Bad Monkey first went before cameras in the summer of 2022, with a plan to release it the following year. But two strikes, one very long contraction of business in the industry and an increased squeeze on post-production resources led Apple TV+ to release showrunner and executive producer Bill Lawrence's much-anticipated adaptation of Carl Hiaasen's detective novel in 2024.
Judging by the positive critical and audience response (93% on Rotten Tomatoes), the wait was worth it.
In the witty noir dramedy, Vince Vaughn plays Andrew Yancy – a former Florida police detective-turned-food inspector who struggles to solve a murder in the sun-drenched Miami area where the victim may still be alive. In between Yancy's (and Vaughn's) popular brand of rat-a-tat improvisations and snarky observations about the twisty case and its unusual suspects emerges a riveting and, at times, very tense caper where everything and everyone isn't what or who they appear to be. Helping Yancy sort all of this out is his former partner and current best friend, police detective Rogelio (John Ortiz). More a fan of ice cream than of the constant pains in the ass that Yancy causes as he gets closer to solving the convoluted crime, Rogelio is also recently out of the closet and married to Montenegro (Victor Turpin), who also happens to be Yancy's attorney.
The complicated and compelling narrative that the characters of Bad Monkey find themselves in makes for some very engaging television. In honor of the show's recent season finale, Ortiz spoke with the Television Academy about how the production satisfied the novel's challenging tone, when he knew they mastered that tone and what it's like to improv with Vaughn and Bill Lawrence.
Television Academy: Carl Hiaasen's Bad Monkey is a tricky tone to capture in a TV adaptation, but audiences and critics seem to agree that you and your collaborators pulled it off. How challenging was capturing that tone while also establishing the show's own identity within that?
John Ortiz: It's extremely tricky, the tone of the show. It's a tricky conversation when it comes to tone, because there are so many different perspectives and sensibilities that should be in play if you're really talking about life and how to handle realistically the life of these characters. It all boils down to the work of Carl Hiaasen, in that you have a great mixture of what he's experienced in life as a reporter and as a journalist and then as an author — and his great imagination in taking those characters out to where they need to go. In doing that, you've got to tread not only lightly with finding common ground on what it is that speaks to us as characters — and within relationships and themes — and have it be, I think, general enough that you can then, at the end of the day, go in. Especially if you're doing comedy.
Was there a particular scene or moment that stands out for you, where you captured what you just talked about? Like, where you went, "Oh, this is working. We've nailed the tone"?
Almost every scene I did.
Wow.
I didn't have a lot of time to prep the character and be involved a lot with these kinds of [tonal] conversations, so I essentially had to just trust and throw myself in there. And I think, I've seen a snippet of this scene a lot because it's on [social media], but the ice cream scene in that wonderful flashback episode, and you get a little insight on the relationship of Yancy and Rogelio when they were both [police] detectives. And after every breaking of a case, they used to celebrate and have ice cream together. And in that scene, Yancy is trying to pry into something that's kind of personal and deep [for Rogelio] regarding this new romance with Montenegro that is happening. And it's kind of normal if you're best friends with someone to go there, but that's one of the things that Rogelio is guarded about. That's just kind of how he is. And through that tension, there's ultimately a lightness that comes through that I think — as a viewer and as the characters — you are ultimately able to enjoy.
And what's also great about that example is that Bill was on set that day. He wasn't on the set every day, because he was also doing Shrinking, but it was an awesome collaboration. And with that scene, all of the dialogue wasn't on the page, so we could riff a bit.
How was it working with Bill and Vince in that regard? In previous interviews about the show, neither one of them have seemed too precious when it comes to the scripted dialogue.
Bill Lawrence is, I mean, the guy knows how to do a good TV show. He's a great writer as well, so whenever we were lucky enough to have him on set, he was on his feet. He wasn't, like, just supervising stuff behind the monitor. I don't think he ever really was behind the monitor. He was on his feet, just out of our sight lines, so I always felt like he was as much in it as we were as actors. Also, in the same way that he would encourage us to improv, he would be rewriting [on set] as well. Because he'd be maybe inspired by whatever was happening between [the actors], or he had some idea, and he would say, "You know what? Say this line instead." And he was there thinking it up on the spot. And the immediacy of that, I think, also contributed to the final product that folks seem to be really enjoying.
You seem to really have enjoyed working that way.
I love working like that. It's great. First of all, I love preparing. I come from the theater, and the written word is everything. And you rehearse for four or five or six weeks, and there's no one seeing it, and you're just getting the words down and figuring that out. So the show is, in a sense, frozen after the first preview or after the critics show up. And I respect that, and I honor that as an actor. I love coming in with my lines memorized. But one thing that I learned working in film and TV is that you want to essentially keep every moment as if it never happened before. And no matter how great of an actor you are, you can face the danger of plateauing potentially. So having the writer on set that feels inspired to change things up will automatically add this almost magic potion of [helping] it feel alive, fresh and spontaneous. That is ultimately connected to the reality of the story that we're trying to tell, which I think is important.
