Vince Vaughn and Bill Lawrence Unpack Their ‘Bad Monkey’ Ending and Tease Three-Season Plan
[This story contains major spoilers from the season finale of Bad Monkey.]
Back in the early 1990s, when they were still in their early-to-mid 20s, Vince Vaughn and Bill Lawrence met at a low-stakes poker game hosted by a mutual friend in Los Angeles. Vaughn had yet to rise to fame alongside Jon Favreau in the buddy comedy film Swingers, and Lawrence, then a standup comedian, was still years away from co-creating Spin City, the ABC sitcom that starred Michael J. Fox (in his final role before disclosing his Parkinson’s diagnosis) as the astute deputy mayor of New York City.
More from The Hollywood Reporter
Over the years, as their paths continued to cross at social events, Vaughn and Lawrence would keep tabs on each other’s progress. Vaughn became one of the most bankable stars of R-rated comedies in the late ’90s and 2000s, headlining box-office hits such as Wedding Crashers, Old School and Dodgeball. Lawrence established himself as one of the top showrunners in Hollywood, creating small-screen hits such as Scrubs, Cougar Town, Ted Lasso and Shrinking.
But the old friends could never quite find the right project to work on together. That is, until Bad Monkey, which just wrapped up its 10-episode freshman run on Apple TV+. Based on Carl Hiaasen’s 2013 novel of the same name, the mystery dramedy series stars Vaughn as Andrew Yancy — an irreverent, fast-talking former Miami detective turned health inspector who, after being given a severed arm fished up by tourists, is pulled into a dangerous world of greed and corruption that decimates the land in both Florida and the Bahamas.
“Yancy is portrayed as a big, physically imposing guy that can be threatening at times, get in trouble, be acerbic and have edge, and yet is still so affable and has a core of humanity underneath it that people root for him,” Lawrence tells The Hollywood Reporter. He didn’t write the role of Yancy for anyone in particular, but he did write one character description in the script: “Probably should be played by James Garner. We just have to get a time machine.”
Vaughn, as it turns out, fit the billing just fine. Vaughn and Lawrence had discovered early on that they shared a knack for gabbing and riffing. But Vaughn has a particular facility for feeling accessible to anyone he meets. “Everybody approaches Vince as if they’re already friends — and he meets them with such generosity and humanity,” Lawrence says. “Not many people can get away with saying and doing the things he does in this show without being the bad guy.”
Wednesday’s season finale brought the overarching mystery to a bloody end. After surviving Hurricane Mel in the Bahamas, Yancy hatches a plan to fly Nick (Rob Delaney) and Eve Striping (Meredith Hagner) back to Miami, where the FBI would be planning to arrest them for illicit activities. Nick and Eve decide to withdraw as much money as possible before their bank freezes their assets, in an attempt to flee to Nassau before making their way to London.
With no more planes coming and going from Andros, the Striplings decide to flee by yacht — only for Eve to push Nick, who recently lost motor function in his legs after being stabbed in the back by a fishing rod, into the water and watch him drown. Although Yancy and young Bahamian fisherman Neville Stafford (Ronald Peet) are forced to let her go, Eve, while seeking refuge in Portugal in the coda, eventually chokes on a baby carrot and falls to her death.
In the joint interview with THR below, Vaughn and Lawrence, who both serve as executive producers on the series, discuss the finale and the difficult process of adapting one of Hiassen’s most beloved novels, and protagonists, for the screen — and tease the three-season plan they pitched to Apple.
***
What do you remember from your earliest conversations about Bad Monkey? Vince, I’m assuming you didn’t have to audition for this one.
BILL LAWRENCE He sent some tapes in, and the initial tapes he sent were good, and then I asked him to show me some more serious stuff.
VINCE VAUGHN That’s right. He said, “I don’t mean to be like a guy who runs a marionette, but can we try again?” (Laughs)
LAWRENCE I could tell that Vince was the right guy long before he agreed to do it, just because I’m so familiar with Carl’s work. It’s a tough tone to crack, and the coolest thing is that when we started talking, the first thing Vince was interested in talking about was tone.
VAUGHN I might’ve exhausted you with the tone conversation, to be fair.
