Jon Hamm in 'Your Friends & Neighbors.'

Apple TV+

Share on Facebook

Share on X

Google Preferred

Share to Flipboard

Show additional share options

Share on LinkedIn

Share on Pinterest

Share on Reddit

Share on Tumblr

Share on Whats App

Send an Email

Print the Article

Post a Comment

Logo text

Jonathan Tropper has a 6-year-old daughter; as of exactly today, I do as well — Happy birthday, Emily! So despite Tropper’s status as the creator of Apple TV’s Your Friends & Neighbors and Cinemax’s Banshee and Warrior, when he says he has nothing of value in his house because he can’t have anything of value in his house, I tend to believe him. (Imagine if we had boys.)

But Tropper’s boys are the fully grown Jon Hamm, Hoon Lee, the aptly-named Mark Tallman and James Marsden, the fellas of Your Friends & Neighbors season two. Save the 45-year-old Tallman, the guys are all in their 50s, but their characters are still plenty destructive — especially self-destructive. Together, Andrew “Coop” Cooper, Barney Choi, Nick Brandes and Owen Ashe, respectively, form a motley crew of dudes who all kinda-sorta have their hands in each others’ pockets, both above board and below. Coop has his gloved hands in more than his friends’ pockets.

Related Stories

Movies

'Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice' Review: Vince Vaughn and James Marsden in a Time-Traveling Hulu Comedy That Packs a Bloody Fun Punch

James Marsden Moves in on Jon Hamm's Turf in Apple's 'Your Friends & Neighbors' Season 2 Trailer

The basic premise of Your Friends & Neighbors is this: Coop, who (quite literally) fucked himself out of a cushy hedge-fund management job, turns to a life of home-invasion burglary to make ends meet and to fill some sort of Richard Mille Felipe Massa automatic chronograph watch-sized hole in his compromised soul. He targets his — you guessed it — friends and neighbors in the affluent (and fictitious) Westmont Village, a stand-in for Westchester County, New York.

In season one, Coop swipes jewelry, expensive wine, designer handbags and more to pay his alimony, child support and to keep up appearances in a neighborhood where appearances are all that matter. He’s got another motive as well — Coop is acting out to enact some modicum of revenge on the uber-rich men and women who he still mingles with at the country club but can no longer relate to. It is Tropper’s job to pick Coop’s targets, assign value to the stolen items value, ultimately, to write his protagonist both into and out of pickles — a task that doesn’t get any easier as the series evolves.

Your Friends & Neighbors season two premiered Friday on Apple TV; read The Hollywood Reporter‘s Q&A with Tropper on the new season, below.

***

Do you keep a running list of luxury items for Coop to take?

Believe it or not, we don’t. It all happens organically in the room. I sit with the writers [and] we talk about things. We don’t want to steal anymore watches. You can do an interesting piece of jewelry because there are so many varieties of jewelry, but it’s like, “How do we keep exploring this? What are other items that have assigned value, that are sort of ridiculous but also meaningful?”

How do you assign the ultimate value to the items you choose?

There’s a lot of internet research. One thing people assume, which is not true, is we don’t partner with any brands. We don’t partner with any companies. When we want the Rolls-Royce, Rolls-Royce sends us that car. That’s different. But when we’re writing— whether it’s a Patek Phillipe watch or that [season two item redacted], we do a lot of research. We see where things sold for, both on auction and retail, and then we come up with a believable, grounded number that sounds right.

How does Coop choose what he wants to go after? Because he typically goes in with a target — sometimes a non-obvious one — and doesn’t often deviate.

The biggest thing for us is he’s stealing things that won’t get missed right away, because the idea is he doesn’t want the cops getting called. If people feel burglaries are happening, then, you know, alarms will start getting used more, security systems will start getting used more. So it’s always about if I can get in and out [and] no one’s ever going to raise the alarm.

In a lot of cases, what that means is it’s something very mobile, very small, the kind of thing also that somebody would first assume they had misplaced it rather than assuming they were robbed. Because (if they were robbed), more things would be gone, right?

Generally, it’s stuff he could put in his pocket or into a bag and move quickly. Once in a while he breaks that — like in season one, he stole a painting and

Your Friends & Neighbors Season 2: Luxury Items Coop Steals, Explained