Jude Law and Jason Bateman play mutually toxic brothers in Black Rabbit, a new Netflix crime drama set amid the seedy underside of the downtown New York restaurant scene. Photo / Cody Cutter, The New York Times
The two actors play mutually toxic brothers in a new Netflix crime drama set amid the seedy underside of the downtown New York restaurant scene.
By their own admission, Jude Law and Jason Bateman are not foodies. And yet, last year they found themselves at a series of tasting menu outings together, choosing among entrees – lamb shank en papillote, a Caribbean-inspired soft-shell crab sandwich – “like we were getting married,” Bateman said. “Like, ‘Do you like that one, honey?’ ‘Ooh, I love it!’ ”
Law, laughing: “We were choosing side plates, and glasses.”
It was all prep for their new eight-episode limited series, Black Rabbit, which is available to stream on Netflix. Law and Bateman play friction-fuelled brothers, and the show, set in a fictional buzzy restaurant in Lower Manhattan, pairs and pits them in a high-stakes dramatic thriller. The Bear, with its hero shots of mise-en-place, it’s not. Here, the menus may be delectable, but they are a backdrop.
In a way, the chases and sloppy violence are too. The emotional crux is really about familial bonds laid bare by ambition and greed.
“It goes back probably to the earliest forms of storytelling,” said Law, a co-executive producer with Bateman on the series. “Warring brothers, loving brothers, opposites.”
Bateman, who directed the first two episodes, added: “Structurally, being brothers gives you a bank that allows for massive misbehaviour — without destroying the connection.” Marriages can dissolve in divorce. With siblings, “they can literally beat each other up,” he said, and still, “we’re always going to be brothers. You’re [expletive] stuck with me.”
Their union may seem like a head scratch – the elegant Law, 52, is an exemplar of a certain kind of high cheekbone British drama; Bateman, 56, a son of Hollywood, is a comedy staple turned multimedia heavyweight. But they were equally obsessed with assembling the world of Black Rabbit, as the fictional FiDi restaurant is called.
Although the show is contemporary, its creators, the married writers Zach Baylin and Kate Susman, were inspired by the atmospheric scene of hipster-era downtown Manhattan. (Think: Beatrice Inn, Spotted Pig, skinny jeans, the Strokes.) The stars and producers were committed to authenticity, in location and detail, down to the restaurant’s trendy Bo Bo chickens. The writers’ room included a former employee of Babbo, among other ex-restaurant staffers.
Baylin and Susman pitched the project to Bateman and Law, but the actors also sought each other out. Law had been a fan of the dark-yet-wry seaminess that Bateman helped orchestrate on Ozark (2017-22), the Netflix crime caper that he starred in and often directed.
And Bateman was just a fan. “There’s been no one I’ve been more excited about as a new person in my life,” he gushed when Law appeared last year as a guest on SmartLess, the hit podcast Bateman hosts with Will Arnett and Sean Hayes. (Arnett affirmed: “I’ve never seen him so impressed,” he said of Bateman.) They gabbed insatiably about Law’s career: his breakout roles in Gattaca and The Talented Mr. Ripley; box office hits like Sherlock Holmes; and his campy papal legacy, HBO’s The Young Pope and its sequel series, The New Pope, both of which Law starred in and produced.
“Acting’s a weird job,” Law said. “You don’t want to be doing a lot of lonely wandering around. It’s great having a partner; it’s kind of like playing sport.”
Law is the younger brother, Jake Friedken, a seeming slickster who runs Black Rabbit, a clubby town house pub on the verge of major success; he is hoping to parlay it into fancier establishments with less greasy cash flow. Bateman plays Vince, the older miscreant who throws a wrench, and a mean cocktail, into the mix when he returns home, indebted to a mobster (Oscar winner Troy Kotsur, of Coda). Their mix of charisma and chaos shifts throughout the series.
“Together, they kind of make one good brother,” Bateman said.
Susman and Baylin said they couldn’t recall discussions about who would play which character, but Law had partaken in the New York nightlife of the aughts, which made it fitting for him to slide into Jake. And having Bateman go somewhat against his strait-laced type gave everyone a frisson.
“He took it further than we could have ever dreamed of,” Susman said. (The beard was Bateman’s idea.)
