On our latest episode of the Awards Tour Podcast, Rotten Tomatoes Awards Editor Jacqueline Coley is joined by Emmy Award-winning actor Jon Hamm, star of the hit Apple TV+ show Your Friends & Neighbors. In the series, Hamm plays Andrew “Coop’ Cooper, a down-on-his-luck former hedge fund manager who resorts to robbing his friends (and neighbors) in order to maintain his family’s expensive lifestyle in the upscale suburbs just outside New York City. Tune in as Hamm shares how the show’s sharp writing and standout ensemble cast helped shape its darkly compelling tone.
Read below for a preview of the conversation with Hamm as he details his first reaction to seeing Top Gun: Maverick on the big screen and shares how the sharp writing and standout ensemble cast helped shape the darkly compelling tone of Your Friends & Neighbors, which is available to stream now on Apple Tv+.
Jacqueline Coley for Rotten Tomatoes: Talk about joining the project and why you wanted to play “Andrew” and work as Executive Producer of the show?
Jon Hamm: It was kind of born out of the pandemic. We were sort of sitting around wondering what the next thing to do would be, and I had finished Top Gun, which was sitting in a can waiting for the world to open back up. We were all kind of in that weird mode of “What’s next? What does it even look like?”
And during that time, I had read some of Jonathan Trapper’s incredible short stories and some of his writing. We both fell into a mutual admiration society, and we had a meeting. He said, “I have this idea about this show possibly.” And he pitched it, and we thought, “OK, well, that could be something interesting.” Then the people at Apple thought it could be something interesting as well, and it became something interesting. And so that was the genesis of it. It was simply an idea that sprang from his mind, fully formed.
Your Friends & Neighbors is streaming now on Apple TV+.
