Sunday Sitdown with Willie Geist - Jason Bateman

Episode Date: May 27, 2018

Jason Bateman is living a double life these days, playing the leader of the Bluth family in the comedy cult classic “Arrested Development” while also starring in the dark series “Ozark,” where he plays a family man who is in deep trouble with a drug cartel. In this week’s “Sunday Sitdown,” Willie Geist chats with the actor about his lengthy career, from growing up a child star on the sitcom “Silver Spoons,” to facing some dark times in his twenties, to landing “Arrested Development” and his recent success on Netflix. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hey guys, Willie Geist here. Thanks for clicking on. Thanks for downloading. Thanks for checking out. The latest episode of the Sunday Sit Down podcast. It's the podcast where every week we give you the full uncut version of our Sunday today interviews on NBC. Seven or eight minutes is what you're getting on TV.

That's a lot in TV time, but not enough for us. So we set up a podcast and you've been generous and kind enough to listen to these and spend 30 minutes, 40 minutes, an hour, depending on how much time we got with the person. and this week my guest is the hilarious Jason Bateman. Guy's been around show business a long time. I think he first entered my conscience. I kind of missed Little House on the Prairie where he played when he was 12 years old. He rolled into my life when he played bad boy Derek Taylor.

Ricky Schroeder's friend on the show, Silver Spoons, which if you grew up in the 80s and you were a kid, that was kind of one of the jams, wasn't it? He got big from there and he did movies. he did Teen Wolf 2, which was sort of a bomb, frankly, and it hurt him. So he talks about in our interview here in a second, from the ages of 10 through 20, he was doing great on top of the world, had money, took care of his parents, his sister Justine Bateman, who was on family ties, was doing great. And then from 20 to 30, he hit a dry spell.

The phone stopped ringing after he had some, well, some movies that didn't work, some TV that didn't work. And it wasn't until he was 30 years old that he was. was sort of rescued from the abyss by a show called Arrested Development, which came in his early 30s, and much more importantly, by his now wife, Amanda Anka, who, by the way, is the daughter musician Paul Anka. They have two daughters together. So he talks about these sort of peaks and valleys that go decades at a time. He's about to turn 50 years old. He's 49 right now. So we talk about all of it. We get into Arrested Development. We get into the new season of Ozark coming later this year.

He just wrapped that incredible Netflix show, which couldn't be more. different from Arrested Development in its complete darkness, drugs, money laundering, and murder, and the rest of it. So there's a lot to talk about it with Bateman. You may have read at some point this week about an interview that Jason and the cast of Arrested Development did with the New York Times. It was raw. It was emotional.

Jason drew some heat for the way he conducted himself in the interview. He apologized profusely the next day. Unfortunately, that interview took place after he and I spoke, so we didn't get a chance to get into that. with Jason. We did, though, sit down in Central Park. It was a drizzly day, and I want to point all this out because it's an outdoor interview. Picture us sitting at a table at Le Pan Cotidian, overlooking the sheet meadow. Beautiful, beautiful sheet meadow, but it was rainy. You're going to hear some airplanes. You're going to hear some sirens. You're going to hear birds.

You're going to hear lawnmowers. The full, it was, as I said to Jason, it was like a parody of an interview done in New York City. Every sound imaginable. You will. here. You'll get the full New York experience as I sit down for our Sunday sit down podcast with Jason Bateman. So I'm so glad you picked this spot. Outdoors in the rain. It's not my spot. You pick the

outdoor cafe. You're like, hey, let's have a nice light brunch, huh? That's not what happened at all. You want to the green... It's like a steam afterwards, I think you said. Green frothy drink and your kish and the whole bit. Well, you know, I do a full cup of coffee in the morning. And then if I do a second cup of coffee,

she gets jittery. Oh. So I need to go into a green tea. And that's vegan milk in there, like an almond. Los Angeles has penetrated me, and I can't. It's all gone downhill. All my manhood has left me. I've got a quiche in front.