LAWRENCE But that’s the game. Carl’s books are banter-driven comedy, surrounded by surreal satire, huge characters and pathos. If you fall on the wrong side of that tone, it just absolutely stinks. But if you nail it, it’s awesome. It’s really hard, but Vince and I both talked about the movies that we grew up loving — 48 Hours, Midnight Run, Beverly Hills Cop. People remember Beverly Hills Cop and Eddie Murphy as so funny, [but] the truth is his best friend is gangland murdered in front of him right at the beginning. It’s a pathos-driven movie.
VAUGHN For me, I felt confident with it being [created and written by] Bill, and then it was, “How do I fit into it? How far can we go with the funny?” He’d go, “Go, go, go. It’s fine. This is the time to do that,” or “[You should] really feel this.” You’re just finding that it all fits together, but I could try stuff and do stuff and leave it in good hands.
Vince, you began your career on TV with guest appearances on afterschool specials, Doogie Howser, 21 Jump Street —
VAUGHN You’re not wrong. I cut my teeth on those afterschool specials.
LAWRENCE While you were doing that, I was writing for Boy Meets World. (Laughs)
But you haven’t done a proper live-action series since Curb Your Enthusiasm and True Detective, and this is your first time leading a series. What did you find most appealing about the ability to explore a character over a longer period of time?
VAUGHN This is an amusement park ride where, even while reading the pilot, I was laughing, and I couldn’t wait to see what was happening. So this felt like the right format, to do this over 10 episodes. It was so much not just good story, but great characters. I love being in the world. I joked and said that it felt like playing Grand Theft Auto, because you’re in Florida, you’re going to these different communities that were super fun, and I really loved all the other actors on this show. I wasn’t there when they filmed, but I enjoyed seeing [their scenes], and obviously, when the characters get to collide is super exciting.
I think part of the appeal for you must have also been the opportunity to create your own take on an action hero again. Yancy is caught in car chases and shootouts, and then he jumps into open water to chase a getaway boat in the finale.
LAWRENCE I have tons of videos of Vince literally floating in the ocean, while all of us are on shore or in a boat, going, “What do you want me to do now?!” And I’m just going, “Is he okay out there? He seems like a strong swimmer.” It was absolutely insane, man.
VAUGHN I enjoy that stuff sometimes. I like it when I have guys like Bill, because you’re going to get it and not have to do it more times [than you have to]. They’re not learning as you go, so you can get excited to jump in and do that kind of stuff. The fun of this is that you get to do a little bit of everything, so you don’t get bored with it, and I thought that the stunts were fun and surprising, so I enjoyed it for the most part. But [it helps] your mindset — you get in the water and you’ve got clothes on, but you’re committed to your character. That’s how it works.
Bill, as someone who has primarily written from a character perspective in comedy, how did you find the challenge of having to unravel this serialized central mystery? How did you navigate all of the different layers of this story?
LAWRENCE I don’t think I would’ve jumped into this world without a template. Vince and I got to know Carl, and he’s a lovely guy. I consider him a friend now, and this is his world. So many people have tried to crack Carl’s stuff as a movie. There’s a famous biography out right now about Mike Nichols, and the whole middle section, oddly, is Mike trying to turn a Carl Hiaasen book into a movie starring Harrison Ford. The problem is, nobody can make Carl’s stuff in 90 minutes. You think it’s this caper and fun little ride that could be a movie, but the truth is it’s these surreal, satire-filled character pieces of these people bouncing off each other.
The hard part was not wanting to let Carl down. If you went to your favorite author and said, “Hey, you wrote my favorite book, and I’d like to add six chapters to the middle,” [you have to hope] he doesn’t slap you and say, “Leave it alone.” But the cool thing was that we had a home base to return to, template-wise. The book nails the tone, and for us to always be able to retreat there to help figure it out was really helpful.
Vince, using both the book and the scripts, how did you come to understand Yancy’s motivations?
