The Men of Arrested Development Look as Bad as You’ve Heard in That Interview

Earlier tonight the New York Times published an interview with most of the cast of Arrested Development, and by the end of it pretty much all the men on the show look like big assholes. Sopan Deb of the Times interviewed almost the entire cast at once, and during the course of the conversation Jessica Walter broke down crying while talking about Jeffrey Tambor’s verbal harassment of her on set. The other men in the room—Jason Bateman, David Cross, Will Arnett and Tony Hale—all defend Tambor, trying to provide cover by saying, in various different ways, that everybody’s had to deal with tensions on set, or by indulging in pretentious actor speak about how sometimes people’s “processes” lead to conflict. As Hale says, “we’ve all had moments.” And although Walter says she’s forgiven Tambor, she makes a point of disagreeing with her castmates about on-set abuse. “Jason says this happens all the time,” Walter says. “In like almost 60 years of working, I’ve never had anybody yell at me like that on a set.”

Here’s a 77-year-old actress with over 50 years of experience saying that nobody has ever treated her on set like Jeffrey Tambor did, and every other man in the cast (save Michael Cera, who was not there) tries to downplay Tambor’s harassment and dismiss Walter’s obvious pain. Every actor in that room except Walter and Alia Shawkat, who briefly speaks up during this exchange, look awful in this interview. The Times even posted an audio clip of Walter’s comments about Tambor, and it sounds even worse than it reads. Walter’s openly disrespected by her castmates, who we can see try to gaslight her in real time and convince her that whatever Tambor did wasn’t as bad as she thinks.

If you haven’t read the interview yet, you can find it here. The conversation about Tambor and his history of harassment begins about halfway down the page.

Tambor, of course, was fired from Transparent after being accused of sexual harassment by two actors on the show. He will still appear in Arrested Development’s fifth season, which will be out on Netflix next Tuesday. There’s been no word on if he’ll return for any potential future seasons of the show, but in this same interview Bateman resolutely says he won’t do the show without Tambor. After this ugly bit of business, the deeply mixed reaction to season four, and the utterly unnecessary season four remix, it’s hard to see how many people would want more Arrested Development, anyway.