You put the quiche in front. At least I don't have almond toast. I was going to say, I'm not sure this is any better. But if I were to have quiche or almond toast, it would be at Le Pen Cotidian. Yes. Right? Outdoors in the rain. One of the better restaurants in the nation.

No question. No question about it. All right, let's talk arrested. Season 5, so pick it up. Where are we? What's Michael up to? How's the Bluth family doing? Michael Bluth is still thinking that he's smarter than certainly everyone in the family

and most people in 714 area code. But he is actually just as dumb as the rest. He hasn't really gotten any smarter. He's, where is he? He is working at a company that is not Google, but it's called Search, because Google didn't clear. They're not comfortable with some of the content. And then he's drawn back into the family as he always is and tries to save them.

And to be honest, I don't know what the hell goes on in season five. It's beautifully complicated, again, not as complicated as season four. We, they sort of rounded the edges a little bit and made it a little less challenging. Mitch Hurwitz, who's the genius that runs the show, can handle a great deal of plot complexities. I cannot. And since my character is a person that usually has to process a lot of these plot things and stitch them together, I'm always going to him and saying, I get that this works on five levels, but if we make it just two levels, then dingbats like me can follow it. And so he acquiesces every once in a while, and he's done that quite a bit in this season, and it goes down real easy.

It's got to be fun to be on a show where any plot twist or any plot line that is introduced to you seems plausible. A hand is bitten off by a seal, and that's okay. It all works somehow on the rest of development. He does have this incredible creativity, but then a knowledge of how to kind of write backwards from that in order to make it plausible, and make it believable. And, well, yeah, of course they're friends with a guy who has one arm and is then, you know, available to teach a lesson to the family.

So I'm just, I'm astonished at how talented he is. Do you have a sense when you start the season or when you sign up for the new season of where it's going? No. You just walk in cold and he tells you, here's what's happening to Michael. Well, it's less important that you know where it's going.

it's more important to understand the scene that you're saying, again, there's these multi-levels of these jokes. Like there's a regular line, but then what you're saying functions as one joke. What you're playing functions as another joke, and then also what that line means in relation to the following scene is yet another joke, and how it responds to the episode before is another. So you get four bites on the apple on every line, and it takes a lot of help from him to let you know what you need to be playing, what you could be playing. Did you think when the show went off the air in 2006,

after those three seasons, and it later sort of became this cult classic, did you think you'd be playing this role again, or did you think it was done in 2006? Well, there was talk about Showtime was going to do it for a minute, and then Netflix came along. And I remember Mitch saying to me, you know, Netflix is interested in picking the show up. And I said, these are the guys with the envelopes with the DVDs, right?

He said, yeah. But they're doing these scripted shows now. And they would like to, I was like, really? Are people going to watch? He says, I don't know. But they're going to let us do what we want to do. Showtime, great, but a little more restrictions. And this is my ride.

So are we close to the end? I think this is, yeah, we're wrapped. Just, yeah. Grab your tea for the ride. But so there was an idea that it was going to keep going a little bit, but certainly I didn't think we were going to be doing it 15 years later. How about that idea that it became a cult classic after the fact? It was canceled by a network, a traditional network,

and it just grew from there. Did that surprise you? I know I actually picked it up after 2006. I bought, like for Christmas, I got that DVD pack for the whole three seasons and got sucked into it. And it sort of grew from there, right? It did. There was a vocal minority that started to make some noise.

And since it was moving off of a broadcast network and into something a little bit more sort of fringe, that small of an audience was enough. So there was a sense that maybe this could have a little bit of a life. Should we, though? Like, is that enough of an audience to really warrant? you know, coming on out again and saying, hey, we're here again, and there was a concern about there would be a big like, who cares, which to a certain extent there was, there is, but at least

there's enough that cares where we're not wasting our time. I'm glad we didn't do the movie because that would have been a big, you know, like, well, we're worth a movie, and I think box office results would have been depressing. Well, it's impressive that you had the self-awareness to know that. Most people don't. Yeah. Well, it's been drilled into me. Humility is a, deep part of my soul. Your plane's back. He's now taken off.

