Vince Vaughn shines as a wisecracking Florida detective in Bad Monkey, a new Apple TV+ series from the producer of Ted Lasso
It may or may not come as a surprise that comedic genius Bill Lawrence, known for hit series such as Scrubs and Ted Lasso, has a particular affinity for the Sunshine State. “My mom’s whole family is from Florida. My parents still live there. I know this world and I know these people,” he tells TV Week. “Florida is lovely and beautiful — which a lot of Americans don’t know — but it’s also insane. It’s like someone picked up the United States and shook it and every insane person went down to the very bottom. In Florida, it’s bananas.”
Florida is also the ideal setting for his new series, Bad Monkey, a wacky crime drama based on journalist and author Carl Hiaasen’s best-selling novel, where former Miami PD detective Andrew Yancy, who has been downgraded to health inspector, comes across a severed arm found in the waters outside Key West and throws himself into the mystery of who it might have belonged to. “I’ve been a Carl Hiaasen fan since I was a kid,” says Lawrence. “Even though his books have capers, and there’s so much crazy chaos going on, they’re actually character pieces. That’s what I love about Carl’s writing. I also have a huge fondness for any protagonist that is unable to stop shooting himself in the foot because of his own skewed sense of justice, and that’s Andrew Yancy in this thing.”
Yancy is played by Vince Vaughn, an actor perfect for the seemingly impossible-to-cast role. “It’s very hard to be a character described as physically intimidating, often violent, big, edgy in his banter and still comes off as an average guy, a lovable person that you’d trust your life with,” says Lawrence. “When I first wrote the script, I wrote, ‘I don’t know who could play this part. Maybe we can get a time machine and bring James Garner back.’ I knew that we made the right choice when we first got to Miami and the Keys. Vince is like America’s host. He walks around and — age, gender, race, it didn’t matter — everybody approaches him as if they’re long-time friends and he accepts it. You know what I mean? And that’s the character.”
Greater America may treat the Swingers actor like their long-lost pal, but to the cast and crew Vaughn is an icon. “As a comedy writer, to have Vince making your stuff funnier and then you get to take credit for it later is awesome,” says Lawrence. “It took all my self-restraint to not ask him to do different lines from Swingers or Wedding Crashers.” Vaughn’s co-star and love interest on the show, Natalie Martinez, recalls being caught off-guard on set. “Vince, he’s such a genius. I’ve seen this man work and it’s just brilliant,” she says. “There was this one time we were in the middle of a scene, and Vince is doing his thing. It was my turn to talk and I was just staring at him. I completely forgot that I’m working. I just got so taken by the scene, as if I was watching a movie. He’s captivating.”
In addition to Vaughn and Martinez, the cast is stacked with superb and perhaps surprising comedic talent, from Michelle Monaghan to Jodie Turner-Smith to Rob Delaney.
Making her television debut in Bad Monkey is Lawrence’s 24-year-old daughter, Charlotte. The series’ creator jokes that she ended up in her role through pure nepotism. “No, I’m joking. I’ll tell you how it came about,” he says. “I was trying to figure out who would play that part, and I remember someone saying it would be cool to get a young actress with like a million Instagram followers. So, just because of who she is and where she lives, I was auditioning no one but her friends. It was like a hundred auditions of people that had called her up and been like, ‘I’m going in to see your dad. What’s he like?’ And she was getting more and more upset. She sent a tape into casting and the people that work in my company showed it to me and I’m like, ‘Oh my God.‘ I thought it was really good. And she’s awesome in it.”
So much did Lawrence love the project that he is already thinking about what Yancy and the gang might do next. “If anybody’s dumb enough to let us [make a second season], I will, without a doubt,” he jokes. “Carl’s got a book called Razor Girl. Our company owns it and Vince and I are ready, so we got our fingers crossed.” But before embarking on another season, Martinez promises an unforgettable inaugural outing. “One of the things that I love about this story is that every episode ends in cliffhangers,” says Martinez. “Once you think you know what’s happening it just throws you for something else. But one of the most satisfying things about Bad Monkey is that you will definitely be satisfied at the end and you’ll solve this case.”
Bad Monkey, streaming Wednesdays on Apple TV+