Justin Theroux was crouched in the passenger seat of a black Chevrolet Suburban creeping through the Lower East Side of Manhattan, looking exactly like you would expect Justin Theroux to look, wearing a black T-shirt, gold aviators and a black Wu-Tang cap pulled low.

It was around 11:30 p.m. on a sweltering Wednesday in August, and he was out on the town with his boys, in this case, the director Cary Joji Fukunaga and the night life impresario Carlos Quirarte. Nights like this happen a lot these days. Mr. Theroux, as you may have heard, is single again.

The evening began with a spirited dinner at Lilia, the impossible-to-get-into pasta temple in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn. Conversations touched on fake news (“There are now actually people who believe the world is flat,” Mr. Theroux said) and D.N.A. ancestry kits (“Part Italian, part French,” he said, to which Mr. Quirarte added, “and 100 percent hot,” without missing a beat).

Sipping a double Tito’s with soda and three limes (never two, never four), Mr. Theroux joked that he wanted to keep the giant robotic sex toy that his character wears in “Maniac,” Mr. Fukunaga’s mind-melding new Netflix psychological thriller, as a souvenir.