He's tired of waiting. He left. You left. You have to catch the next. Cop told him to keep moving. You talked a little bit about Netflix, the red envelopes. What's that experience like as an actor to have that level of creativity where you're not agonizing over every half a data point in the demo and all those things you have to worry about at a network?

Yeah, it's for the portion of your audience, it doesn't understand or care about ratings. basically, you know, usually you need to have X number of people watching your show to keep the lights on. With Netflix, it's more about pleasing enough of the subscribers to warrant the budget that they're giving you. So it's kind of an apples-to-apples metric. And that's really comforting because it all ends up just becoming about the merits. Like the show keeps going because that portion of the audience still likes the show. or they hear more is coming, so they keep their subscription up to date. And it's not about checking the overnights and seeing,

did we build on our lead-in? Is there a drop-off after our show? Which is a correlation to ad revenue. And so without getting into the weeds, it is great that you can just concentrate on what it is that you're making for the specific people you're making it for, as opposed to constantly trying to get more and more in so that your ad rates can go higher. You now have a couple experiences with Netflix. Is this the best creative experience you've had in your career?

Yeah, their reputation is very well earned. They have a very light touch without also being a doormat. You know, like there's a healthy level of indifference in that they defer to the creatives that they hire, which makes a lot of common sense, but it's surprising how rare that is. They'd let the creatives do the creative work, and they do all the other sort of adult stuff

that we dingbat, you know, creatives need, like figuring out how to market the show and how to distribute it and make sure the light stay on. Ozark was, for me, seeing you on that show, knowing you as a great comedic actor, watching you through a rest of development. Not good, tough transition. No, I was right there with you. Because the baitment of it all was still there, your demeanor and the way you delivered lines, but obviously in a completely different and much darker context.

When that script came to you, did you think, yeah, I can pull this off, or was that like a little bit of a scary departure for you? Well, I mean, it wasn't scary just because I don't take real big comedic swings or big dramatic swings. I really enjoy playing the guy that's us. So in a drama or a thriller, I'm the guy running from the guy with a knife. And in a comedy, I'm the guy reacting to the person who's saying something funny. So my role is kind of stay close to the median. and so toggling between the two is usually not much of a big creative challenge. Which is good because I've a limited skill set.

The Ozark was really an attractive thing to me as a director. I was like, well, this is something with a lot of mood and, you know, would demand that it be shot and scored and edited and lit in a way that, like the films that I love to watch, the TV shows that I love to watch. I'm a big David Fincher fan or Paul Thomas. Anderson and these guys have a very keen visual sense and and really enjoy working with multiple departments to create an environment that fits the content and there's a there's a sonic component to that and that visual thing and

and so I thought well if they let me direct all these I'd love to do it and they said yes and ultimately we couldn't create enough time for me to prep all the episodes so I just ended up doing four of the ten but as a executive producer I get to oversee the whole thing which which kind of satisfied some of the same kind of creative challenge I was looking for, you know. Yeah, you know, it's one of those things, I'm sure, for you where you think something is good and you put something out there, but you never know how people are going to respond to it. And unlike Arrested, which had that sort of slow burn and found its audience down the road, this thing was a hit quickly.

Well, I mean, I don't know. I mean, Netflix does not share their data. It is, it's, well, you get another season or you don't. But it's in the cultural bloodstream. People talk about it. They watch it. I mean, again, I don't know. Maybe it's just me then.

