I sat down to interview Jonathan Tropper, who just received his first Emmy nomination for Outstanding Drama Series for Apple TV’s Your Friends & Neighbors, where he serves as creator, showrunner, producer, and writer.
The show stars Jon Hamm as Coop, a former hedge fund manager turned amateur burglar who fancies himself a character straight out of a noir film: slick, composed, and methodical.
That fantasy, of course, comes crashing down to reality when his back gives out mid-burglary, the first of several moments where his body can no longer keep pace with his new lifestyle.
By season two, even Coop wants out.
And he’s not alone. Every major character tries, in some way, to leave the life they’ve built.
Tropper shared that’s the show’s real engine:
“There’s a lot of talk about people’s exit strategies, whether it’s getting out of Westmont Village or getting out of the life of crime. The lives we live create a gravity that the longer we live them, the stronger that gravity is in terms of pulling us back into it.”
So of course, season two’s antagonist comes to us in the form of Owen Ashe, played by James Marsden, a seductive disruptor with more money and more charm than anyone in town. Ashe is a representation of what everyone wants: pure escapism.
Part of what makes Tropper’s characters so human is what he refuses to do. He doesn’t let Coop’s flaws soften into a redemption arc, and he doesn’t let Ashe’s virtues linger for very long.
“The reason you don’t hate [Jon Hamm’s] character is that he’s flailing so hard. He’s just trying to right his own ship and he can’t.”
The choices Coop’s kids and sister make land as sharply as they do because they double as mirrors held up to Coop, exposing the same dissatisfaction driving him.
Similarly, Marsden’s Ashe comes onto the scene less as a straightforward antagonist than as a warped reflection of what Coop could still become.
Structured this way, gravity is the force organizing the plot: every attempt to escape pulls the characters deeper into the lives they’re trying to leave.
Even the title makes the point without saying it outright: your friends and neighbors aren’t people you choose so much as people gravity assigns to you through shared circumstances, and the show never lets anyone forget it.
Here’s the Season 2 trailer.
An interesting note for this season is that gravity had gotten hold of Tropper’s own career.
More than a decade of success on the genre path with HBO series Banshee (2013-16) and Warrior (2019-23) gave Tropper an identity, “the action guy,” as he puts it.
It was Your Friends & Neighbors that pulled him back to the show he wanted to write all along.
And for those unfamiliar with Tropper’s work, he’s also behind:
Apple TV’s See starring Jason Momoa (S2 & S3)
Showrunner
Apple TV’s Lucky starring Anya Taylor-Joy
Co-showrunner
Season three of Apple’s Your Friends & Neighbors is currently filming.
