

Summary

In the Apple TV+ series ‘Your Friends & Neighbors,’ Coop turns to burglary after job loss, exploring the complexities of his double life and the consequences of targeting the wrong home.

Barney Choi is Coop’s accountant and best friend, and Hoon Lee takes on the role in yet another Jonathan Tropper project.

Lee discusses his close relationship with Tropper, the painful cancellation of ‘Warrior,’ and upcoming projects like the Netflix series adaptation of ‘East of Eden.’

From creator Jonathan Tropper (Banshee, Warrior), 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). 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. At the same time, his own affair with Sam (Olivia Munn) results in Coop getting caught in a murder accusation that he has to disentangle himself from before figuring out what comes next. Barney Choi (Hoon Lee) is Coop’s accountant and best friend, especially since Coop’s ex-wife is living in Coop’s house with Coop’s other best friend (Mark Tallman), as well as being another one of his wealthy neighbors. Barney lives in Westmont Village with his wife Grace (Eunice Bae), who comes from the kind of money that leads her to gift him with an electric Rolls-Royce. During this one-on-one interview with Collider, Lee discussed playing yet another character in a Tropper project, how each of those characters have served similar functions, the level of neuroses that Barney is in touch with, the Barney and Coop dynamic, vomiting into the magical prototype toilet, and the relationship that Barney and Grace have. Lee also talked about how much the cancellation of Warrior hurt, and his upcoming Netflix series adaptation of East of Eden.
Hoon Lee Talks About the Close Relationship He’s Developed with ‘Your Friends & Neighbors’ Creator Jonathan Tropper

“I know that he’ll tell me if there’s something in the show for me.”

Collider: How did you find out about this? Does Jonathan Tropper just call or message you and tell you “I’ve created another character for you”? Do you know that something is coming your way before it does? HOON LEE: Yeah. Over the years, we’ve developed a closeness, which I really appreciate. Just like friends are, I’m aware of things going on in his life and he’s aware of things that are going on in mine. I knew a bit in advance that he had been working on this show, but one thing I very much respect about Jonathan is that he’s very cautious not to over-promise anything. I don’t press it. I know that he’ll tell me if there’s something in the show for me. But he did intimate early on that there was likely going to be a role that might work well for me and I always have a tremendous amount of trust in that. He’s always provided characters that are incredibly fun and very useful. They get to do a lot of things in the world, and they get to be quite witty and entertaining, even within the context of a heavier drama. At this point, it’s always a treat. They’re all so different that it’s cool that he doesn’t see you as one thing. LEE: Well, on some level, I think they serve similar functions. That makes sense to me. I think that he looks to create a character that operates in a certain way in the world. For example, Barney is a financial planner, Chao was a weapons dealer, Job was a hacker. These are all facilitators. These are all people that help the world move and help the engine run for the main character. There is a similarity. It’s the contexts of the world that are so different that start to create the specificity and the distinctions between them. But I also think he leans on what he thinks I can bring to bear to help move pieces around on the board. Who did he tell you who this guy would be when he first told you about him? Did you have a very clear idea of who he is, or was there still some sense of collaboration on who he became? LEE: I always feel like Jonathan brings a character that’s pretty defined. And then, what ends up happening is that I do something wrong with it, and we have to figure out how to recalibrate based on the errors I’m making. But that’s a process that I think we both trust and enjoy. Even in Warrior, Chao took a little bit of calibrating in that first year. That’s something that I used to be more apprehensive about, as an actor, because you always feel like maybe you’re screwing up. But now, it’s something that I see as a normal part of the process and a real privilege because you don’t always have that relationship with the show creator. You don’t always have that relationship with the author where they trust you enough to say, “Hey, you’re not quite hitting this, and we need to workshop it a little bit.” What I did know about Barney was that he was probably going to be in touch with a level of neuroses that other characters I’ve played are not in touch with, and that was very exciting to me to see. I know Jonathan is dealing with the things that he deals with in his life, and he has a healthy amount of anxiety about all the projects he’s juggling. I don’t know how he does it, in general. It’s baffling to me. But it struck me that this could be really fun because Barney might be a little bit of an avatar for some of those concerns he might have. I thought that could be really entertaining.