Well, but I mean, but your, what your feedback is really valuable to me, like what you hear, because you're going to hear people that don't like the show. People who don't like the show shut up when they walk by me. You know, I only hear from the people who like the show. So I'm in a hundred percent bubble. And so I have to kind of bake that into what I'm thinking about, whether it's landing with people. But yeah, I didn't know if it was, if it was going to catch. John, there's so much good stuff to watch and how you manage to cut through the clutter

is kind of in the ether. I don't know how, I mean, Netflix being such a powerful company and has such reach and resources to build kind of a profile that drives kind of a social pressure to watch something sometimes because of the saturation sometimes with marketing is really helpful that other companies might not be able to do for you. and we're very grateful that they lend some of that to us. And are you going to do a bunch of directing in season two as well? I did only the first two of this season.

We just finished this second season. Oh, it's wrapped? Yeah, last week. Can you give us anything on it, at least where they are? I die in the third episode. I don't know if that might be a spoiler. No, I think you're good. Yeah, no, good.

Yeah, people aren't going to care about that. No, as Linney is still there. I make it through. Linny makes it through. But yeah, there's some bloodshed, and there's obviously there's a big escalation in plot and in stakes and in that general sense of unsettling, you know, domestic. It's not a comfortable ride for them there. And the writing staff did a really great job at ramping things up without putting that typical and predictable throttle drop.

Oh, second season, we got a stuff's got to go sideways. It's a, it's a pretty disciplined on and off there. And we don't want you to get desensitized to danger or violence. And so they're really great about, now this episode is just going to be about laying some domestic pipe. And then in the next one, it's, well, now we're back with the money and the gun. And I don't know how they do that, but I'm lucky to be a part of a lot of good people doing it. a lot of good work there. This is like a parody of doing an interview in New York. Rain, reverse lights, beep on the truck, planes, and the side. It's just, we don't get this

kind of diversity in Los Angeles. Yeah. You just drink frothy green tea. Your keatshs getting cold, by the way. I like it chill. So I don't want to keep you out here in the rain too long, but arrested development the first time around 2003 when it came, you've said, along with your wife Amanda, sort of like, rescued you from a place you'd been for a place you'd been for while in the wilderness after a huge career as a kid. Yeah. What were those intervening years like from like Teen Wolf 2 to Arrested Development? Yeah, it was a lot of shaving, you know, because that's a great deal of hair in that movie, but I got it off eventually. I ended up going for, I just went for laser. I was tired of, yeah, it's never coming back. Yeah, let's just take it all off.

The days were quiet because work slowed down, not as a result of Teen Wolf 2, but just sort of probably just a natural ebb and flow. I was fortunate to continue working somewhat enough to pay the bills, but certainly it was a decline as far as relevance, access, notoriety from my kind of 10 to 20 was active, and then 20 to 30 was quiet during the day, but very loud at night. I went out and caught up a bit, and that was really, really fun. And then fortunately, Amanda came along at 30. Arrested Development came along at 30,

and it made it very easy to transition out of kind of playing and partying and doing all that stuff into, okay, now it's time to stop with the girlfriends, go with the wife, stop with, you know, just doing kind of silly work into, you know, career work. I mean, fortunately, you know, you can make that decision and then not get the opportunities. But Arrested was really the big reset button for me. And I'm really grateful that I've had subsequent opportunities to not parlay that capital, but treat it with the kind of responsibility and appreciation that it deserved and try to diversify a bit and stay afloat.

And I just feel really lucky that I'm still working. I read something really interesting. Ron Howard, of course, you work with Unarrested Development. When you were going through that period and trying to sort of figure yourself out and where your career was going, that you used him as a model in some way of, oh, wait, this is how I should behave professionally. He's just a great example. He's not the only one, but one of the greats of being incredibly kind, like almost distractingly kind

when you see him in an interview. And, of course, he's so incredibly successful that you're not misinterpreting that kindness for weakness or being overly solicitous, that you wants you to like him or hire him. And it was just like, I'd always watch them and go, if I was ever successful enough to be as kind as I want to be, that people won't think that I'm just trying to get hired or be liked. Because, you know, you go out and auditions all the time as an actor. And you want to walk in there with kind of a sexy indifference,

