SPOILER ALERT: This article contains spoilers from the first season of “Black Rabbit” now available to stream on Netflix.
Restaurant hospitality is the last thing to be found inside Netflix’s latest crime thriller, “Black Rabbit.”
The series, created by married couple Zach Baylin and Kate Susman, drew inspiration from New York’s dynamic nightclub and restaurant culture, which laid the groundwork for the show’s atmosphere. Its stars Law and Bateman also serve as executive producers.
Although set in the present day, the series draws inspiration from New York City’s dark past — specifically the downfall and eventual closure of the influential gastropub, the Spotted Pig. Once the hottest restaurant in the mid-2000s, it shut down in 2020 after owner Ken Friedman settled lawsuits from former employees alleging sexual harassment.
The high-stakes tale centers on estranged Brooklyn brothers and restaurant co-founders Jake (Law) and Vince Friedken (Bateman) and the chaos that unravels after Vince unexpectedly returns home.
Jake is the ambitious and charismatic owner of Black Rabbit, a restaurant and VIP lounge that is on the cusp of becoming the city’s hottest spot. Vince returns to their shared business, bringing immeasurable trouble along the way with his gambling debt that places both brothers in a never-ending spiral of madness and havoc.
Below, Law and the creators spoke with Variety about Jake and Vince’s destructive relationship, pulling inspiration from New York City’s toxic nightlife and dining culture, that shocking final death and more.
Jude Law: Working with Zach and Kate drew me to the project. We’ve had positive experiences as friends and creatives on “The Order.” It’s important that if you meet people that you can trust and work well with, it’s great to nurture those relationships. Also, this was an irresistible piece. I knew the New York they wanted to recreate and the energy that was going to permeate a story. I loved the potential of this relationship at the heart of it. These brothers were good guys, but they were doing bad things and making a mess. I loved Jake, because he looked incredibly together from one angle. Then, slowly, he’s unpeeled. You realize that it is a facade and he has problems, a past and a relationship with a destructive brother.
Law: It was important that he wasn’t likable. I find complicated, contradictory and dark characters fascinating to bring to life. It doesn’t mean that you don’t necessarily empathize with them or understand where they’re coming from. I liked that he was multifaceted. You see a side of him where he’s very charming and good at handling people. Then you see an underbelly revealing that is reminiscent of holding a microscope up to one’s life. People have many sides to them.
Law: He is incredibly well-prepared. He knows himself and what he can do so incredibly well, which is vital. When you’ve got a great map and know what you need to get from a scene, you can play within that loosely. That’s a great place to be. He has a superpower, and you can’t help but like him. He can do awful things as a character, and you can forgive. That was a smart piece of casting and a cool contribution to this character in particular.
Law: What happens is you express yourself in certain ways, and you’ll get lost in a scene. The longer we played these parts, the more I felt Jake’s love for his brother. The first time when we shot the scene when Vince first came back, I didn’t know how I was going to greet him. When we hugged, it felt right to be like, “Oh man, he’s back and alright.” It taught me very quickly about how they felt about each other. I didn’t necessarily plan for that.
Law: The best way to understand Jake away from Vince is really in that very first section, before Vince comes back. As soon as Vince is in his orbit, his consciousness changes. When you see him at the beginning, he is ambitious, reaching for another goal, keeping himself together, moving on, thinking it’s all right to paper over the cracks and get on with life. He puts on a smile and works hard. That’s him at his best. As soon as Vince steps back into his orbit, he’s constantly aware that he has to put out a fire.
Law: It stems back to what happened between them as children with their father. He recognizes that it altered his brother’s course irrevocably and left him with guilt and a broken sense of morality and spirit. Before that, not only was he his big brother and he idolized him, but he was also an inventive, creative spirit who continues to put the band together. But he also has the capacity to blow the band up. That’s the idea of the Rabbit. He protects him boundlessly because he recognizes the damage that he’s carrying.
Zach Baylin: They’re like two sides of the same coin. It’s an incredibly co-dependent relationship. There would be no Jake without Vince, and no Vince without Jake. Vince is a character that we always looked at as being this beacon of charisma, talent and possibility that got curdled somewhere. It was that idea of who Vince was for Jake at an early age, and how some people are more capable of taking an idea, dealing with life’s curveballs and being able to manifest something into success. Those aren’t always the people with the ideas. Celebrating someone else’s success, while at the same time being incredibly envious of it, is something that everyone can understand in a lot of people’s relationships.
Kate Susman: When we lived in New York, we loved the nightclub and restaurant culture. We were excited and intoxicated by what was going on behind these velvet ropes. As the stories unfolded of sexual harassment at several places that we knew about, it was very interesting to see the difference between what we saw and experienced at the forefront and what was happening there. When you flipped on a light or asked people what was really happening in their job, it was horrifying. These were huge scandals that we ate up. We loved this idea of selling an image and putting on a show that feels very sexy, inviting and exciting, and then learning what’s really going on there.
Baylin: We took a lot of inspiration from also reading and watching Anthony Bourdain. He talked a lot about his love and drew to the restaurant industry his attraction to this pirate lifestyle. People who didn’t want to work a 9 to 5. People who were willing to and excited to be in a workplace that anything could happen. People who were a bit lawless – there’s a real excitement to that. When you play that close to the fire, something bad is going to eventually happen. We were interested in where that line is and when it gets crossed.
Susman: We always knew this was meant to be a limited series. We always knew that that was kind of where it was going to end for the brothers. Vince made the only and final sacrifice he felt like he could make to help Jake. We went through rounds of how that might happen and how Jake might be able to survive after that. That was always the finish line for that character Vince was moving toward. He begins as a very selfish character and can’t act beyond what’s in front of his face. He makes a decision that he feels will free his brother from what he has brought him.
Baylin: We always knew this was meant to be a limited series. We talked a lot about the idea of familial bonds also being anchors sometimes. It was this co-dependent relationship, and, not to valorize what Vince does, but I think that there was a sense of him trying to rid Jake. That felt organic to who Vince was and his story. But it felt like the natural place where it was always going to end.
Susman: It’s a tragedy. That was how we set out to tell the story. There’s hope in it. But we always knew that it was a tragic tale of brothers.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
