Back in the early 1990s, when Vince Vaughn and Bill Lawrence were hungry 20-somethings trying to get a toehold in show business, they met at a regular poker game hosted by a mutual friend in Los Angeles. Vaughn had not yet made his splash in “Swingers,” or told Jon Favreau he was “so money and you don’t even know it.” Lawrence was yet to co-create “Spin City,” the ABC sitcom starring Michael J. Fox as the quick-witted deputy mayor of New York City.
“Some nights I had to decide if I was going to Subway or if it was going to be noodles in a cup,” Vaughn recalled.
Lawrence, whose new series, the crime caper “Bad Monkey,” premieres Wednesday on Apple TV+, and Vaughn, who stars in the series as a well-intentioned police detective who can’t get out of his own way, quickly realized they had something in common besides their mutually modest means: They both had a way with words. A gift of gab. A talent for extending a verbal riff. In a joint video interview, Lawrence recalled the time he got up from the poker table to pay the pizza delivery man only to hear Vaughn’s voice trailing behind him: “Hey, Bill, does he have a sparkle in his eye? Ask him if he likes musical theater.”
That’s funny now largely because we can hear the words in Vaughn’s seemingly never-tired voice, a familiar sound from comedies including “Wedding Crashers,” “Old School” and “Dodgeball.” But back then, it was just a couple of poker buddies goofing off. A few years later, when Lawrence saw Vaughn as the motormouth Trent in “Swingers,” he felt a joyous thrill of recognition. There was his old friend, being “money” on the big screen.
“It made me so happy, not just that I had witnessed Vince before, but also because I saw that’s what entertainment could be,” Lawrence said. “You could have a joke with your friends with the [stuff] you do when you’re bouncing around and bantering, and it could actually become part of your art.”
They saw each other around town over the years as they both got big. Vaughn became a bankable comedy star, even dabbling in drama with the likes of “Brawl in Cell Block 99” and Season 2 of HBO’s crime anthology “True Detective.” Lawrence created TV series including “Scrubs” and “Ted Lasso,” shows that demonstrate a screwball comedy-like facility with banter. But they never got to work together — at least not until “Bad Monkey” came calling.
As you might imagine, interviewing Lawrence and Vaughn isn’t like pulling teeth. At a certain point they start asking each other the questions. They riff on the value of taking chances, on the jobs they held before they found success (Lawrence painted houses, Vaughn was a telemarketer), on their appreciation for Carl Hiaasen (the dean of Florida crime novelists, who wrote the 2013 book on which “Bad Monkey” is based). And there was the time the biggest star in country music bought dinner for the poker gang. Sort of.
“We had one friend who was working for ASCAP [American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers],” Vaughn recalled. “He would order dinner and expense it. I would say to him, ‘Oh gosh, this is so nice. Thanks for ordering this.’ And he would say, ‘Don’t thank me. Thank Garth Brooks.’”
In “Bad Monkey” Vaughn plays Andrew Yancy, who, shockingly, likes to talk. He also likes to sabotage his own career as a Florida Keys police detective, at least until he gets suspended and is knocked down to health inspector duty. Then a fishing tourist reels in a human arm, middle finger extended. Yancy suspects foul play at the hands of a ruthless moneygrubber (Meredith Hagner), who claims the arm belongs to her late husband. There’s also action in the Bahamas, where a local named Neville (Ronald Peet) wants to hold on to the simple life with his pet (bad) monkey in the midst of a shady real estate grab.
Yancy also finds time to romance a Miami medical examiner, Rosa (Natalie Martinez), charmed even though “he’s a little older and talks way too much”; and an unhappily married woman, Bonnie (Michelle Monaghan), running from the law for completely unrelated reasons.
Lawrence recalled his initial conversations with Hiaasen, who was also a consulting producer on the series, about casting Yancy. They agreed, as Lawrence said, that “he should be imposing and a little dangerous and have the ability to be a little threatening, and he should be somebody that makes bad decisions. He’s acerbic and edgy and sarcastic, but the show doesn’t work unless you root for him and want him to win and wish you could hang out with him.”
In other words, he should be somebody like Lawrence’s old poker buddy, a big guy (or, as his character in “Made” describes himself, “a tall drink of water”), a little rough around the edges but quick to flash disarming verbal charm. Vaughn, also a fan of Hiaasen’s fiction, was in, especially if it meant finally being able to work with Lawrence.
“Here’s the answer key for television writers,” Lawrence said. “Write a show where you can hear the lead actor’s voice in your head, not only because you know his breadth of work and his comedic styles, but you are lucky enough to have shot the breeze with him with a beer in your hand when you were a kid.”
For those not familiar with Hiaasen’s world, imagine a tropical Elmore Leonard. The drinks and the blood flow in equal measure in a Hiaasen novel. The glow of paradise is offset by the stench of crime, usually committed by craven schemers. And the heroes, including Yancy, who is also featured in Hiaasen’s 2016 “Bad Monkey” follow-up, “Razor Girl,” are blessed with the kind of rich, chewy dialogue that becomes red meat for Vaughn in the new series. “You ever get choked by pleasuring yourself?” Bonnie asks Yancy. “One time, but it was not on purpose,” Yancy replies. “I was wearing a tie and then I kind of tripped.”
Lawrence and his writing team had plenty to work with in Hiaasen’s novel. They also had a gifted improviser in Vaughn, quick enough on his feet to become a featured player in the later seasons of “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” On “Bad Monkey,” it wasn’t uncommon for the actors to say their lines as written, followed by a Vaughn question: “Now one for fun?”
Lawrence said many of those “fun” takes found their way into the series, and they allowed others in the cast to shine as well. “There’s a willingness with which he sets up others,” Lawrence said. “Vince adds material and moments and when people come up to me later and say, ‘Oh, that was so funny.’ I just go ‘thank you,’ as if I had anything to do with it. It’s just an absolute gift and it’s how I like to make television.”
Even as “Bad Monkey” plays to the strengths of its creator and star, it also allows them to try some new tricks. Lawrence made his name with half-hour comedies, and while Vaughn has dabbled in television, he’s primarily associated with “frat pack” movie comedies.
And as much as Lawrence gets pitched variations on the can-do optimism of “Ted Lasso,” Vaughn was inundated with scripts looking to bottle that “Wedding Crashers” magic.
“The business out here is built to go, ‘Oh, that’s what you do. You should do that thing forever,’” Lawrence said.
This, of course, can get boring.
“You want to ride the different rides at the amusement park,” Vaughn said. “So you start to push yourself, and sometimes you kind of like being right there where it’s a little bit new, a little bit scary. It’s fun to try to do different things and you have to make an effort to do that.”
Those poker games, Lawrence and Vaughn recalled, often ended with the night’s losers clamoring for one more chance while the winner played it safe, folding hand after hand until it was time to go home.
“The guy who was down $300 wanted to keep going,” Vaughn said. “So there’d be an agreement that we’d go one more time around. But then whoever was in the lead would just be counting their chips. Everyone else would be like, ‘Come on, man, give me some action.’”
Today, Vaughn and Lawrence are getting the action together. And they’re holding the good cards.