but you don't want to seem like you don't want the job, but you want to, I mean, it's such a mind game, but not dissimilar from way. but everybody deals with in high school trying to pick up on a girl and you know you want to kind of play it cool and it's just it's it's a mind game for an actor because you're constantly going out on these auditions and selling yourself and so I got trapped in that a little bit in my 20s because I did want to be employed again so badly and just didn't know how to toggle between the the two of kind of pretending that I don't want it and I'd always watch him and then

to end up working with him in such a such a helpful way. at 30 with the rest of development. I was really happy that I had an opportunity to sit down and literally have a meal with him like this and and try to explain that to him without making him embarrassed. And I had a chance actually to explain to his father. His father is in this final season. He did an episode, a few scenes, a few weeks before he passed. And I remember during one of the setups, cameras were getting set, and he and I were just happened to be.

sitting next to one another and I said hey I want to I want to tell you something and because he was obviously extremely kind you know he was the he was the tree and Ron was the acorn and and I said I just want you to know for what it's worth that whatever you've done with Ron I want you to know that it had a huge impact on on me and so thank you for and I think he understood it you know he's he was a very humble man and and and he smiled and he nodded and seemed to understand it and I was glad I got a chance to do that but not everybody survives child stardom. There was a time period, well, literally, yes. But there was a time when you probably

thought for a minute you weren't going to survive it professionally, but here you are now doing all the things you want to do and directing and doing great shows people talk about. What's the lesson for you about young actors when you did Little House in the Prairie and Silver Spoons and all that and lived that life at such a young age? I mean, you know, for a while there, I kind of bought the attitude I should have been renting. So that was kind of an uncomfortable transition was like, oh, it doesn't last forever, and you should appreciate your moments of relevance and buckle down and treat it with responsibility. So I would say that. But I would also say that the form of keep your day job. Like it is important to not really need it because there is that

intangible when you walk in for a job interview of having that healthy level of indifference that I don't need this job to validate who I am or define who I am. I've got this great group of friends or I've got this great job that pays the rent and I'm doing this because I have this, you know, passion for the art of it and like other art, it's not necessarily a meritocracy. It's very, it's very objective. And if you're the best at what you do, you're not guaranteed the job. So you have to watch what kind of emotional and financial and spiritual investment you make into it. Because what you put into it, you don't necessarily get out.

And you just kind of have to keep your knees bent for that. I didn't know you in your 20s, but I've known you a little bit in your 40s. And the book on you from people I know is that you're just a good guy. Did you read that book? Yeah, it was... Thank you. Didn't sell a lot, but I thought it was excellent. Yeah, thanks.

It was in the bargain pin at Barnes & Noble. Is that you're a good guy. And I think the instinct people have is to succeed in Hollywood or business or TV or wherever. You kind of have to be... You've got to be a killer in some way. If that's antiquated, yeah. I think you'll notice, I'm sure you have. You see and meet and hang out with a lot of people that are in this business as you are.

Like yourself, you've been in a long time, and you realize that to be a jerk is just... is kind of rookie, you know, and because it's not a meritocracy, you realize there are a lot of people, everyone who's surrounded, that, like, there's no one here that doesn't need to be here. And not a lot of people know that. So you have an appreciation for how much it takes and that we're just a very tiny part of it. Like they've been here for an hour and a half setting up, and we get to just sit down in front of our avocado toast and chit-chat for a little while. It's humbling.

So you end up walking with a little less entitlement, the long. longer you're in it. You may be aware that next January you have a significant birthday coming up. 50 yeah 50 50 50 50 is that the silver or the golden that's the golden right silver 75 right yeah no 25 oh it is that you stupid god damn yeah no where am I going where are we going no so what's the how do you feel at 50 life I'm happy about it I mean I was saying to my wife the other day you know like if you're if you do want to hide that you're getting older because it's like, oh, I can't believe it when you're, well, guess the only alternative is that you're dead.

