Jonathan Tropper draws from 15 years of living in Westchester to craft ‘Your Friends & Neighbors,’ a darkly comic look at the secrets simmering beneath suburban affluence.
“I wasn’t interested in doing a heavy drama and I wasn’t interested in doing just a farce,” Tropper tells Awards Focus about striking the right tone. “I wanted to do something that had real emotional stakes, but was also funny.”
Tropper opens up about writing for Jon Hamm, working with the cast, the challenges of building a second season, and what it’s like contributing to the ‘Star Wars’ canon with longtime collaborator Shawn Levy.
In the wealthy enclave of Westmont Village, hedge fund manager Andrew “Coop” Cooper (Jon Hamm) seems to have it all—until his world unravels following a betrayal by his wife Mel (Amanda Peet), estrangement from his children, and a sudden firing under suspicious circumstances. Desperate to maintain his lavish lifestyle, Coop turns to robbing the very people he once considered friends and neighbors. But when one heist goes disastrously wrong, he’s pulled into a dangerous spiral of secrets, lies, and shifting moral boundaries, revealing just how fragile—and interconnected—their privileged world really is.
Created by Tropper, the series stars Jon Hamm, Amanda Peet, Olivia Munn, Hoon Lee, Lena Hall, Mark Tallman, Isabel Marie Gravitt, Donovan Colan, Eunice Bae, and Aimee Carrero. Series directors include Tropper, Craig Gillespie, Greg Yaitanes, and Stephanie Laing. The series is written by Tropper, Jamie Rosengard, Jennifer Yale, Josh Stoddard, Evan Endicott, Danielle DiPaolo, and Bryan Parker.
Season 1 of ‘Your Friends & Neighbors’ is streaming on Apple TV+. Season 2 is currently in production.
Award Focus: It’s so nice to meet you today. How are you doing?
Jonathan Tropper: Good. Nice to meet you, too.
AF: What was the genesis behind ‘Your Friends & Neighbors’?
Tropper: Essentially, I lived in Westchester for 15 years. I felt in that time I absorbed a lot of what that whole world is about, and I wanted to do a television show about it.
AF: My understanding is you had considered writing this as a novel at one point?
Tropper: Yeah, I started it as a novel. I’d written about a 100 or so pages of it as a novel, and then I just got much too busy to finish the novel. But the idea always stayed with me, and then after I’d done a few television shows, it just felt like there’s a really interesting TV show in this.
AF: Let me ask you this—which do you find less challenging to write, novels or scripts?
Tropper: They’re both challenging in different ways. I just need a lot more time for a novel. Scripts don’t take me as long. Scripts come with other challenges. But in terms of sheer amount of time, it’s easier to write a 60-page script than it is to write a novel.
AF: I feel like a hedge fund manager getting losing his job and resorting to robbing homes is something that could have gone in any direction, be it comedy or drama.
Tropper: Yeah, I chose both. I think everything in life can be viewed through both prisms. If you just choose one, I think you’re missing out. I wasn’t interested in doing a heavy drama and I wasn’t interested in doing just a farce. I wanted to do something that had real emotional stakes, but was also funny.
AF: I liked how the tone met somewhere in the middle.
Tropper: Yeah, that was the goal.
AF: Going back to living in Westchester for 15 years, does having that familiarity with the area help in putting the show together, especially when it comes to research?
Tropper: Yeah. I think the research was already done. I spent 15 years accidentally researching it. Luckily, we were shooting in a place I was really familiar with, which just helped.
A lot of times you don’t shoot in the exact—this show happens to be fortunate that we’re actually shooting in the place it’s written about. We could have just as easily been shooting in New Jersey or Long Island for Westchester.
I don’t think there’s anything in terms of the day-to-day shooting where that familiarity helps. But just knowing what the aesthetic is, and being able to talk to your costume designers, and the kind of houses I’m looking for, and things like that, I think that it’s all just—it’s good to sort of already be the expert because I lived there for so long.
