Esquire First Look: How Bad Monkey Season 2 Brews Up Even More Trouble in Paradise

5 min readFor Bill Lawrence, producing some of TV’s biggest comedies is serious business. Once the architect of cable juggernauts Scrubs and Cougar Town, the 57-year-old producer is now at the helm of several streaming-era darlings including Ted Lasso, Shrinking, Rooster, and Bad Monkey. But of all his shows, Lawrence tells Esquire that Bad Monkey scratches a specific itch.“My favorite movies, books, and TV shows that grabbed me as a kid melted genres,” Lawrence says. A self-professed die-hard for buddy cop classics like 48 Hrs. and Beverly Hills Cop, the two-time Emmy winner says that the films’ signature mixture of humor with grittier themes and settings made them more than just funny movies. “People remember them as raucous comedies, and they were. But there were real emotional stakes,” says Lawrence. “And the first author that got me into that stuff was Carl Hiaasen.”A political journalist and author from Florida (where Lawrence’s family originates), Carl Hiaasen wrote the satirical crime novel Bad Monkey in 2013. The book was adapted in full in 2024 as the Apple TV series first season. Lawrence was, and is, a “massive fan” of Hiaasen. “Then I got to know this guy,” he says. “That one of my heroes turned out to be like I hoped he would be, and that he let me take one of his best properties and turn it into a little bit of throwback TV—it’s one of the most fun rides of my career.”Now, Lawrence is ready to unpack the upcoming second season of Bad Monkey—and its Emmy-worthy newcomers—which returns to Apple TV on December 2. A new trailer, launching today, is embedded just below.Bad Monkey season 2 sees Vince Vaughn returns as Yancy, a former Miami detective turned reluctant restaurant inspector who lives in the Florida Keys. With severed arms and medical fraud deep into his rearview mirror, Yancy finds himself caught in a new case involving a shady restaurant—an obvious front for a criminal enterprise—and the underworld boss behind it. Three-time Emmy Award winner and Oscar nominee John Malkovich joins as a new antagonist, Spencer. While Lawrence resists revealing too much about Spencer, he describes the role as a “comedic and dangerous” villain who drives Yancy to the brink.“One of my favorite things about Carl’s books is that they’re really, at their core, character stories,” Lawrence says. “Spencer” is a role that Lawrence and his team “reverse-engineered” for Malkovich when they caught wind of the actor praising Bad Monkey while promoting his 2025 film Opus. “Randomly, Malkovich said, ‘My favorite show this year was Bad Monkey,’” Lawrence recalls. “This story started from a place of [thinking], ‘If John Malkovich was kind and silly enough to bring him in this world, who would he be?’ You will meet him as our other fearless leader this year.”The second season of Bad Monkey breaks from Hiaasen’s books (with the author’s blessing) to tell a new story that, in a spiritual sense, takes place between the original Bad Monkey novel and its 2016 sequel Razor Girl. “We took massive liberties expanding certain characters, making the world bigger,” Lawrence says about collaborating with Hiaasan. “My nightmare would be to do anything he didn’t feel was true to Florida or his voice. I’m not overstepping when I tell you he helped come up with the main issue that Rosa’s chasing down [in season 2], because it was something he had written about when he was a journalist.”Adds Lawrence, “It was nerve-wracking. One of the scariest things, if you’re doing an IP [series] and it’s your favorite author, [is when you] have to make up things, but I’m very lucky he’s become a close friend and is candid with me to tell me if we hit or miss on it.”Michael Becker//AppleJohn Malkovich, who once raved about Bad Monkey in an interview, joins the series as Spencer, an underworld crime boss who Bill Lawrence calls both hilarious and dangerous.Malkovich isn’t the only new face in season 2. A slew of stand-up comics, up-and-coming actors, and notable names fill out the ensemble. Sam Jaeger, Zavior Phillips, Peter Billingsley, Sofia Boutella, and Mo Amer all appear in the second season, to name a few. The Handmaid’s Tale’s Yvonne Strahovski also joins as a series regular in a role Lawrence hints has “something much bigger and deeper going on.” Returning characters from season 1 include Rosa (Natalie Martinez), Ro (John Ortiz), and Caitlin (Charlotte Lawrence, Bill’s real-life daughter).But Bad Monkey is still all about Vince Vaughn’s Yancy, the endlessly witty, if also damaged soul of the whole shebang. Yancy has changed a little since season 1—“He realized that he was a catalyst for change in other people,” Lawrence says—but he’s also still the same dude who knows how to relax in his own backyard. “He was still drifting around and ended up very alone. Were we to have him be the same loner throughout season 2, it would be a mistake. He is the same Yancy. But watching that character decide what it means to let people into his life—whether it be Caitlin or Rosa—that is his personal journey. I wouldn’t want to watch the show if it weren’t Yancy being Yancy on some level.”Apple“There’s not a comedy writer my age that didn’t have their comedic voice influenced and affected by Vince Vaughn,” says Bill Lawrence. “That style of banter killed us. I’m a Vince Vaughn fan for life.”Yancy’s big story for season 2 involves his father, Jim, played again by Scott Glenn, whom Yancy invites to stay with him in his home. Lawrence says this story aims to highlight Yancy’s internal struggle as a budding father figure. “We all have dynamics with our fathers—me, Vince, [co-executive producer] Matt [Tarses]. You become your parent’s... I don’t want to say caretaker, but the roles switch. That’s a role that comes your way. The person who always could take care of you, you need to step up and do that for them, and embrace taking their role for everyone else.”“If you ask me what [season 2] is actually about,” says Lawrence, “It’s about Yancy stepping in to be the patriarch of whatever his found family is, and whether or not he is ready to do that.”Michael Becker//AppleYvonne Strahovski joins Bad Monkey season 2 as an affluent congresswoman. Her performance in a comedy is something Bill Lawrence is “most excited for people to see.”If one thing sets Bad Monkey apart from Lawrence’s other works, it’s action. Lawrence aims to pay proper homage to the movies that influenced him with “feature-level” set pieces this year. “In season 1, we were flying by the seat of our pants, seeing what we could do, especially in Florida,” says Lawrence. “The one thing we wanted to upgrade in season 2 is the action. It’s stuff I haven’t shot in my normal 30-minute comedies before, and I think we pulled it off.”The action will be felt through the characters—the ones standing, anyway. Bill Lawrence teases that the sheer amount of newcomers means one or two or several won’t make it to the end. “One of the things about Carl’s books is that when you reach the end, a lot of the regulars have died. Knowing the cast will never get too big, it’s fun to see the smoke clear and [find out] who’s left.”This is serious business. But it’s still a blast.