From a budgetary perspective alone, Bill Lawrence — the writer behind “Scrubs,” “Ted Lasso,” “Cougar Town” and “Shrinking” — shouldn’t have shot his new Apple TV+ series “Bad Monkey” in Florida.
“There’s no tax break, and it’s immediately more expensive,” Lawrence says. “There are so many regulations about the wildlife and about what you’re allowed to do. There was a massive storm every 20 minutes that you have to shut down production. Animals were wandering around everywhere. It was tricky. But it mattered to Carl.”
“Carl” is Carl Hiaasen, Lawrence’s favorite author and the famed Miami-based writer behind the 2013 novel “Bad Monkey,” upon which the new series is adapted. Before Hiaasen would sign off on the show, he had one major stipulation: You have to film it in Florida.
“I went from thinking it wasn’t worth it when I was there — because it was a nightmare — to being really grateful,” Lawrence says of the production challenges there. “All of the limitations became a part of the show. For example, the red lights thing in the show is real. When we got there, we were not allowed to shoot on certain beaches. The turtles were about to hatch, and the Keys were lit in [turtle-safe] red lights, so it looked noirish. Also, when deer and birds were ruining takes, we just put a camera on them, and they became all the transitions for the show. In the end, it was all worth it. But, man, it was rough.”
“Bad Monkey,” which premieres Wednesday on Apple TV+, stars Vince Vaughn as a former Miami cop who’s now a Florida Keys health inspector but eager to get back on the force. When he stumbles across a sawed-off human arm, he investigates what he hopes will be the murder case that gets him his badge back. (And yes, there is an actual monkey that gets caught up in the tale.) Like all Hiaasen stories, Florida and its oddball citizens are very much a part of the plot.
Lawrence says he has a bit of a love/hate relationship with Florida. His relatives (including his parents, now living in Orlando) hail from the state, and it’s that family connection that first inspired his interest in Hiaasen’s novels.
“I started reading his books when I was 15,” says Lawrence. “He’s an icon there. And he’s one of my biggest influences. There’s a direct line between Carl Hiaasen’s surreal satire and insane situations, and the goofy scenarios and ridiculous fantasies in ‘Scrubs.’”
Adapting “Bad Monkey” became a passion project for Lawrence, who wrote the show’s first script seven years ago. He then spent nearly a decade trying to make it happen.
As a matter of fact, when Lawrence first held a meeting with Jason Sudeikis several years ago, it was for “Bad Monkey” — before Sudeikis brought up “Ted Lasso,” and the two of them set out on that path instead.
“Bad Monkey” remained a priority for Lawrence, however, and ironically, it was the success of “Ted Lasso” that gave Lawrence the career momentum to finally get it off the ground. But even as Hollywood became keen on the project, Lawrence knew Hiaasen — who had felt burned when previous adaptations of his books went poorly (including a Mike Nichols project with Harrison Ford, now coincidentally the star of Lawrence’s “Shrinking”) — wasn’t ready to return the affection.
“He’s got a huge, healthy skepticism about Hollywood,” Lawrence says. “He hasn’t always had the greatest experiences here. And he doesn’t need it. He’s a giant, best-selling author and environmentalist. He was a journalist at the Miami Herald until just a few years ago. When I convinced him to let me do this, and it was the most surreal thing in the world. He is a friend now, but imagine going to your favorite author, and saying, ‘I love this book, and I want you to let me write six or seven chapters that I put into the middle of it.’ It was insane.”
The successful adaptation of Hiaasen contemporary Elmore Leonard’s books into series like “Justified” helped soften that stance. And Lawrence says Hiaasen was already a fan of “Scrubs” and “Ted Lasso” when they met, which also helped get the author on board. Out of respect, Lawrence says he made the extra effort to keep Hiaasen in the loop on any major changes he was making to the original story.
“Worst case, he would go, ‘why?’ And then I’d explain it. We’d talk it out,” Lawrence says. “But best case, he’d give me other ideas. I haven’t felt really nervous about doing a TV show in forever. But I didn’t want to let Carl down.”
How much does Hiaasen mean to him? Lawrence reveals that the next project that he and fellow “Bad Monkey” exec producer Matt Tarses are working on — a 10-episode HBO comedy starring Steve Carell — was also inspired by the author.
“Steve’s character is loosely based on Carl Hiaasen,” he says. “Matt and I got to know Carl, and he’s so self-effacing and self-deprecating, and doesn’t consider himself the literary genius we consider him to be. But Steve plays a ‘man of the people’ author who goes to a snooty New England college where his daughter teaches. He gets entrenched in that college life by accident, and we watch him as a fish out of water trying to navigate it.”
Lawrence has been splitting his time between those projects and also Season 2 of “Shrinking,” his Apple TV+ series that he oversees with Brett Goldstein. After a long hiatus due to the Hollywood strikes, “Shrinking” is back on Oct. 16, and Goldstein will be seen in front of the camera this year. “I will say it is not quick,” Lawrence says of how much of Goldstein we’ll see. “You will know from the very first episode who he is. We’re not doing any spoilers, but it’s pretty cool.”
Much like “Ted Lasso,” Lawrence says he sees “Shrinking” as a three-season show. “We had to pitch the beginning, middle and end, and so we said the first year was about grief, the second year was about forgiveness, and the third year was about moving forward,” he says. “The way I approach it with actors is say I need at least three seasons to tell this story. So, know this particular story will be over in three seasons. But if Apple’s interested in continuing on, no matter what the incarnation is and the main players are into it, I would without doubt go forward.”
And if you’re asking about “Ted Lasso,” there’s no movement on that front. “The best thing about [questions about the future of ‘Ted Lasso’] is that it replaced, for a second, having to talk about whether or not ‘Scrubs’ was going to get rebooted,” Lawrence says. But he admits that he recently flipped it: “The reason that I accidentally said, ‘Yeah, I think I’m going to figure this out the next six months’ about ‘Scrubs’ recently, was because I just wanted to stop talking about the ‘Ted Lasso’ thing.”
Now that he has re-seeded the “Scrubs” conversation, Lawrence believes there’s some real momentum to making a reboot happen. There are still plenty of obstacles — “Scrubs” is a Disney show, and Lawrence has a deal with Warner Bros. TV, for example. And the series’ cast is all pretty busy with a multitude of projects.
“It’s fascinating to me that the passion for ‘Scrubs’ has, I’m so grateful, never died,” Lawrence says. “Maybe it’s because Zach and Donald are such friends in real life and doing their podcast, and those T-Mobile commercials. None of us really need it, and that’s probably the biggest barrier to entry —everybody’s super successful, so talented and lovely.”
But the cast is never too far away: Lawrence has a habit of bringing back stars from his previous series, both in front of and behind the camera. That includes Braff, who was Emmy-nominated for directing “Ted Lasso” and has a guest role on “Bad Monkey” playing a different kind of doctor.
“I asked him to do this because I wanted to hang out with him in Florida,” Lawrence says. “He got to play a doctor again, but it’s not the same. He’s really funny, but there’s a sadness underneath it. I’m just really proud of him.”
So… is that “Scrubs” reboot forthcoming, then? “The business part of it can always get mucked up. But I’m super hopeful,” he says. “It would be fun to do not just because we want an excuse to hang out with each other, but because it’d be fun to do creatively. You don’t want to just mail it in. But it would be interesting to see those characters older and see what new young kids look like in medicine right now, because it is a heroic profession, and no one’s doing it to get rich.”
