Tony Hale on the Return of ‘Arrested Development,’ and Working on ‘Veep’ In the Time of Trump — Turn It On Podcast
“Veep” star Tony Hale admits it’s a little strange to turn on CNN these days.
As much as the writers on “Veep” go to “such extremes,” Hale said he’ll then watch the news. “What? That was supposed to be a plot line, that wasn’t supposed to be actually happening!”
Welcome to 2017, when the awful characters on “Veep” seem more competent than our real-life leaders. At least on “Veep,” Hale noted, Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ Selina Meyer knows how to fake it.
“The wild thing is Selina behind the scenes is a nightmare,” Hale said. “But when the cameras are on, she turns it on. Some people in the news, they’re not even worried about game face. She turns it on and off and some people in the news don’t turn it on!”
Hale was just nominated for his fifth Emmy Award in the supporting actor in a comedy category, which he previously won in 2013 and 2015.
Gary, the long-suffering bag man for now former and perhaps future president Selina Meyer, isn’t the only iconic TV character from Hale. Just this week he started production on Season 5 of “Arrested Development,” where he plays man-child Buster, the youngest member of the dysfunctional Bluth clan.
IndieWire’s Turn It On caught up with Hale to discuss the recently concluded season of “Veep,” and what he’s looking forward to as he steps back on to the “Arrested Development” stage.
On the continued revival of “Arrested Development,” Hale said, “How often do you get to do a character and then say goodbye to that character and then come back and do that same character again?”
Getting back into character as Buster isn’t easy, but Hale has found a way: “I always get a little bit nervous coming back and doing Buster because I always think, can I match whatever the expectations are? And then I always try to get some time with Jessica Walter, who plays Lucille Bluth, because right when she starts saying Buster’s name in her passive aggressive degrading tone, it’s just like a Pavlovian response.”
Beyond “Veep” and “Arrested Development,” Hale can currently be seen in Paramount’s “Transformers: The Last Knight,” was also recently cast on Clint Eastwood’s new film, “The 15:17 to Paris,” and will also soon be seen opposite Jennifer Garner in 20th Century Fox’s “Simon vs. The Homo Sapiens Agenda” and in Netflix’s “A Series of Unfortunate Events.”
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