Tony Hale optimistic about Arrested Development movie, Boldly Going Nowhere TV show

In our never-ending quest to collect comments from every cast member from Arrested Development about the upcoming (please, God, let it happen) film, Paste talked to Tony "Buster Bluth" Hale this week. In addition to his recurring role on NBC's Chuck and his voice work for Despereaux, Hale has been busy acting in films for Steven Soderbergh (The Informant alongside Matt Damon) and The Chapelle Show's Neil Brennan (The Goods: The Don Ready Story alongside Jeremy Piven). He's even in a film debuting at Sundance this year with Jeff Daniels, called Arlen Faber.

But no measure of success on the big or little screen will be enough to keep him from dreaming about an Arrested Development movie. "I want Buster’s hand to become bionic," the actor says from his home in Los Angeles. "All the cast members, we’re all fans of the show. I want to read the script. I want to see what [creator] Mitch [Hurwitz] comes up with. Who knows what will happen? What’s so great about him and [writer] Jim Vallely is they constantly surprise you. I’d love for Liza Manelli to come back and be my love interest. Stuff like that would just be a blast to do again."

A couple of hurdles remain, though. "Pretty much, we’re all willing to do it," he says. "I think it’s a matter of everybody’s schedule just being crazy. After the show, everybody did their own thing. We all had babies. So it’s just tough to pull everybody’s schedule together. And it’s also a matter of the budget and what they can do it for. I’d love for it to happen because I’d love to get together with everybody and just play and have a great time. There are a lot of other factors involved, but it seems like everybody’s excited about it."

Another project he's hoping will get greenlit is an outer-space sitcom pilot he did for Fox, called Boldly Going Nowhere, created by It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia veterans Rob McElhenney, Charlie Day and Glenn Howerton. Hale plays a robot (named Robot), and the show explores what happens on a spaceship in between missions. "We shot the pilot in November, and it is so funny," Hale says. "The captain is afraid of a robot uprising and so his goal is to emasculate me. And he does that by—not that I had much hair to begin with—but he shaves just the front part of my head and leaves my hair in the back. And he also gives me a baby penis. His goal is to just totally break me down so I can’t rise up and [take over] the ship.

If that sounds all sounds both bizarre and little bit familiar, it's just another Hale character getting beaten down by life."I have a string of nervous, neurotic characters that are consistently emasculated," he says, "but Buster was just such a man-child. Robot really wants a spine, where as Buster never really wanted a spine. He was pretty content to keep his dysfunctional relationship with his mother and crave safety his whole life. All Robot wants is to be powerful. He’s tired of being emasculated and wants his spine back. It’s a really fun character to play."

It sounds like Tony Hale fans now have two projects to be praying that they'll see the light of day.

Related links:
News: Ron Howard confirms Arrested Development movie
TV Detail: Arrested Development stars keep making TV better
Tony Hale on  IMDb

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