How Nick Bakay, Co-Creator of ‘Bookie’ Tapped Into His Unique Flavor Profile

From Emmy^®-nominated creator Chuck Lorre (“The Big Bang Theory”) and Nick Bakay, this darkly funny comedy follows veteran Los Angeles bookie Danny (Sebastian Maniscalco) as the potential legalization of sports gambling in California threatens to upend his business for good. Alongside best friend and former NFL player Ray (Omar J. Dorsey), side-hustling sister Lorraine (Vanessa Ferlito), and reluctantly reformed drug dealer Hector (Jorge Garcia), Danny must contend with his increasingly unstable clients as he tries to settle their debts – all while making plenty of risky bets of his own. Full of relatable mishaps, Bookie chronicles one man’s journey to adapt to an ever-changing world as he attempts to charm and con his way to the top.

Screenwriter and actor Nick Bakay has been in the TV game for quite some time. Having lent his talents to shows as a writer on In Living Color to lending his voice to Salem the cat from Sabrina the Teenage Witch, to his most recent creative endeavors with collaborator Chuck Lorre on Mom and The Kominsky Method. Now the two have reteamed for their latest comedy series, Bookie. 

Nick Bakay spoke with Script about his experience creating and developing the comedy series with Chuck Lorre, and shared insight on how his acting background influences character and dialogue motivations, and more!

This interview has been edited for content and clarity.

Sadie Dean: How did this idea come to be and then teaming back up with Chuck Lorre on this one?

Nick Bakay: It's an area that's always been intriguing to me. Years ago, I did a segment about betting football on ESPN on Sports Center, and I certainly have been active in this in my life and in my professional life. So, it's always been a part of my profile. And this is an area that I was kind of sort of playing around with a little bit.

But then Sebastian [Maniscalco] and Chuck connected. And the idea was to come up with something and Chuck approached me saying, ‘Do you want to work together on this?’ And I was delighted to because obviously I have a great relationship with Chuck and I was a big fan of Sebastian's so we started that process - sort of just spit ball and throw things around.

At one point we were talking, what did we see him in that was not just straight-up comedy? And we remembered he was in The Irishman and we both watched him as Crazy Joe Gallo. And he really was really good, and he's in scenes with Pesci and De Niro and it kind of redirected us away from what was probably at the outset. And we just kind of went off to the races. I mentioned to Chuck the bookie area, and I've been playing around with it, and he liked it a lot. And we started to play around with that. And it started to really catch fire. And to Sebastian's credit, we had a meeting with him, and we pitched it to him, and it was a left turn for sure, I think from what we were all assuming we'd do together, but he got it. He liked it. And with him jumping aboard things progressed pretty quickly. And we started writing - we had a blast.

Sadie: There’s so many layers to this show, and one of the things I thought was really fun was how you use LA and the valley, especially Burbank as a character in the background.

Nick: [laughs] You have no idea how gratifying it is to hear you say that. And that delights me because one of the things that I loved about the premise is that you know that there's a lot of the road work in the life of this show is you get the relationship between Ray and Danny - a lot of their life is spent together in that Escalade driving all over Los Angeles. And a lot of their work and their lifestyle is you know, knocking on that door for the envelope, whether it's coming in or going out. And I know some guys who are cops, I know some guys in different lines of work, and they always used to tell me the most dangerous days of their lives was when they had to go into like domestic situations - and I've always thought, well, that's such an interesting thing for a show. If every time you go through an apartment door, you don't know what's waiting on the other side. And I realized that's a big part of the possibilities of this show.

And then LA became a fantastic backdrop because a guy's gonna take a bet from everybody. He'll take it from somebody living in a mansion looking over the ocean in Malibu and he'll take it from factory workers in Downtown.

Sadie: Speaking of Danny and Ray, you guys created a fun motley crew of characters, I'd love to talk about how you guys broke those characters, especially once you brought the rest of the cast on board.

Nick: For us the starting point was, it's no secret that writing this show has been a wonderful deviation from the norm for me and Chuck. We do get to write it in some sort of an Elmore Leonard-adjacent world that people get to be funny and complex in ways that are different from a lot of what we've made our bread and butter with. And we wrote these parts first, very specifically, and really have fun making them rich and weird and interesting.

But boy oh boy, I mean, this is one of the best casting experiences I've ever had because everybody who is playing these parts was absolutely the first choice when we looked at casting, and they were the absolute leaders in the clubhouse when we were looking at people for these parts. And then what happens is there is an alchemy once you get these actors in these roles, you start to understand their voices and their rhythms and all their personalities and it has an influence. It's very interesting as we embark on season two, now that we know the world and the actors and the characters - we hit the ground running a whole different way this year that's been quite remarkable.

Sadie: In terms of just writing dialogue, it does feel very natural and authentic, because of your background as an actor, how much of that background influences what you're writing on the page for these characters from their motivation to their attitude?

Nick: It's definitely been a plus for me. I've been writing these things for a long time and in the earlier stages of my career, I think that was sort of my forte, and that was how I survived. Story and some of the more macro aspects of this were things I really did have to kind of learn on the job. And they were elusive, but pitching in character, pitching and voice and writing dialogue that was not jokey, but that was in character and in the moment, that was always served by my performing career and my sort of improvisational comedy career.

It was always a natural thing for me to put on the mask of whoever the person speaking was, and to just sort of talk in their voice. That's always been a strength. And so that's another reason why the show was fun. This show tonally is closer to what I think my true voice is than anything else I've ever worked on. A lot of a working writer’s life is…we say to be a pro in the industry, that's a part of what you do, you have to be like tofu, you have to jump in the skillet and take on the flavor around you. And that's a very important skill set. But it isn't often that you get to say, ‘I'm using my own flavor profile here,’ and this is that and so writing these characters, they're much more an extension of what I've always wanted to write - so it's been a joy. 

Season One of Bookie is now streaming on Max.