VAUGHN It’s like the trickster hero in a myth that, despite all the reasons why one shouldn’t go forward, [believes] they have a calling and can’t help but think they can somehow be triumphant or bring justice. Even though it’s something that’s not in their self-interest, they can’t help themselves — and that makes the character so able to root for. We talked about this Energizer bunny that was going to be resilient and just not stop. The case goes in a direction that is more scary, but he’s just going to keep the attitude that this is something he can accomplish. With that being in place, you understand, at the core level, who he is and what’s driving him.
The part that I found most interesting in portraying this character is, he has this code that’s evolving. He has this wisdom from his father. He has this life experience, but [it’s] leading to this self-awareness that he doesn’t really have at the start. He’s forced to look at himself in a way he was avoiding.
LAWRENCE In my favorite summer movies, the movies that we were talking about — and one of the things that Vince brought to it — the character always gets multiple chances to leave the journey. His character gets all these chances to bail and have what he thinks he actually wants — his old job back, the life that he misses from before — and he doesn’t take those chances. And because of that, he gets to grow a little. This is all subtext, but that’s the stuff the two of us grew up watching and loving.
You ended the finale how you started the premiere: Yancy’s ex-partner Rogelio (John Ortiz) giving Yancy another mystery he can’t resist. Where do you think we leave Yancy by the end of the finale?
LAWRENCE Carl very seldom wrote sequels to his novels — [yet] he wrote a sequel to this one called Razor Girl that we have. Carl always tells me, with his main characters, he’s a big believer in one step forward, two steps back. But he really wanted to write a second book so that you could see Yancy on a journey to becoming a guy that doesn’t get in his own way when it comes to happiness.
Do I think he’s learned all the lessons he has to learn? No. I think he’s going to still be a miserable dude living by himself now that Rosa [Natalie Martinez] has taken off, wondering how he once again shot himself in the foot and, still probably in the back of his head, wishing he could grab that little string to get his gig back. But if you want the spoiler, you can just read Razor Girl. It’s awesome.
VAUGHN I think that’s well said — and it’s true to life. I think he is who he is, but he’s just a little bit more painfully aware of it. It’s hard to change someone who’s survived in the way that he has for so long, and that’s the thing we can all relate to. He wants things to be ethical and voluntary and come from the right place, but there’s not the complete evolution to connect that [idea]. So I think there’s just an awareness he has [now] where he realizes how positive and what an influence he’s been for everyone else.
LAWRENCE We both have to shout out Matty Tarses. He’s one of the other head writers on the show. We wrote a bunch of stuff at the end, and we wanted Yancy to at least feel the accomplishment of when you know you’re a survivor. What he realizes is that he may, in fact, be a catalyst for other people’s growth. It’s one of my favorite sections: He’s a survivor, he’s a “Key deer,” he’s got saltwater in his mouth, he can survive out there on the little morsels he’s given and move forward. I often feel like we’re talking too deeply about what I want to be a fun summer movie, but I hope that’s the subtext that people pick up on.
Even though Yancy literally and metaphorically lets go of her, I have to admit that it was particularly satisfying to watch Eve get her comeuppance in Portugal — especially since she was responsible for the deaths of Nick and the Dragon Queen (Jodie Turner-Smith) in the finale.
LAWRENCE The funniest thing is, and I don’t even know if Vince is aware of this: Meredith Hagner, who’s lovely and such a funny comedian, sent me at least 20 texts, pitching different versions of how she didn’t die. I saved [the texts]!
VAUGHN I think that was everybody, because we really enjoyed the experience.
LAWRENCE Even on the day that her character died, she was still sending ideas of how, maybe, she didn’t die. I’m like, “The dog comes and licks up your brain blood. You’re dead!” She’s like, “Wait, you don’t know that I’m dead.” I’m like, “You’re so dead.” (Laughs) One of the things that Carl loved was that your hero doesn’t always get the satisfaction of seeing people get their comeuppance, and in the book he doesn’t with Eve and Nick.
Why did you choose to adapt the Dragon Queen’s story differently from book to screen? And why did you kill her off in the end?
LAWRENCE What’s interesting about it is that in the book, the Dragon Queen is very obviously a con woman and a charlatan right away, and she was based on someone that’s real. Carl has the newspaper clippings in Andros about a woman that had gotten a lot of people killed and was out for money, and we approached Carl about making it a longer and redemptive story.