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With Banshee, there was the opportunity to end that series and story and know that it was the end. You didn’t really get that with Warrior. Even though we have three beautiful seasons of that show, was it hard to end that before you felt like you were done with it? LEE: That was brutal. I’ll be honest, that really hurt, and it hurt on multiple levels. You want to be able to end the show on your own terms. You want to be able to say a fond farewell to these characters, in whatever way makes sense. But also, that group of actors is extraordinarily close, and not just the actors, but the creative team of the writers, producers, and crew. Knowing that you were not going to see these people again in the same capacity, and some of them are in South Africa and it’s extremely difficult to visit them, continues to be very challenging, honestly. I’m still in regular contact with a lot of the cast. I’m very grateful and thankful for the gift of that show, but it would never be enough, really. Yeah, I think it says something about how well these guys know each other that when Coop tells Barney, “I lost my job,” Barney’s response is, “Who’d you fuck?” He says that he’s not a drunk, he’s not a racist, and he does well at work, so that’s the option that’s left. Do you think that Barney has a pretty good read on Coop, or does he not have as good a read as he thinks he has? LEE: That’s a tricky one. It’s a really good question. There’s a good level of self-denial to Barney. It manifests in a couple of different ways. For example, I think that he’s using the professional relationship as a mask for his personal concern and worry for Coop. He keeps pushing an agenda of, “You should get a job. You should get a job.” But I think in Barney’s mind, if Coop did do that, he would know the extent and shape and size of the problem that Coop is wrestling with. The fact that Coop doesn’t do that means that Barney becomes more and more concerned, not only professionally, but also personally. There’s a certain level of, “I don’t want to see. I don’t want to know what I don’t know.” At the heart of it, Barney, himself, doesn’t make terribly pragmatic decisions all the time. That’s one of those ways in which those characters speak to each other. We’re seeing Coop in a position of making a break from his past life and, ostensibly, from his better judgment. We start to detect that that capacity is in Barney as well, certainly with some of the actions he takes in episode five. In that way, there’s a kinship there. You talk about the closeness of their relationship, and those small details of dialogue like, “Who did you fuck?,” are those little bits of shorthand, which hint at the history and the closeness of these characters in a way that’s much more powerful than just exposition. He has no hesitation in his response. LEE: Yeah, and that’s often done through exclusion. Coop isn’t one who’s talking about the fact that Barney’s Korean-American. He’s not talking about trivial facts that they would have already known about each other in their first year of acquaintanceship. That isn’t worth discussing.
Hoon Lee Got to Vomit Into a Prototype Toilet for ‘Your Friends & Neighbors’

“I have never received so many plaudits for anything I’ve done on screen.”

Image via Apple TV+

One of the moments that stood out for me was when Barney was hurling into the toilet. What was it like to shoot that? LEE: I have never received so many plaudits for anything I’ve done on screen, as I did for vomiting into the magical prototype toilet, to the point where it started to really undermine my confidence as an actor. I was like, “This is apparently the pinnacle of my work.” People who had never spoken to me before from the crew came up to me and were like, “That was amazing!” And I was like, “Cool, good to know. That’s it. Everything is a denouement from there.” But those things are really, really fun. It’s one of the few places where it would be hard to know how to go too big. There’s a certain kind of safety there. No one thinks to have an unhooked-up toilet in the middle of the living room with neon lights on it that you then throw up into. There’s a reason that IKEA always has signs on the toilets in their showroom that say, “Please don’t use.” LEE: Home Depot as well, apparently. I also really like that Barney and his wife seem to actually love each other. They have a more playful relationship than the other couples on the show. What was it like to find that? What does his family mean to him? LEE: One way to look at it is that you’re looking at a couple and a family that are on much more solid ground than some of the other couples and families. They’re not dealing with the aftermath of a divorce, like Coop and Mel. They’re not dealing with a new relationship that’s formed under less than ideal circumstances, like Mel and Nick. They’re not dealing with the struggle that Sam is dealing with. You go, “Okay, this is a more solid relationship.” I got very fortunate with Eunice [Bae] because she really came to play. She was able to bring such a solidity to Grace and a command to her and a self-possession that made it very easy to ping pong off of as Barney and find out where the appropriate negative space was for that character. I’m very excited to see how that continues to evolve. But another way to look at that whole relationship is that they’re simply in a different point on the timeline and their fallout hasn’t happened yet. We’re gazing into some alternate past version of Mel and Coop, or Sam and Paul. That’s another way to look at that relationship. In the spectrum of relationships that we all live through, there are periods and epochs and timeframes where things are good and things are bad, things get better, and things become irreparable. I’m not sure whether it’s just solidity or whether it’s timing, at this point.

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It’s nice to get some of those moments of playfulness when so many of these other relationships feel like they dread even being around their partner. LEE: Yeah. That’s also important because we see a lot of couples and a lot of families, but we have an incredible cast of New York actors as the neighborhood. We don’t get too much glimpse into the inner workings of their lives and the inner workings of their families, so Grace and Barney somewhat become the proxy for the larger community, as to what a working family feels like in this world and what the problems are that they’re wrestling with. Some of us, in a more grounded reality, might be dealing with the cost of groceries this week and now how many trees we need in the landscaping. Or an electric Rolls-Royce. The car that Barney drives is insane. LEE: That is an insane car. It’s very, very true. I would be afraid to get in that car. LEE: I was terrified of it. I was terrified in it. I was like, “I guess I should stay in this car now. It’s my new home.” To be fair, it’s better than most apartments I’ve been in. You’ve also shot a TV series for East of Eden. LEE: I did. I came back from New Zealand, where we were shooting, in mid-March. That project started [last] October, and I was there for the month of November, and then January through March.
Hoon Lee Was Excited to Take On a TV Adaptation of ‘East of Eden’

“I know that I would come out as a richer person, no matter what.”

Image via Apple TV+

Is it extra intimidating to take on something that has such a history to it? LEE: I would say it’s intimidating, but ultimately, if one wants to progress in the type of work you’re able to do and the type of work that you feel capable of doing, that’s what you have to do. There’s no way around it. I had never read the book before auditioning for that project, and the book absolutely blew me away. It became a reward unto itself. It really was the case where, if nothing had happened further than the audition, I still would have felt like I came out ahead, just for being exposed to that book and being able to take it in. I was extremely excited to work on that project and to accept whatever challenge came my way because I knew that I would come out as a richer person, no matter what.

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