Note: This story contains spoilers from the “Black Rabbit” finale.
Jason Bateman and Jude Law may not have always known which character they were going to play in Netflix’s “Black Rabbit,” but their roles were never a mystery to creators Zach Baylin and Kate Susman. “That has been a revelation of this press tour for us,” Susman told TheWrap, in reference to the actors’ recent comments.
Law stars in the eight-part crime drama as Jake Friedkin, the hustling owner of a New York City restaurant that is on the verge of finally becoming one of the city’s premier dining spots. His plans — and life — are thrown into disarray by the return of his estranged, former addict brother Vince (Bateman), whose reemergence catches the attention of a loan shark family he never paid back.
“When we first talked about the project with Jude, he was always Jake to us,” Susman said, remembering Law’s familiarity with the places in New York that partly inspired the series. “Jude right away tapped into the touch points of this world.” As for Bateman, Susman revealed that she and Baylin were excited to not only work with him as a director (he helmed the series’ first two episodes) but also cast him as Vince, an “unhinged wild card” who gave him the chance to play a kind of character “we don’t get to see him do a lot.”
“We all have a relationship with Jason from years of watching him on TV. A lot of times, when we think about him in, say, ‘Arrested Development,’ he’s the character in the family who is shouldering all the burden,” Baylin explained. “It felt very exciting to us to have him be the burden.” That said, both writers were nervous to find out how comfortable Bateman would be going to the places onscreen they wanted Vince to go.
“I remember wondering, ‘Oh, is he gonna be uncomfortable with this? Do we have to back this character up at all?’ Because he’s usually very easy to identify with,” Susman divulged. “But he immediately was like, ‘No, dig in. Make him dirty. Take it there.’ We were like, ‘Great. Let’s push the envelope as far as we can on who this guy is and what he does.’”
Baylin believes the choice greatly helped the show, if only because Bateman made it easier for them — and viewers — to look past Vince’s flaws. “I think Jason is so likable as a person that Vince gets away with a lot more than he would because it’s Jason,” the Oscar-nominated “King Richard” screenwriter said. “That was a kind of revelation to us, too.”
Bateman’s Vince is at the center of the “Black Rabbit” finale. He and Jake spend much of the episode the same way they did the previous seven — running for their lives. At one point, the two brothers are literally sprinting through the streets of New York trying to evade the wrath of Joe Mancuso (Troy Kotsur), the loan shark whose son Vince has killed, but also the police. It all comes to a sudden, halting end, though, once Vince and Jake make it back to the Black Rabbit, the restaurant they bought and founded together.
Once there, Vince comes to realize the destruction and trouble he has wrought on his family’s lives. In an effort to relieve Jake and everyone else of the weight of his problems, he kills himself by leaping off the restaurant’s roof. It is a heartbreaking moment, and it paves the way for the finale’s closing minutes, in which Jake is shown leaving the Rabbit and his penthouse apartment behind in favor of a new life bartending at someone else’s restaurant.
According to Baylin and Susman, this ending was, just like Bateman and Law’s roles in the show, part of their vision for “Black Rabbit” all along.
Vince’s death is tragic, but Jason plays it in a way that feels cathartic for Vince, too. How did his performance shape or reshape the character’s final moments?
Susman: Vince was a much darker character on the page. When we started rehearsals with Jason, we realized that he can’t help himself but be witty and charming. The very first scene, the first day we shot, was the scene with him in the car in Reno, and immediately Zach and I looked at each other behind the monitor and were like, “That’s him. That’s Vince.” It was like we didn’t know exactly who he was before that. And in that moment, we just knew, “We get this. We know exactly who this is now.”
Was he always going to die at the end?
Baylin: That was always the intention. There was always this sense of it being a sacrifice at the end. It’s seeded very early in the show. Vince alludes to [suicidal thoughts] early on, and I think there was always a sense of inevitability to that. When Kate said Vince was originally darker, he was more of a depressive character than Jason actually portrayed him to be.
He has a lot of confidence in the show for someone who has f—ked up so much. He still feels incredibly emboldened and righteous in his decisions and his way of life. That was something amazing that Jason brought to it. And because Jason is such an engaging and charismatic person, that final act for Vince, I think it feels cathartic and almost giving to Jake in a way that we definitely wanted it to feel, but we weren’t sure we could evoke on the page.
Was there ever a moment when you considered swapping his and Jake’s fates?
Baylin: Back when we pitched it to Jason and Jude and Netflix, this was the ending. Not necessarily the location of where it happens, but the idea was always that Vince was going to try to help his brother in some way he thought he could.
In the end, are we meant to assume that Jake willingly sells the Rabbit? Or is it forcibly taken away from him?
Baylin: I think he has to sell the restaurant so that it doesn’t exist anymore. He goes on to have a much humbler career, but I think he is also unshackled from that kind of ambition that previously drove him. We built that restaurant. There was a real exterior and then we had an amazing production designer, Alex DiGerlando, who built the three stories of that restaurant on a set. That became like our home. We wrote episodes seven and eight in the restaurant, so it was really heartbreaking when we broke it down.
Susman: Once Vince is gone and Jake is in that moment outside the restaurant where he is waiting for the detective to come down, it’s kind of like that part of his life is over now. He’s ready to make a break from that.
The Rabbit is such an integral part of the series. Was there a part of you that didn’t want to let it go, either?
Baylin: There was a lot of talk in the writer’s room about what would happen to the restaurant. I remember we were like, ‘We don’t know. Maybe it continues,’ and everyone else said, ‘This restaurant is f—ked. No one is going back to eat at the restaurant where all this happened.’ We were like, ‘Yeah, OK.’ In the end, we had to be like Jake and reluctantly give it up.
Jake loses almost everything, but he also seems more at peace at the end. How do you feel about where he ends up?
Susman: A lot of the show is about ambition and the ambition of being a New Yorker, for starters. Everyone who lives here, has spent time here, knows exactly what that is and the kind of buzz, armor and blood pressure you have to find to make it in the city. So the story for Jake is really about what end he is pursuing and what that ambition ultimately does to him.
Baylin: When we meet Jake, he’s got a mask on. He’s wearing this black suit and he’s driving this car that is an embodiment of him. He’s on his phone when he should be with his son. It’s not a huge transition, but by the end of it, he’s sort of unshackled himself from some of the veneer from before. He takes the subway. He walks his son to school. I think he’s tried to stop reaching for something that was maybe an ideal of what he wanted his life to be and is trying to be at peace with something simpler.
The finale ends with “Isle of Joy.” Given how much tragedy occurs in “Black Rabbit,” it’d be easy to view that needle drop as a bit cynical. How do you see it?
Baylin: I don’t think that is meant to be viewed as sardonic. I see it as more hopeful — in a kind of yearning and nostalgic way.
