‘Your Friends and Neighbors’ Creator Jonathan Tropper Dishes on the Show’s Concept [Exclusive]

Apple TV’s latest hit show Your Friends and Neighbors takes viewers beyond the gates of wealth unlike any other series. After being fired in disgrace, Andrew “Coop” Cooper (Jon Hamm), a hedge fund manager still grappling with his recent divorce, resorts to stealing from his neighbors’ homes in the exceedingly affluent Westmont Village, only to discover that the secrets and affairs hidden behind those wealthy facades might be more dangerous than he ever imagined.

The series also stars Amanda Peet, Olivia Munn, Hoon Lee, Mark Tallman, Lena Hall, Aimee Carrero, Eunice Bae, Isabel Marie Gravitt and Donovan Colan. Your Friends and Neighbors was created by best-selling author Jonathan Tropper, who serves in a dual role as the showrunner and executive producer under his overall deal with Apple TV+. 

Ahead of the season premiere, PopCulture.com spoke with Tropper about the show’s concept. He also delved into the excitement for a second season.

PopCulture.com: Congratulations on the success of the show.

Jonathan Trooper: Thank you.

PC: Now, you are the creator, showrunner, executive producer, and director of this series. Talk to me about having multiple roles in this show. How did you go about balancing all of them?

JT: Well, I kind of feel like they’re all really the same role. You list them as four different things and to be clear, I didn’t direct most of the episodes. I directed the finale, but we had Craig Gillespie direct the pilot and really set the visual language for the show. But for me it’s  all about creating it – whether that means writing it, casting it, shooting it…I’m in postproduction editing it, it’s all the same thing. It’s just taking it from the page to the screen, and so I don’t look at them as separate jobs. I just feel like the whole beauty of show running is you get to do all of that.

PC: Talk to us a little bit about the concept.

JT: This really takes us into the world of the wealthy and the rich and famous, and all of the darkness that’s uncovered there. I just always thought about the fact that you drive through these neighborhoods with these really fancy houses and these cars, and these lawns and and there’s an assumption that these people have it made, that they’re winning at life. And what a show like this tells you, which is a real truth, is that, behind a lot of those doors,  there’s a rotting foundation and there are a lot of secrets and the people are every bit as unhappy as they are anywhere else. They’re just unhappier with more things.

And to a large extent, I think people who have spent their lives trying to climb that mountain to get to those houses and those cars, have done it at a price that only they only start to pay once they’ve gotten there. And so that was kind of like where I wanted to tell a story about suburban ennui and people who’ve reached this point in their lives where somehow they should have everything, but they’re still in emptiness they can’t seem to stave off.

PC: How involved were you, were you in the casting process?

JT: I was heavily involved. It’s my show. I was involved in casting everybody. That’s part of building the show is building the cast. I brought this to Jon Hamm before I even wrote it and just pitched him the idea, cause I really wanted to do it with him. And once he signed on and we had scripts, and we had a greenlit show, then we went after Amanda Peet, we went after Olivia Munn. I wrote a role for Hoon Lee because he’s one of my favorite actors and I always write roles for him. And then we worked obviously with a really great casting director Cindy Tolan, and we built out the show. But there’s no aspect of this I’m not heavily involved in.

PC: I was speaking with Olivia and Amanda, and I spoke to them about the show being praised as the show of the spring season by Glamour Magazine and some of the other reviews that came out and it’s already been renewed for a second season, ahead of the premiere even airing. What do you think that’s a testament to?

JT: I don’t actually know. I think there is something accidentally very timely about the show, given the current state of politics and the current state of world markets, etc. But I also think that it’s just when you take the time to make a show about family and about love and divorce, and marriage, and community, and then you add a really spicy layer of intrigue to it, there’s an escapism fund to it, and I think people are looking for escapism right now, and this show certainly has a lot of that.

PC: Because we already know season 2 is a thing, what are you hoping to explore in the second season?

JT: I think like every second season you have to take the world you’ve built, and now you have to up the stakes for everybody. Season one was about Coop discovering how supposedly easy it was to steal from his friends and neighbors. It was about him getting involved in that, and it was about him finding a kind of liberation and doing that. I think in season two, his reach is going to exceed his grasp. He’s gonna start to have bigger plans and the stakes are gonna get higher, and I think he’s gonna get himself in a lot more trouble.