Jon Hamm says the Season 2 finale of Apple TV’s “Your Friends & Neighbors,” streaming now, demanded high-stakes underwater filmmaking and tight, elbow-to-elbow action. He also teases where the show may go next, with Coop wrestling over “dark secrets” and wheth
When the story’s men turned an “accident” into a cover-up in the “Your Friends & Neighbors” Season 2 finale. the chaos didn’t stay safely in the script. Jon Hamm describes the sequence as both funny in its absurdity and terrifying in its execution — and he’s still thinking about it as viewers watch the finale. streaming now on Apple TV.
In the penultimate episode. Owen Ashe (James Marsden) appeared to die after slipping on marble tile in his home while chasing Andrew “Coop” Cooper (Jon Hamm) with a gun. Ashe. who had injected himself with ketamine. was enraged after learning that Coop had informed his boss of his place on the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) list.
But on June 5 in the finale, Coop, Barney Choi (Hoon Lee), and a reluctant Nick Brandes (Mark Tallman) tried to dispose of Ashe’s body using his Escalade — and Ashe woke up. He began sparring for his life, attempted to throw Barney from the car, and tried to strangle Coop with a seatbelt.
Hamm, 55, compared the moment to a familiar comedy beat. “There’s a moment in the movie ‘Tommy Boy,’” he says. “where they put a deer in the back of the car, and it goes crazy. That’s what it reminded me of, which is very stupid and silly, but also funny.”
Even with the humor in the image, Hamm says the scene was “a very difficult scene to film,” shaped by tight quarters and the kind of action where limbs have nowhere to go. “There’s all of these elbows and limbs flying everywhere.”
From there, the plot’s mess spills into the practical problem of filmmaking. Nick swerves to miss a deer in the road and ends up in a lake. Nick. Barney. and Coop surface and escape from the submerged vehicle. but Ashe perishes — “for real this time. ” as the moment plays out on screen. To further cover their tracks. the trio decides to move Ashe from the back of the car to the driver’s seat so it will look like he drove into the water.
Hamm says those scenes were both “very fun to do” and “very scary to do,” filmed in a “massive tank” in Connecticut.
“The shooting underwater is a very, very tricky thing,” he says. “Not only because you have to have cameras that go underwater, and electricity and water do not really mix. But also, you have to have human beings that go underwater. And human beings underwater are not a great fit either.”
Hamm’s own comfort in the water comes from his background. He says he’s “a former member of his high school swim team,” adding, “Doing stunts like that is always super fun.”
On screen, the consequences don’t end with the water. After Ashe’s disappearance, residents begin questioning whether he’s alive or dead, with Nick grappling alongside them. Coop, in the finale, sums up the moral slip with the kind of clarity that lands after the adrenaline fades. “The three of us crossed a line that night, and we knew it,” Coop says. “Whether or not we’d get away with it remained to be seen. We shared a secret now − a big one − and I was reminded of an old Ben Franklin quote: ‘Three can keep a secret if two of them are dead.’”.
The finale also closes the door on one set of questions while cracking open another — the ones the characters keep avoiding and the ones viewers keep feeling in their gut. Hamm believes that shift becomes a “driving force” for Season 3.
“That’s going to be, I would imagine,” he says. “How do we keep these dark secrets secret? And should they be kept secret? Should they be secrets at all? Should [Coop] really be involved in any of this? And I think the answer is probably no.”
Hamm ties that pressure to a recurring theme of being dragged back into trouble. “He needs to kind of grow up and get out of this world, but it’s harder and harder to do,” he adds, quoting Michael Corleone from “The Godfather Part III”: “Every time I try to get out, they pull me back in.”
For viewers, the stakes are already visible: the characters’ choices have moved from immediate danger to long-term secrecy. For Hamm. the filmmaking reality is equally blunt — “electricity and water do not really mix. ” and human bodies in underwater action are “not a great fit.” The result is a finale that feels like it’s still moving. even after the credits. with Season 3 poised to answer the question the characters can’t stop asking: what happens after you’ve crossed the line — and can’t quite find your way back?.
Jon Hamm Your Friends & Neighbors Season 2 finale Season 3 plans Apple TV filming underwater massive tank Connecticut OFAC ketamine Escalade James Marsden Hoon Lee Mark Tallman