How ‘Your Friends & Neighbors’ gave Jon Hamm a lovable a–hole to play: ‘This is going to be something that will be resonant’
A week ago, Your Friends & Neighbors star Jon Hamm got a real inkling that his character Andrew “Coop” Cooper is an antihero viewers hate to love.
“I was at the upfronts last week and Denis Leary was there,” Hamm related during an FYC panel for the acclaimed Apple TV+ series at the Hollywood Athletic Club, recalling his very first encounter with the famously abrasive actor-comedian. “He goes, ‘Hey, Hamm! You're a f--king a--hole, and you are on a show with a bunch of f--king a--holes, and I'm watching you and you're around these a--holes and you're the biggest a--hole — and yet I f--king love you!’”
Hamm, who was joined on the panel by series creator and executive producer Jonathan Tropper and costars Amanda Peet and Olivia Munn, considered Leary’s amusingly over-the-top but insightful take. He concluded that there's something inherently, undeniably compelling — relatable, even — about Coop’s dilemma: having achieved the near-apex of upper-class affluence and security, only to lose it all in a messy divorce and an unjust firing. That downfall sends Coop spiraling into burglarizing the very materialistic bounties accumulated by his elite social circle — only to discover their lives are nearly as untidy as his.
“The structure of the show is this is what is supposed to happen when you do all the things that you are supposed to do, and then it doesn't work. Then are you an a--hole? Are you wrong, or are you meant to then figure it out?” said Hamm. “We're all trying to figure it out and navigate this wildly difficult place that we are in that is surrounded by this tremendous wealth. I think that's what the attraction is. … There's an aspirational point of all of this too, but it also tingles the brain to say, ‘To what end?’ That's really I think what we're really trying to figure out.”
Both Hamm and Tropper marveled at how simple and straightforward their collaboration was after being brought together by their agents. Tropper had difficulty seeing anyone else in the role but Hamm, and the actor — coming off a string of applauded stints on Fargo, The Morning Show, and Landman — was open to tackling his first regular series lead since Mad Men.
“It's really weird how easy this actually was,” said Tropper. “You do these things all the time and they never actually work out, and then this did feel pretty seamless and quick.”
“He's not lying,” nodded Hamm. “It literally was like, ‘Do you want me to do this thing? I have this great idea.’ And he told me the idea and I said, ‘That sounds great!’ And then a month, three months later… this script came and it was so fucking good. ... And I was like, ‘Well, yeah — duh. This is a no-brainer’… I was like, ‘This is going to be something that will be resonant.’”
Resonant enough to earn a second-season pickup from its streamer, allowing Tropper to expand his vision for the series. “We're shooting the second season now, so that's completely mapped out and I have a pretty strong idea about the third,” he told Gold Derby before the panel. “After that, it's anyone's guess.”
“In Season 2, the stakes are much higher,” Tropper added. “The robbing the houses gets him into another piece of trouble now, which forces him to up the entire ante of what he's doing and the danger of what he's doing, and it puts him pretty much in a whole different league.”
Tropper said much of the show’s tonal success — swinging from achingly poignant to uproariously funny to thrillingly tense — hinges on Hamm’s “complete lack of vanity.”
“His willingness to look bewildered, befuddled, undone — I mean, actors who've been around a long time sometimes have some armor,” Tropper offered. “His willingness to really strip that down and be … not the butt of a joke, but to show the sort of more vulnerable side of what this character's going through. That's been surprising.”
Peet told Gold Derby that her character, Mel, will continue a more slow-motion version of unraveling compared to her ex-husband Coop’s descent. “She’s struggling with that suburban ennui, that very American-esque thing of: sex doesn't help; money doesn't help; the accoutrements don't help. What's missing?”
In the aftermath of the still-pending season finale, Peet revealed, “The friction between Olivia and me is still going to be really fun, and extends,” she confided. “And I would say the frisson between Mel and Coop is also extending, and the question of what that is, and what could that be?”
Munn — who took a personally enforced hiatus from appearing in front of the camera after surviving breast cancer and pursuing a long fertility journey before the birth of her second child with John Mulaney — was compelled to sign onto Your Friends & Neighbors by the undeniably top-tier quality of Tropper’s writing.
“My character, Sam, she's really hardworking, but to get into this world she really manipulated the social strata and sacrificed a lot to get there,” she explained to Gold Derby of her affinity for the role. “The sacrificing a lot was something that I really understood and was able to bring to this character, because although we both have different goals, I understand what it's like to give everything that you have inside of you to get to what you think is the most valuable thing in your life.”
Once considering a major career shift into solely writing and producing, Munn said she’s suddenly found herself enchanted with acting all over again. “Jonathan Tropper has made me fall in love with being in front of the camera again,” she admitted. “And the response from people and the love that the show's getting is really energizing and it's really exciting.”
Tropper’s gotten his share of feedback as well. During the panel, he noted he’s been particularly amused by what’s being reported back to him from his sister, who still lives in New York’s affluent Westchester County — the inspiration for much of the show’s tone and setting.
“My sister is getting it from all her friends and neighbors, and everyone is sure that it's about them,” he explained of the speculation rolling through the wealthy community. “I always give the same answer, which is that people greatly overestimate how interesting they are.”