AF: This is Jon Hamm’s first big series since ‘Mad Men’ ended just over a decade ago. How far were you into the writing process when you first reached out to Jon?
Tropper: I hadn’t written anything yet. I wanted it to be him, but I wanted to—I couldn’t really see writing it if I wasn’t going to get him. The first thing I did was I got myself a meeting with him and I pitched the idea to him. Once he was excited about the idea, I wrote the pilot. I shared the pilot with him, and then he came on board.
AF: What’s it been like getting to work with this cast?
Tropper: This has been a dream come true. I’ve wanted to work with each one of them independently for a long time. But also as a writer, especially when you want to write a lot of dialogue, you want to write for people who really elevate dialogue, and this cast really does that. Especially watching Amanda Peet, who I’ve been watching for years, and Olivia Munn and Jon Hamm, and sort of the verbal stew they create in any combination of the three of them—it just makes it so much more exciting to write because you know what they’re going to do with the dialogue.
AF: A lot of shows these days are lucky to get that second season. How grateful are you to in knowing that Apple ordered a second season?
Tropper: Oh yeah, we were super thrilled. We were thrilled at how fast they did it so that we didn’t lose a lot of time.
But I certainly went into it not expecting to only do one season. I don’t think anybody who tries to create an ongoing series doesn’t do it with the intention of doing more than one season. Our intention was certainly to do more than one, but it’s always great to get that official green light and know, Oh, we’re going to live in this show for a while.
Because if they give you a second season and you do okay, you’re pretty confident you’ll get the third. I think this is the kind of show that has almost an infinite amount of stories to tell so I’d love to keep making it for a while.
AF: Do you already know how it’s going to end?
Tropper: I think I know what the very last thing you’ll see whenever we end this show is. Yes, I know where Coop’s journey ends, but there’s a lot of details in between I haven’t worked out yet.
AF: Yeah, it’s just that road getting there.
Tropper: Yep.
AF: How collaborative has Apple been as a partner?
Tropper: Well, obviously, I like the way they work with me because this is the third show I’m doing with them. They’re great.
The thing with Apple is, it’s not easy to get to the green light. It’s not easy to get the green light anywhere, but with Apple, Apple doesn’t overdevelop. They don’t develop stuff speculatively. Anything they developed, they hope to make, which is both positive, but also, the negative is they really put you through the ringer till you get to the green light.
But once you get to the green light, the level of support you get is fantastic, the level of creative support, the level of financial support for the show. I just feel like we’ve really been well taken care of by them.
AF: How long did it take to get the green light?
Tropper: I don’t remember. This one was pretty quick. We were interrupted by the writers strike, but pretty soon after that, we were green lit. So yeah, this one went pretty quickly for me. I think this may be the fastest I’ve ever gotten there.
AF: When I spoke with Stephanie Laing the other day, she mentioned that she’s directing six episodes during the season season. Has season 2 been less challenging because there’s already an established look, tone, and characters?
Tropper: It actually feels a lot more challenging for some reason. It is less, we don’t have to work on all that so much, but it’s a bigger season and we’re more ambitious this season and we’re trying things we didn’t try in season one.
The logistics of season two has been much more complicated for us. The schedule, the logistics, making sure we don’t just repeat ourselves. We’re taking the show in some new directions, we’re going to some new locations and building out the show in that way has actually been really complicated.
AF: Where do things stand now? How many episodes have been shot?
Tropper: Yeah, we’re not quite at the halfway point yet. This week, we’re finishing up the episode three and four block and then next week we start shooting episodes five and six.
AF: What’s it been like having to going back into production for season two while also having the Emmys push?
Tropper: Yeah, that whole thing is really surreal. Shooting season two while season one is still airing. That was really surreal. It was also taxing for us to have to be doing junkets and press while we’re prepping episodes. You’re doing a lot of double duty. But there’s also a weird feeling of excitement that, Hey, we’re already making season two. It takes the pressure off. We already got the green light. We’re already making season two. Whatever else happens, we don’t have to worry about moving forward.