Reviews of the series, from its premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, have been mixed, but they praise the leads’ chemistry. Their on-screen relationship pops “because they’re so different,” said Laura Linney, who played Bateman’s wife in Ozark, and who directed Episodes 3 and 4 of Black Rabbit. She also starred with Law in the 2016 movie Genius.
“Jude is an incredibly, uniquely refreshing person to be around,” she said. “He’s just positive, and a wellspring of circulation. He’s a great de-stresser.”
And Bateman? “He’s a galvaniser,” Linney said. “His enthusiasm is contagious.”
Their approach to performance was quite distinct. Law would invent lengthy back stories for the brothers – their childhood tales, what fuelled their love and rivalry – and send them to Bateman. But Bateman wasn’t deep into bios. “He just sort of went, ‘Sounds good to me,’” Law recalled, laughing.
As the director of the first block of episodes, Bateman juggled all the foundational details; he was planning camera moves while scripts were being written. “Jason is the fastest mind I’ve ever been around on set,” said Baylin, who is an Oscar-nominated screenwriter for King Richard. For his part, Law did not shirk from intensity. In one emotional scene, Baylin recalled, the episode’s director, Justin Kurzel, told Law to chuck his shoes into traffic and walk away barefoot. Law went for it.
![With siblings, “they can literally beat each other up,” Bateman said, and still, “we’re always going to be brothers. You’re [expletive] stuck with me.” Photo / Cody Cutter, The New York Times](https://www.nzherald.co.nz/resizer/v2/PY6S2AWMTZH3ZC3WL7EAPQWD5M.jpg?auth=2c9f4427c4d2cf2eb19dcd70a21775307d4488369eaf6e96801e02dc9cb7e026&width=16&height=14&quality=70&smart=true)
In another moment, Vince and Jake are battling by the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. “Cars were whizzing by at 80 miles an hour, and they were there in their underwear for six hours,” winding each other up, Susman said.
Visually, the series is moodily lit, a noir shot mostly on hand-held cameras, underscoring how unsettled things are in this world. The Friedkens are Coney Island kids who first tasted fame as indie rockers, meaning the soundtrack is heavy on New York City acts like Interpol and the Beastie Boys. Albert Hammond Jr., the Strokes guitarist, wrote the songs for the brothers’ fictional band, the Black Rabbits, glimpsed in flashback. (Vince’s wardrobe is heavy on vintage band T-shirts, like Pixies and Sonic Youth. A few, Bateman said gleefully, ended up in his own closet.)
Visiting the defunct bar that served as Black Rabbit’s exterior location for a photo shoot, Bateman and Law pasted stickers with the show’s logo around the neighbourhood, near the South Street Seaport.
“I feel like an outlaw,” Bateman said, as he climbed a traffic barrel.
Hardly. Although he had a wild period in his 20s, Bateman is now constitutionally mild. At one point, he revealed that he was suffering because the day before, as part of his Black Rabbit promo, he had taped the talk series Hot Ones, in which guests nibble high-spice wings. “This is the level of commitment I have,” he said. “My GI is on fire.” (The food metaphors Law and Bateman had been employing took a different turn after this – dad joke stuff.)
They are both fathers: Law has seven children, ranging in age from adults to two preschoolers with his wife of six years, Phillipa Coan, a psychologist. Bateman has two teenage daughters with his wife, Amanda Anka, an actress and producer. His eldest had just started studying film in college, he said proudly, continuing a family lineage. Bateman’s father, Kent Bateman, has also worked as a director.
“He’d take me to the movie theatres instead of the park, and I got really interested in acting and directing,” Bateman said. He first directed television at 18 – an episode of, which he also starred in.
In Black Rabbit, the brothers’ drive threatens to lead them astray. In real life, Bateman and Law propelled each other to expand.
On Ozark, Bateman had pushed Linney, a celebrated stage and screen actor, to direct, and he turned that same cheerleading on to Law at breakfast. His “set IQ is astonishing,” Bateman said. “His taste is unmatched.”
Law was intimidated by the idea of acting and directing. “I do not know how you compartmentalise all of those necessary decisions,” he said to Bateman.
“You can do it in a second,” Bateman said. He launched into a lengthy pitch, and Law listened intently, ready to be convinced.
Wandering around lower Manhattan later, they never once stopped talking.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Written by: Melena Ryzik
Photographs by: Cody Cutter
©2025 THE NEW YORK TIMES