A Hale of an Actor: Buster Bluth Pushes Forward

When Tony Hale heard the news that Buster Bluth had performed his last chicken dance and been attacked by his last loose seal, his first thought was of the new baby daughter at home who needed to be fed. It wasn’t very long ago, after all, that Hale was doing Shakespeare in the parking lot and waiting tables on the side. He worked eight years in the business before his big break came in the role of Buster on Arrested Development, and he wasn’t sure what would be waiting on the other side of the series’ cancellation.

But work poured in, with a role on NBC’s Andy Barker, P.I. and a string of feature films, where he’s turned playing the quirky sidekick into an art form. “I’m pretty confident that Brad Pitt and I aren’t going to be going after the same roles,” Hale says. “As an actor, you accept that you kind of have a type and, initially, all your roles play that certain type. Fortunately, I’ve always been able to do really good writing and I just want to be able to keep doing that.”

Here are some of the many ways Hale will be keeping his daughter in diapers and the rest of us in stitches.

TV

Chuck
The Scoop: Hale appeared midway through last season as Chuck’s supervisor at the Buy More.
Airing: Mondays on NBC
Hale: “As a character actor, especially as a comic side-kick, I just kind of play all different versions of quirky. Sometimes you’re mentally quirky like Buster was. And then other times you’re just like the quirky best friend who’s maybe a little off base or loveable. And then I’m playing this character on Chuck, but he’s quirky in a dark sense. He’s kind of a nemesis.”

Boldly Going Nowhere
The Scoop: The team behind It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia has pitched a new series to Fox that looks like Star Trek meets The Office.
Airing: Please, God, soon on Fox
Hale: “We shot the pilot in November, and it’s so funny. I’m hoping that it happens. But it’s a comedy that looks at what happens on a spaceship in between missions—everyday life on a spaceship. I play an android named Robot. The captain is afraid of a robot uprising, 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.”

FILM

The Goods: The Don Ready Story
The Scoop: Feature-film debut from Neal Brennan of Chappelle’s Show
Release Date: August 2009
Hale: “It’s a comedy about this car dealership that’s going down and a car mercenary, Jeremy Piven, comes in to save the dealership. I play the happy-go-lucky car salesman on the lot, and I’m kind of shocked by the crassness of Piven’s character, but he teaches us his ways on how to sell cars.”

The Informant
The Scoop: Steven Soderbergh directs the true story of an Archer Daniels Midland whistleblower.
Release Date: Sept. 18
Hale: “It’s a dramatic script, but it’s such a crazy story about what happened to this guy, played by Matt Damon, that Soderbergh brought in a lot of comic actors to add our quirky edge—what we bring to the table. We weren’t really punching up the script and making it funny. Just our mannerisms and everything we did added to the chaos of how crazy this story is.”

The Answer Man
The Scoop: Newcomer John Hindman wrote and directed this Sundance entry.
Release Date: Currently on the festival circuit
Hale: “Jeff Daniels plays this spiritual guru that has a crisis in both faith and life. I play this obsessed fan of his, a FedEx guy that always comes to his door to meet him.”

Untitled Arrested Development movie
The Scoop: Creator Mitch Hurwitz is rumored to direct a film version of the brilliant TV comedy.
Release Date: Please, please, please, God, soon
Hale: “All the cast members, we’re all fans of the show. We’re all willing to do it. I think it’s a matter of everybody’s schedule just being crazy. I want to read the script. I want to see what Mitch comes up with. Who knows what will happen? I want Buster’s hand to become bionic. I’d love for Liza Minnelli to come back and be my love interest. Stuff like that would just be a blast to do again.”