AF: Yeah. As you can tell by the poster in my background, I am a ‘Star Wars’ fan. I’m going to thread the needle very carefully since I know how Disney legal can be. What’s the shorthand been like with Shawn Levy since working on ‘This Is Where I Leave You’?
Tropper: Well, since ‘This Is Where I Leave You,’ Shawn and I have worked on two other movies together in between. He produced a movie with me that I wrote called ‘Kodachrome,’ and he also directed a movie I wrote called ‘The Adam Project.’
We’ve been working together for a long time on and off, and that’s the good news. We know each other very well. He doesn’t have to gild the lily when he talks to me. He tells me what he likes. He tells me what he doesn’t like. He values my input, and he also is the point of the sword when it comes to dealing with Lucasfilm. I’m protected, and we spend a lot of time writing, rewriting, shredding ideas, and putting in new ideas.
We both feel together the great responsibility of this IP. Sometimes I’m freaking out. Sometimes he’s freaking out. I think it’s been a very good experience to work with someone I already have that shorthand and that comfort level with, where if I try something and he doesn’t like it, he doesn’t spend the first five minutes praising it before he destroys it. He just tells me, This is no good. Let’s do something else. We have that familiarity, and we’re able to cut past all the pleasantries and just do the work.
AF: How did it feel to be able to join the ‘Star Wars’ universe as a writer?
Tropper: That’s been exciting from the minute we started. It’s still a surreal thrill. Once we got greenlit and the reality of it set in, the work’s gotten exponentially harder. Every day you realize just how massive this production is and how much work it really is. It’s really so much more work than your average movie. But it’s also like, how do you not take your swing at this. This is the biggest IP in the world. For people my age, this is part of your cinematic bible, so being able to contribute to it is incredibly exciting.
AF: Yeah. I just lost my train of thought.
Tropper: ‘Star Wars’ will do that to you.
AF: Yeah. I mean, I grew up on that. ‘Jurassic Park.’ ‘Indiana Jones.‘
Tropper: Yeah, it’s it’s really one of those pinch-me moments.
AF: Yeah. Did you did you have the opportunity to go to Celebration when they announced the film or were you busy?
Tropper: I was here running my show. But I was very excited when they went. It was nice to make it official and get the name out there. It’s one less secret to keep right. But yeah, I did not go.
AF: I really loved reading ‘This Is Where I Leave You.‘
Tropper: Oh, thanks. Thank you. That’s my favorite.
AF: I’m one of those that if it’s a Jewish comedy, I gravitate towards it.
Tropper: Yeah. I mean, it feels like another lifetime ago, but people still talk to me about that book. It’s nice to have it out there still.
AF: How do you respond to people who compare the book to the film and say things like the book is better?
Tropper: Well, look, I wrote both, so I’m proud of both, but they’re two very different things. The thing is, anytime anyone’s tried to adapt one of my books, and the question is, are you worried they’ll ruin it? They can’t ruin it. The book is the book, and the movie is the movie. I worked really hard on the movie, and I’m proud of the movie. To me, they’re two separate but related things. I like that in this new streaming universe of ours, the movie’s really had a new life, seems to always be on one of the streamers, and seems to still have a life out there so that’s nice.
AF: It kicked off this relationship with Shawn Levy and has you now writing a ‘Star Wars’ film!
Tropper: Yeah, it’s a very strange evolution, but yes, that’s where we met.
AF: I also loved ‘The Adam Project.‘
Tropper: Oh, thanks. Yeah, that was a fun one. That was our audition for ‘Star Wars.’
AF: You go from sci-fi to dark comedy, and back to sci-fi.
Tropper: Yeah, you gotta just flex all the different muscles. Otherwise, you get bored.
AF: It was so nice getting the opportunity to talk with you. Take care and good luck.
Tropper: Thank you, very nice to meet you.