Jodie talked to the consultant every day. She was in charge of her wardrobe, her makeup. I think she kills it because — when you talk about tone, to never play it with a wink, to play it like it’s an actual journey — she played it real from the start. She chose that character. The reason [L. Scott Caldwell], who plays Yaya, is in [this adaptation] is we wanted to still have a matriarch in Carl’s book of a different generation. But we added a journey for that character that I find really satisfying because of the way she played it. We wanted a great redemption story for her but we had set up that she had to pay with her life. [It’s a] hard story, because we loved her as a character and actress.
Bill, you once said that Vince taught you a lot about what you like about comedy. How so?
LAWRENCE I’m going to connect Vince and Carl, in that I love banter-driven comedy. There’s a direct line from Carl’s surreal, wild characters, and Scrubs and all the fantasies and stuff. I read his books as a teenager, and I loved them. I loved Vince’s movies because it’s not hard if you’re a comedy writer or a comedian to write the banter. Vince and I knew we would work well together, because we do it in real life. It’s fun, it’s easy, but what’s hard is to do it with an undercurrent of actual humanity and emotions.
What always struck me is — and I don’t want to sound too corny — Vince would do these things in the characters that stood out to me most, and there would either be some sadness or some longing underneath it that made it actually mean something. And that is the core of the shows I write. I try to walk that tightrope between funny, broad, silly, banter-driven comedy that would make a group of friends laugh when you’re shooting the shit around a card table, and moments with emotional depth and stories actually being about something. So I knew he helped shape that [ability] in me, and at the same time, I knew we’d be great trying to do it together.
Bill, you obviously have another book that would be the source material for the next season of Bad Monkey, but the way you’ve built the show seems to imply that you could generate a new mystery every season and follow this protagonist for a very long time. How long do you plan to explore Yancy’s life?
LAWRENCE When I pitched it [to Apple], I had a beginning, middle and end of a three-season arc for this character, and for who he would be and where he would get to — and they were really receptive to it. It’s challenging right now to make shows, and especially to pick up your life and go make it. We both moved to Florida! It was insane. Hot in Florida is not hot like anywhere else; it’s like somebody put a bag of wet cement on your shoulders. It’s hot —
VAUGHN But beautiful.
LAWRENCE Yeah, but beautiful.
I think what’s cool, if we were able to do it, is that you have these season-long stories [where] you get caught up in characters’ lives. You see redemption stories, descents into the dark side for other characters, and that story gets told. But in my head, Yancy will move a step forward. I always categorize people and characters in my head as “This person has the ability to end up happy,” or “This person will always shoot themselves in the foot and not end up happy.” I think that Yancy is the quintessential question for that.
I think people would believe it if the end of this story arc was, “He was right back where he started,” and you have to feel bad that he couldn’t get out of it. I think they’d also be happy if the end was, “No, he made his way through, and I know that guy is going to exhale a sigh of relief and be content moving forward.” So that’s the story I’m telling.
Vince, would you be up for more seasons of Bad Monkey?
VAUGHN Yeah. I love the character, the world, the tone — all of it. So I think it would be exciting, obviously, with Bill creating it, to have a continuation and see where the character goes.
LAWRENCE It’s a gift doing what we do, to be on a fun set where everybody brings their A-game. The end goal, too, is to make a show that we would watch. I wanted to change my production company name to Noble Failure Productions because if you could make something that you could show your friends and family and they think it’s a fun ride, that’s the goal.
VAUGHN It’s so fun. And to work on something that’s funny and has these meanings and stuff that’s touching — you recognize your own lives, and there’s so much empathy in these conflicts.
LAWRENCE All of Carl’s stuff has this environmentalist undercurrent because he’s been a journalist there for years and years, and he’s like, “You can’t remove the story about how beautiful Florida is, and how we as Americans are just ravaging and killing it with dumb houses and development and pollution and all that stuff.” So that was an undercurrent too — to make it fun on the one hand, but actually a subtext and a little bit of a subversive message on the other.
***
All episodes of Bad Monkey are now streaming on Apple TV+.
Best of The Hollywood Reporter
Sign up for THR's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Solve the daily Crossword
