‘Bad Boy’ Co-Creator Ron Leshem: ‘The Human Capacity to Feel Compassion and Empathy for Those Who Are Different Is Dying’
Speaking to Variety ahead of the International Emmy Awards where his compelling coming-of-age series “Bad Boy” vies for a Best Dramatic Series award, Ron Leshem reflects on what brought him to create the show alongside Daniel Amsel, who co-created the original Isreali “Euphoria” with him, actress-writer-director Hagar Ben-Asher (“The Slut,” “Prisoners of War”) and Amit Cohen, a co-creator-writer on “Red Skies” and “No Man’s Land.”
The eight-episode series debuted on Netflix in early May where it ranked number one in 22 territories for multiple weeks in some, particularly in Israel where it made a sweep of the Israeli Academy Awards for Television, including best drama. It has been a massive success on local network HOT, which has just ordered a second season. Netflix is working on a U.S. version of the series.
Based on comedian Daniel Chen’s real-life story, the series follows teenager Dean (Guy Menaster), who spends much of his teen years in a juvenile detention facility for peddling drugs, among other offenses. It is here where he discovers his talent for comedy and the value of genuine friendship. Once free, decades later, he changes his name to Daniel Chen and becomes a renowned stand-up comedian. Chen plays his adult self and co-created the series.
According to Leshem, they cast non-actors, using the same method they worked with on the original “Euphoria.” Haytamo Farda, who plays Dean’s cellmate and unlikely best friend Zion Zoro, was discovered on an audition day at his boarding school where he was not even planning to become an actor but was reeled in by the casting director.
An entire prison set was built inside a Scouts camp of the National Youth Movement. Some scenes were shot across some real prisons in their bid for authenticity.
Show had its North American premiere in at the Toronto Festival and won best TV drama at the Berlin Seriencamp this year.
It is produced and co-financed by Sipur and Peter Chernin’s North Road Company, with HOT and Tedy Productions producing.
The 53rd International Emmy Awards Gala will take place in New York City on November 24, 2025.
Leshem talked to Variety about the series, what it has meant to him, his collaboration with fellow writers and how his personal research on juvenile prisons informed the show, and possibly more in the future.
You’ve said you made the show because of the death of empathy. Daniel Chen’s stand-up act is an invitation to empathy: also seeing the world from the POV of a young con. Could you comment?
Initially I planned to make ‘Bad Boy’ American, but executives in Hollywood asked me to write ‘Oz with kids’ and that was the last thing I wanted. I also did not want to manipulate the viewer with questions about whether the hero will be murdered or won’t survive. I wanted a dedication to a journey of love, even towards characters you are angry at, like his mother, for example.
Much like in ‘Euphoria,’ I was very drawn to exploring the impact of trauma or childhood mistakes on a person’s trajectory and on the ability to heal and conquer your own destiny. But what changed in me since ‘Euphoria’ is that it seems the human capacity to feel compassion and empathy for those who are different is dying, it is an epidemic, and drama is the only tool I know to fight and believe that we can transform the world. I look these days, in my writing, to live inside an overflow of emotional whirlpools of all kinds together, which will surprise me and also challenge me to be empathetic towards those who my instinct blocks.
And would you see empathy, so needed in the past and present Israel-Palestine conflict, a theme running through your past works such as “No Man’s Land” “and “Red Skies”?
I have written anti-war works and about peace since the day I started writing, but in the last two years I have lost so many people I loved, that right now writing is often a tool for me to escape reality, to lock myself away at home in Boston with the kids and the keyboard, and start looking for light and healing.
Dean’s relationship with his cellmate Zoro is based on Dean seeing beyond Zoro’s reputation as a psychotic killer. Could you comment?
Dean looks at a boy whom everyone says is a sociopathic killer, and everyone wants to kill, and Dean is drawn to him, initially like a moth to a flame and out of destructive curiosity and a desire to know if Zoro is really what they say he is, but then he falls in love with him. Zoro is the first kid who laughs at his humor.
Hagar, Amit, Daniel Amsel, yourself. You all have extraordinary careers as writers, how did your writers’ room or collaboration work?
Hagar is a truly bold and stunning filmmaker who, like me, often finds herself drawn by Hollywood to make commercial hits as well, but we are always looking together for a way to reinvent genres, break the rules and surprise. Every creator in the room brought a different voice that tries to surprise ourselves. Viewers today become accessible with the click of a button to everything that has ever been produced for the screen, so there is no point in recreating something for them that has already been done. We must challenge with things that no one has ever created. This is also the answer to AI in its current form.
How much of your time investigating life in prisons informed your scripts? Are there possibly other people you met during your two weeks of research there that could spawn another kind of show?
As a twenty-year-old journalist I locked myself up for two weeks in prison with inmates aged 12-18, and ever since, I’ve been trying to write it. Even the first pitch of ‘Euphoria’ was actually the voice of an inmate I met there, but all the executives insisted that the audience was not ready for it, so we went in a different direction. Daniel was also a 13-year-old inmate when I arrived, and he became a comedian in prison so his story is the birth of a comedian’s soul. The truth is, there are a few other stories I came across there that are no less powerful, which I hope I’ll have a chance to tell.
Animation is used in some scenes. Could you comment on why you chose to use it?
We really wanted an unreliable narrator, emotional realism but not one hundred percent realism, because the world is created according to how that boy’s filter remembers it. We also wanted to break genres and surprise, soar through imagination and flash with light and fun.
Season 2 of “Bad Boy” has been greenlit by HOT, can you give us a hint on where this will take us?
This is a crime show, dark and comedic, about the birth of a comedian who has a split personality between the soul that dreams of becoming a beloved comedian and the soul that wants to be the most notorious gangster, so the series will also know how to take off outside of prison.