And, by the way, it's not just riffing because you're being cute or you're being clever. There's this bigger picture to tell, and so I love that. [Filmmaker] David O. Russell worked that way during Silver Linings Playbook, and that's when I first — no, actually, when I first worked that way really was with Mark and Jay Duplass on Togetherness.
So, what does riffing with Bill look like, on set, in real time? That's a side of his process I haven't seen discussed before.
Sometimes it comes as the cameras are still rolling. Bill will shout out the line or shout out some sort of direction. So it comes or is added in the moment, you know? Or sometimes it's like, "Okay, let's do that again," and the cameras are still rolling and there's no time to shut it off. But I think that's one of the key things that can help you. Because sometimes overthinking it or too much analyzing can turn out not to be your best friend.
And then, related to that, you have Vince — I can't think of any actor better when it comes to improv. But when it comes to the art of improv, in terms of honoring the story and being grounded and connected, I think he's the best. He knew that character. He liked him and the story. So anything that was coming out of his mouth was connected to it, but also, it was fun.
One of the most engaging relationships on the show is between Rogelio and Montenegro. According to the LGBTQ family members I watched the show with, that relationship is one of the most authentic and non-clichéd they have ever seen on TV. How did you and Victor approach your characters' dynamic?
Well, first of all, hearing that makes me so happy. That's really humbling. It just really warms my heart. Thank you for sharing that. When it comes to portraying characters that belong to any group that, historically, has been either underserviced or misrepresented in many different ways, it's very important to do so in a realistic, authentic way. When you have seen similar relationships like [Rogelio and Montenegro's] in the past, they may be either relegated to the background or just boiled down to clichés and stereotypes — and that just has to stop. At the end of the day, for me it's about humanizing any character that you're playing. And when it comes to how do you humanize them, then it becomes about showing all the colors. You don't focus on just one thing. No one is just one thing. It's everything.
What I love, though, specifically about that relationship, are two things. One is Rogelio's journey: Rogelio identified as straight for all of his life, so it's been kind of recent that he came out of the closet, and that was very, that's a very specific journey. One that you don't probably see as much when it comes to gay characters in Rogelio's shoes. And yet, it's out there. It exists, I know. I know a lot of folks who later in life discovered who they are. It's just part of life, right? So that part of his character and that relationship was interesting for me because — it wasn't all about "Oh, now Rogelio is gay." It's more about the journey of living a life, and at what stages in that life that we cherish so much do we discover something new.
The second thing that I love about that relationship is that we spend time talking about the freshness of it. The idea of all the wonderful things about first love, but you're not 14 or 15 years old. You're now in your late 30s or 40s, and you're feeling all those wonderful things. And how amazing is it that they now contend with an extra 20 years of experience? But it's Bad Monkey, which means that not only is Yancy over [Rogelio's] shoulder, but he's also on Monty's shoulder to a degree as well, because Yancy is Montenegro's client. And so all of the hijinks that come with that, the complications that Yancy brings on to us in the midst of this new love, that's exciting to explore. I hope, if there's more story to tell here, that we get to explore that more.
I'm curious if the cast's text chain has been extra active lately with all the praise and attention the show's been getting.
There are a couple of text chains, actually. But, yes, they have kind of been blowing up lately. I missed the show's premiere, unfortunately. I was out in Winnipeg doing a movie, but my wife and son represented me at the premiere. So I was not privy to all of the excitement that was in the air. But, speaking of our text chains, recently some of the cast went to a cast member's house [in Los Angeles] and we watched the season finale together. There were four or five of us, and it was so great. That's the first time I've seen a lot of them since we shot it over two years ago, which is nuts. We shot it summer 2022 and, due to the strikes and how that impacted post-production demand and scheduling, the show came out this year. But the strikes kind of helped the whole post-production phase of it, which was pretty extensive. Because, going back to your first question about tone, even though we were going after a specific tone — we still went after a lot in terms of trying to nail that tone. So there were many different variations on attacking a scene that we explored and the riffing aspect of it all, as well. So it was a Herculean task, probably to edit [the series] into this singular vision that had some kind of inspired tone to it, which it feels like they achieved.
Was this reaction surprising at all to you or to your fellow castmates?
We were all surprised. We were sharing stories about being at our local markets, or neighborhoods, or kind of mundane places where folks may know that we're actors and have seen us in some stuff. But with this one, we've all been stopped — but stopped with a very enthusiastic, "I've got to tell you how much I'm loving Bad Monkey."
Bad Monkey is now streaming on Apple TV+.
