Earlier this year, Bradley Cooper went viral when he revealed the Wedding Crashers scene that changed his approach to acting. He explained that Vince Vaughn would “destroy” the scene they were doing, and then he’d ask for another take. He was very complimentary of the actor's comedic skills and improv prowess, and now Vaughn’s Bad Monkey co-stars are sharing what it was like to work with “constant comedic genius.”
For a bit of context, Bill Lawrence’s book-to-screen adaptation of Carl Hiaasen’s Bad Monkey just premiered on the 2024 TV schedule. In it Vince Vaughn plays former detective turned restaurant health inspector Andrew Yancy. In the show, he sets out to solve the mystery of a severed arm, and he’s hilarious as he travels around the Florida Keys trying to figure out whodunnit. When I spoke to his co-stars, Charlotte Lawrence and Meredith Hagner, about him during an interview for CinemaBlend they couldn’t help but sing his praises.
Charlotte Lawrence, who plays Caitlin Stripling in the show, spoke about how when she’d shoot scenes with Vaughn, she couldn’t help but notice his “constant comedic genius.” She told me:
I think it's impossible to choose one. Also, remind you that as actors getting to work with him, we have to do multiple takes of a 30-second scene, and [in] every scene he'll say a new funny joke or a new funny line. So we had constant, constant comedic genius humor being, you know, talked at us for hours and hours and hours. And obviously what you guys see is what was chosen to come out at the end of the day. But I can't tell you the amount of jokes that made me keel over in laughter that we had to redo the take because of it. He's so freaking funny.
This falls right in line with what Bradley Cooper said about working with the actor on Wedding Crashers. Vince Vaughn is an incredibly talented improviser, and he’s all for doing lots of takes and trying something new each time, as the cast of Bad Monkey told me.
When Vaughn responded to The Hangover star’s viral awe of him, he noted how much he loves improvising and how it’s like “writing in the moment.” He also explained that it’s “just exciting to give yourself over to that process.” Clearly, that excitement is contagious.
It sounds like that’s what he and Meredith Hagner (who plays Eve Stripling) did as they shot their first scene together in Bad Monkey’s pilot. She recalled the moment when Eve and Yancy met in a car, and her character said he looked like a waiter. They go on to quip at each other about it, but apparently, there was more fun involved that was cut, as she told me:
The pilot, when we had our first scene together was actually the first day of shooting of the whole series. And so it's kind of this, 'Is this tone gonna work? Like, what is this show?' And him and I went on some long thing about being waiters. Of course, that didn't make it in. But actually a bit of his about being a waiter did, and [it] just was so funny... I mean, man, it's really not easy to not ruin a take with Vince Vaughn. I mean, it's nearly impossible to just ‘Meredith part of your job is to not laugh right now, that's not what you're supposed to be doing.’ Very hard.
It sounds “very hard,” but it also sounds incredibly fun! As I spoke with the majority of the Bad Monkey cast about this premiere, a lot of them noted that it was hard to pick one great one-liner from Vince Vaughn, because he was constantly switching up what he’d say with each take. So, I can see why Hagner and Lawrence were so enthusiastic about working with him in the same way Bradley Cooper was.
There’s a reason there are so many great one-liners in both Wedding Crashers and Bad Monkey from Vaughn, and it’s because he’s ready to try something new and fire off a fresh funny line. It makes sense why his co-stars on the Apple TV+ show noted how hard it was to not break in scenes, and it's a testament to his comedic brilliance.
To see Vince Vaughn, Meredith Hagner and Charlotte Lawrence in hilarious action, you can stream Bad Monkey with an Apple TV+ subscription, and catch new episodes every Wednesday.