Will you be involved in the writing of the U.S. version of ‘Bad Boy’?
I always want to be involved creatively and as a producer, but in adaptations, I really love bringing in a brilliant filmmaker who will have their own interpretation to add, and not repeat a journey I have already taken myself.
John Hopewell contributed to this article.
The eight-episode series debuted on Netflix in early May where it ranked number one in 22 territories for multiple weeks in some, particularly in Israel where it made a sweep of the Israeli Academy Awards for Television, including best drama. It has been a massive success on local network HOT, which has just ordered a second season. Netflix is working on a U.S. version of the series.
Based on comedian Daniel Chen’s real-life story, the series follows teenager Dean (Guy Menaster), who spends much of his teen years in a juvenile detention facility for peddling drugs, among other offenses. It is here where he discovers his talent for comedy and the value of genuine friendship. Once free, decades later, he changes his name to Daniel Chen and becomes a renowned stand-up comedian. Chen plays his adult self and co-created the series.
According to Leshem, they cast non-actors, using the same method they worked with on the original “Euphoria.” Haytamo Farda, who plays Dean’s cellmate and unlikely best friend Zion Zoro, was discovered on an audition day at his boarding school where he was not even planning to become an actor but was reeled in by the casting director.
An entire prison set was built inside a Scouts camp of the National Youth Movement. Some scenes were shot across some real prisons in their bid for authenticity.
Show had its North American premiere in at the Toronto Festival and won best TV drama at the Berlin Seriencamp this year.
It is produced and co-financed by Sipur and Peter Chernin’s North Road Company, with HOT and Tedy Productions producing.
The 53rd International Emmy Awards Gala will take place in New York City on November 24, 2025.
Leshem talked to Variety about the series, what it has meant to him, his collaboration with fellow writers and how his personal research on juvenile prisons informed the show, and possibly more in the future.
You’ve said you made the show because of the death of empathy. Daniel Chen’s stand-up act is an invitation to empathy: also seeing the world from the POV of a young con. Could you comment?
Initially I planned to make ‘Bad Boy’ American, but executives in Hollywood asked me to write ‘Oz with kids’ and that was the last thing I wanted. I also did not want to manipulate the viewer with questions about whether the hero will be murdered or won’t survive. I wanted a dedication to a journey of love, even towards characters you are angry at, like his mother, for example.
Much like in ‘Euphoria,’ I was very drawn to exploring the impact of trauma or childhood mistakes on a person’s trajectory and on the ability to heal and conquer your own destiny. But what changed in me since ‘Euphoria’ is that it seems the human capacity to feel compassion and empathy for those who are different is dying, it is an epidemic, and drama is the only tool I know to fight and believe that we can transform the world. I look these days, in my writing, to live inside an overflow of emotional whirlpools of all kinds together, which will surprise me and also challenge me to be empathetic towards those who my instinct blocks.
And would you see empathy, so needed in the past and present Israel-Palestine conflict, a theme running through your past works such as “No Man’s Land” “and “Red Skies”?
I have written anti-war works and about peace since the day I started writing, but in the last two years I have lost so many people I loved, that right now writing is often a tool for me to escape reality, to lock myself away at home in Boston with the kids and the keyboard, and start looking for light and healing.
Dean’s relationship with his cellmate Zoro is based on Dean seeing beyond Zoro’s reputation as a psychotic killer. Could you comment?
Dean looks at a boy whom everyone says is a sociopathic killer, and everyone wants to kill, and Dean is drawn to him, initially like a moth to a flame and out of destructive curiosity and a desire to know if Zoro is really what they say he is, but then he falls in love with him. Zoro is the first kid who laughs at his humor.
Hagar, Amit, Daniel Amsel, yourself. You all have extraordinary careers as writers, how did your writers’ room or collaboration work?
Hagar is a truly bold and stunning filmmaker who, like me, often finds herself drawn by Hollywood to make commercial hits as well, but we are always looking together for a way to reinvent genres, break the rules and surprise. Every creator in the room brought a different voice that tries to surprise ourselves. Viewers today become accessible with the click of a button to everything that has ever been produced for the screen, so there is no point in recreating something for them that has already been done. We must challenge with things that no one has ever created. This is also the answer to AI in its current form.
How much of your time investigating life in prisons informed your scripts? Are there possibly other people you met during your two weeks of research there that could spawn another kind of show?
As a twenty-year-old journalist I locked myself up for two weeks in prison with inmates aged 12-18, and ever since, I’ve been trying to write it. Even the first pitch of ‘Euphoria’ was actually the voice of an inmate I met there, but all the executives insisted that the audience was not ready for it, so we went in a different direction. Daniel was also a 13-year-old inmate when I arrived, and he became a comedian in prison so his story is the birth of a comedian’s soul. The truth is, there are a few other stories I came across there that are no less powerful, which I hope I’ll have a chance to tell.
Animation is used in some scenes. Could you comment on why you chose to use it?
We really wanted an unreliable narrator, emotional realism but not one hundred percent realism, because the world is created according to how that boy’s filter remembers it. We also wanted to break genres and surprise, soar through imagination and flash with light and fun.
Season 2 of “Bad Boy” has been greenlit by HOT, can you give us a hint on where this will take us?
This is a crime show, dark and comedic, about the birth of a comedian who has a split personality between the soul that dreams of becoming a beloved comedian and the soul that wants to be the most notorious gangster, so the series will also know how to take off outside of prison.
Will you be involved in the writing of the U.S. version of ‘Bad Boy’?
I always want to be involved creatively and as a producer, but in adaptations, I really love bringing in a brilliant filmmaker who will have their own interpretation to add, and not repeat a journey I have already taken myself.
John Hopewell contributed to this article.