Emmys 2026: Jonathan Tropper On Season 2 Nuances Of ‘Your Friends And Neighbors,’ Lucking Out With ‘Lucky’ [VIDEO]

Season Two of Your Friends and Neighbors upped the crazy ante and was justly rewarded with a surprise Outstanding Drama Emmy Nomination—just one nomination, but a most significant one. The previous year the Apple TV hit also scored a solo nod —for Outstanding Original Main Title Theme Music. This biting and incisive dark comedy deserves much more love than it has received from the Television Academy, although one would argue that category placement may be an issue. Perhaps the TV Academy needs to give its categories a rethink since dramedies like YF&N seem to baffle voters.

Jonathan Tropper created this terrific series and, this season, wrote the first and last episode. Season Three is already filming.

The show continues to follow the antics of a gaggle of upper middle-class suburbanites living in a uber-riche part of New York, centered on Andrew “Coop” Cooper (Jon Hamm), a privileged former hedge fund manager-turned-burglar. The fantastic cast includes Amanda Peet, Lena Hall, Olivia Munn, Aimee Carrero and, added this season, a fabulously devious James Marsden.

Tropper adapted his novel, This Is Where I Leave You, into a 2014 film, directed by Shawn Levy. The cast included Jason Bateman, Tina Fey, Adam Driver, Connie Britten, Rose Byrne, Corey Stoll, Timothy Olyphant and Jane Fonda. The movie premiered at the Toronto Film Festival and received mixed notices but has been sought out and appreciated in the decade since its initial release.

In 2013 he co-created the Cinemax action series Banshee and followed that up with Warrior in 2019.

His fantastic new limited series, Lucky, based on the novel by Marissa Stapley, recently bowed on Apple TV and boasts wonderful performances by Anya Taylor-Joy, Timothy Olyphant, Drew Starkey, Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, and, especially Annette Bening. It should definitely be in the Limited Series Emmy conversation next year.

He also wrote the screenplay for the forthcoming Star Wars: Starfighter, directed by Levy and starring Ryan Gosling, Mia Goth and Amy Adams, to be released in May of 2027 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the original.

The Contending discussed both Your Friends and Neighbors and Lucky, as well as a little Star Wars with Tropper.