The only alternative is that you never got that old. There's not anything in between. So in a perfect world, you get really old. So it's a success that I'm living to another year and another year and another year. The only thing that I think makes those moments palatable, tolerable, you know, exciting is that you're doing the things that you're supposed to be doing at that year. Like, if you're 50 and you're still in mom's basement and she's still giving you allowance and you don't have an ATM card or a driver's license yet, that's like you want to hide the fact that you're turning 50. Some reflection at that point.

Yeah. I feel very, very fortunate that I'm, I've been lucky enough to stay employed. I've got a wife I really like and kids I really like and I'm healthy. So, you know, keep it coming. Do you remember your first acting gig because I do? What do you think it was? Commercial work? Yeah, there was some.

Golden Grams? Did you see, is that on YouTube? Did some research. Golden Grams, yeah. Do you remember that at? I would think I was riding down like a park, a little road like this, on a bike? Is it really on YouTube? Oh yeah, of course it is.

Oh yeah. I do remember doing that. I'll show you on my phone. It's incredible. Come on you've got on your phone? Oh yeah. Is that your screensaver? It's your alarm clock.

It's just you. Like, why do you have a little boy riding through the park? I did. I did a Honey Nut Cheerios commercial that I was really proud of because it was complicated. I had to follow a little tape X on a stick held by a bloated, sweaty, hairy grip just off camera. Did you ever worry about getting pigeonholed into cereal ads? Well, you know, things could be worse. Back in the day, commercials really paid. Now they're all non-union.

But yeah, you could make like $30,000 on one commercial for the year and you do like, Three of those, I can do that math for you. And you're 10 years old, right? Been you're 10 years old and you're pulling down 90 grand a year. You know, my sister did two commercials, that's it, and then she got family ties. Off the commercials? No, but I mean it was like, you know, that's kind of thing. You do commercials, and they send you out for like episodic stuff, and then you do a couple of those and they'll send you out for pilots.

Right. But she did a Wheaties commercial and a dial soap commercial. and then read for the pilot of family ties for the guest star role. And they were like, oh, we like her. Let's have a read for the daughter. Right. And she got it. And that was that.

That was that. Another thing you can tell me, true or false. Yep. Back in the Silver Spoons days, you and Ricky Schroeder used to swim in the Jaws attraction, in the water. That's true? They want me to chat about that on Colbert tonight. Yeah, yeah, we would ride our bikes, you know,

because all these school rooms were on the lot like different strokes and facts of life. We'd all go to school. So we'd bring our bikes. And then the studio tour trams would come by. And then we'd hold on to the back of the tram. And they'd drag us all the way up the hills to John's Lake, where we would walk out into the middle of the like two foot deep lake,

because that's all you need for that great one shark. We'd roll up our pants and we'd scoop up all these goldfish. Because Ricky, who was, he was, he'd like to blow things up. You know, he's one of those, which I like to at the age. Yeah. And he had these fish in this fish tank that were like piranhas, maybe almost literally. So, you know, just like people who have snakes, they like to like feed the mice. So this, he had these fish.

So we get these goldfish from Jaws Lake and we'd drop them in there and these fish would attack them and blood and scales everywhere. But studio operations sent a note to our parents. It's like, hey, listen, I don't want to bore you with a quick, easy explanation about what we're trying to do there with that lake. We're trying to scare a bunch of people with a great white shark. to see a couple of 11-year-olds out there with a Ziploc bag, you know, playing grab that with a bunch of, you know, goldfish, it wrecks it. So, you know, lease your dogs and keep them at school. My thanks again to Jason Bateman for the Conversation,

Season 5 of Arrested Development premieres May 29th on Netflix, and season 2 of Ozark comes sometime later this year. Be sure to check both out on Netflix. Thanks to all of you, as always, for checking out the Sunday Sit Down podcast, and for doing it every week to hear more of the uncut, unedited conversations with all of my guests going back. Make sure to click subscribe so you never miss an episode. And don't forget to tune in to Sunday today every Sunday on NBC. I'm Willie Geist.

Thanks for listening to the Sunday Sit Down podcast.