Spoiler Alerts: This article contains spoilers for the first season of Black Rabbit, which can be streamed on Netflix.
Restaurant hospitality is the last thing you’ll find in Netflix’s latest crime thriller, Black Rabbit.
Created by married couples Zach Bailin and Kate Sussman, the series was inspired by New York’s dynamic nightclub and restaurant culture and laid the foundation for the show’s atmosphere. That star law and Bateman also act as an executive producer.
Although set now, the series draws inspiration from New York City’s dark past, particularly the downfall and ultimate closure of the spotted pig, a particularly influential gastropub. Once the hottest restaurant in the mid-2000s, it was closed in 2020 after owner Ken Friedman settled a lawsuit from a former employee claiming sexual harassment.
The High Stakes centers around the Brooklyn brothers and restaurant co-founders Jake (Law) and Vince Friedken (Bateman), as well as the chaos Vince unleashes after unexpected return home.
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Jake is the ambitious and charismatic owner of Black Rabbit, a restaurant and VIP lounge at the pinnacle of becoming the hottest place in town. Vince returns to their shared business, bringing immense trouble with his gambling debt, which places both his brothers in an endless spiral of insanity and chaos.
Below, the law and creators talk about diversity about Jake and Vince’s destructive relationship, drawing inspiration from New York City’s toxic nightlife and dietary culture, and their shocking and ultimate death.
Regarding this high stakes story and your character, what was the first thing that attracted you to this project?
Jude Law: Working with Zack and Kate, we drew me to the project. We had positive experiences as friends and creatives in “The Order.” If you meet people who can trust and work well, it’s great to cultivate those relationships. Also, this was an attractive piece. I knew the New York they wanted to recreate and the energy that permeated the story. I loved the possibility of this relationship at the heart of it. These brothers were good guys, but they were doing bad things and causing confusion. I loved Jake because he looked incredibly together from one angle. Then slowly, he doesn’t get sarcasm. You realize that it is the facade and that he has a relationship with the problem, past, destructive brother.
Jake is not the easiest character, nor is he the most likable person. What was your approach to nurturing him and bringing him back to life?
Law: It was important that he was unfavourable. I find the complexity of the dark, contradictory characters that are attractive to bring to life. That doesn’t mean you don’t necessarily empathize with them or understand where they are coming from. I liked that he was multifaceted. You see his side of him, who is so attractive and good at dealing with people. Then you reveal the abdomen that is reminiscent of holding a microscope in your life. People have many aspects of them.
What happened to the other side of Jason Bateman?
Law: He is incredibly prepared. He knows he and he can do incredibly well. That’s important. Having a great map and knowing what you need to get from the scene will allow you to play it roughly. It’s a great place. He has a superpower and you can’t help but love him. He can do terrible things as a character and you can forgive. It was a sensible casting, and a cool contribution to this character in particular.
Have you ever forgotten about acting and felt truly like a brother?
Law: What happens is expressing yourself in a certain way, and you get lost in the scene. The longer he played these parts, the more Jake felt his love for his brother. When I first filmed the scene when Vince first returned, I had no idea how to say hello to him. When we hugged, it felt right to be like, “Oh, he’s okay, he’s back.” They told me very quickly how they felt about each other. I wasn’t necessarily planning for that.
Jake is a complicated character. But one constant is his love for his brother. How do you interpret who Jake is individually, and how does it change when he is with Vince?
Law: The best way to understand Jake from Vince is really in that first section before Vince comes back. As soon as Vince enters his trajectory, his consciousness changes. When you first see him, he is ambitious and thinks it’s okay to reach for another goal, keep yourself together, go ahead and continue your life by putting paper over the cracks. He works hard with a smile on his face. That’s his best. As soon as Vince returns to his orbit, he is always aware that he has to put out the fire. It puts him on the edge.
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Why does Jake feel the need to save his brother and not leave him to dodge him for himself?
Law: It’s back to what happened as a child with the father. He recognizes that it irreparably changed his brother’s course, leaving him with a broken sense of guilt and a broken sense of morality and spirit. Before that, he not only idolized him with his brother, but he was also an original and creative spirit, and continued to bring the band together. But he also has the ability to blow up the band. That’s the idea of a rabbit. He protects him infinitely, as he recognizes the damage he is carrying.
Zack and Kate combine Vince’s high-stakes gambling debt, Jake’s ambitions and their childhood trauma to root either of their siblings. When you created this series, what were the overall intentions and interpretations of these siblings?
Zach Baylin: It’s like two sides of the same coin. It’s incredibly co-dependent. There’s no Jake without Vince, there’s no Vince without Jake. Vince is a character we always thought to be this beacon of charisma, talent and possibilities. It was the idea of who Vince was for Jake when he was a young child, and how some people could take the idea, deal with the curveballs of life, and put something into success. They are not people who have ideas all the time. I think it’s incredibly envious of someone else’s success, and yet everyone can understand it in a lot of people’s relationships.
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The “Black Rabbit” appears to take inspiration from the downfall of a spotted pig, with the owner facing multiple accusations of sexual harassment, and the chef reportedly knows. Why do you want to weave these real events into the undertone of the series?
Kate Sussman: When we lived in New York, we loved the culture of nightclubs and restaurants. We were excited and drunk at what was happening behind these velvet ropes. With stories of sexual harassment unfolding in several places we knew, it was very interesting to see the difference between what we saw and experienced on the frontline and what was going on there. It was horrifying when you flip the light or ask people what’s really going on in their work. These were the huge scandals we ate. I loved this idea of selling images and having a show where I felt very sexy, charming and exciting and learning what was going on there.
Baylin: I’ve taken a lot of inspiration from reading and watching Anthony Bourdain. He spoke a lot about his love and drew the restaurant industry a fascination with this pirate lifestyle. People who didn’t want to do nine or five jobs. People who were willing and excited to be in a workplace where anything could happen. People who were a bit lawless – there’s really excitement about it. When you play it near a fire, something bad happens in the end. We were curious about where the line was and when it would cross.
We have to talk about the outcome, especially the moment Vince fell off the roof. Why take that route for his character?
SUSMAN: I always knew this was meant to be a limited series. We always knew it was like a place to end for our siblings. Vince made the only final sacrifice he felt he could make to help Jake. We went through a round about how it would happen and then how Jake could survive. It was always the finish line for the character Vince was heading towards. He starts out as a very selfish character and cannot act beyond what is in front of his face. He makes the decision that he feels he will release his brother from what he brings him to.
There was this final feeling at the final moments of the series. Have you both imagined this story more?
Baylin: I always knew this was meant to be a limited series. We talked a lot about the idea that family ties are sometimes anchors. It was this codependent relationship and I wasn’t to praise what Vince was doing, but I think he had the feeling of trying to drive Jake away. It felt organic to who Vince was and his story. But it felt like a natural place that always ends.
Susuman: That’s a tragedy. That was the way we set out to tell the story. There is hope in it. But we always knew it was a tragic story of the brothers.
This interview was compiled and condensed.
