Will Arnett

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This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross.
My guest is Will Arnett. He co-wrote and stars in the new movie, Is This Thing On?

He was one of the stars of this series Arrested Development, played the title role in the animated satirical series for adults, Bojack Horseman, and was Batman in the animated Lego Batman series.

He also co-hosts the podcast Smartless with his longtime friends, Jason Bateman, who also starred in Arrested Development, and Sean Hayes, who has a small part in Arnett's new film.

Another longtime friend of Arnett's, Bradley Cooper, directed the new film and plays Arnett's self-absorbed best friend. The story is adapted from the true story of the British comic John Bishop.

The film's title, Is This Thing On, has a double meaning. It's what a lot of people say when they first get to a microphone.
It also refers to whether Will Arnett's character's marriage is on or off.

The movie is a hybrid of comedy and drama, focused on the anger and resentments that can undermine a marriage and how your sense of identity can change if you're lucky enough to discover work that is meaningful to you.

Arnett plays a middle-aged father of two, whose marriage has fallen apart. He and his wife, played by Laura Dern, are separated and he's feeling lonely and miserable.

One evening, while aimlessly walking down a Manhattan Street, he sees a restaurant with a comedy club downstairs.

Admission requires a $15 cover charge, but if you sign up to perform, the cover charge is waived. So he signs up because he doesn't have the cash.

When his name is called and he gets on stage, he has no clue what to do. He freezes for a while and then starts talking about the current state of his life.

I think I'm getting a divorce.

What tipped me off was that I'm living in an apartment on my own.

Yeah.

And my wife and kids don't live there.

That was probably the biggest clue.

Will Arnett, welcome back to Fresh Air. Thank you for coming today.
And that scene is so good.

It's so much fun to watch you

feel so uncomfortable. And you're actually very funny, even though you're totally insecure and unprepared to be doing stand-up at that point in your story.

So I know in preparation you went to comedy club, open mic nights. Did you stay in the audience or perform?

No, I performed.

I went to the comedy cellar almost every night for about six weeks and performed under the under the name of Alex Novak

kind of in an attempt to

understand what it was like A to do stand up because I'm I'm not a stand up and I'd never done it before and B to see what it was like to do it through the eyes of somebody who's never performed in any capacity, really.

So that was kind of, that was the assignment for me.

Why didn't people recognize you?

Well, I think some did, Terry.

Some people recognized me and were confused as to what I was doing because

they'd introduce me as Alex Novak and I'd sort of reinforce that, say, hi, I'm Alex Novak, and people would laugh nervously. The people who did recognize me.

The people who didn't recognize me, I guess, was just because they're not fans of my films or TV shows.

Certainly, people were, you know, a lot of my set, especially that first set that you played in the clip where I'm talking about getting divorced, I think it did confuse people, and people would be googling me in real time, trying to figure out what was going on, thinking like, oh, wait, I didn't know this guy got married again.

I was hearing that again. Yeah.

So did you try to be good or try to be stumbly? Trevor Burrus, Jr.: Well, I tried to be sensitive to the material. So I was using sets that we had written for the film.

So I'd go out and I'd do the first set.

And then during the day, I'd be at home a couple blocks away in New York rewriting the sets and trying to figure out, really trying to get it to a place that worked for the context that we were looking for, which is this guy who's never done it before.

So I'd go and I'd rework it and rework it.

And then, you know, one night I might go out and go around the corner to the underground, all part of the comedy cellar, and do the third set, and then go around the corner downstairs to the underground and do the first set again, and just keep working on these various sets, but always trying to track

his development as a stand-up

so that all of those pieces work. And not just his development as a stand-up, because those sets are also affected by

where Alex is in our story and where he is in, you know, with his relationship with

his

estranged wife and all these things. And they all affect how he performs and how he is on stage.
Aaron Powell, you know, the kind of story this is about

two people who are dissatisfied with their lives at the moment and are like looking for a new sense of identity, which they feel they're lacking.

Why did you want to

tell the story from a more middle-aged point of view?

And I know it's based on a real comic, and a British comic who I think is well-known in England, but not here. John Bishop is his name.

What appealed to you about the idea of a middle-aged couple looking to

find new identities and find some satisfaction in their work?

First of all, when I met John Bishop and he told me the story of how he became a stand-up, and you know, he is a very successful stand-up in the UK, and he's a a really funny guy.

He's a really funny stand-up. I was drawn less to the idea of him kind of becoming successful out of nowhere and more to the idea of he found a thing that allowed him to

kind of reconnect to himself and his wife. He had gotten so far down the road in his life

and that he and his partner, his wife, Mel, he described that there was no big event, that there was nothing that they had just simply, you know, you can say whatever you want, grew apart or whatever, but they weren't communicating.

And they were frustrated in their lives and they were frustrated with their lot, but they didn't have the language to even talk to each other anymore. And that was the thing that really got me.

So we ended up, you know, we focus less on, in our story, Alex does not become a famous stand-up.

John told me recently

that for him,

you know, that

becoming a successful stand-up was really the icing on the cake

of which

was

reconnecting with his wife with Mel. And so that stuck with me.
I don't think it's uncommon. I think it's a real reflection of what a lot of people who are middle-aged, I guess, do go through.

And you get

I think that sometimes you get resigned to the idea that this is your lot and this is what it's going to be.

And sometimes it's really a matter of you need to find the language or to start to really connect with who you are.

There's a scene, and I don't think I'm giving too much away here when they're trying to stay together or get back together, where your character asks his wife, he said, like, I know this about couple therapy that like one of the standard questions is, tell me something about myself that you hate about me.

And I think, like, that's the kind of thing that could really go bad. I can imagine that becoming a real nightmare.

I can also see a bit of like self-reflection being the result of that and self-knowledge that you weren't aware of before.

I'm wondering if you've ever tried that approach

and how did it go?

I think that there is,

from my own life,

at this stage,

I'm much more willing to be honest about where I am.

And certainly Bradley and I, this is something that we talk about, which it's really important.

It's something that maybe you sort of avoid when you're younger, I think. And as you get older, you just kind of, you get to the point where you're like, you might as well just say

and be honest. And you have to allow people to have their own reaction to what you say.
And sometimes you, so to instigate that, you have to say, like, all right, tell me, tell me the thing.

Like, just

what is the thing that I do that drives you crazy? Just say it. And I,

at the risk

of blowing it all apart.

And I think that's really important. I think I'm much more willing to get in the deep water now myself than I was when I was a younger man, for sure.

I'd like to offer an example of that from having heard you talk about this on Smartlist, your podcast with Sean Hayes and Jason Bateman. And Bradley Cooper was the guest on this episode.

And of course, Bradley Cooper directed your new film, Is This Thing On?

So Bradley Cooper had been talking about how he really admired how angry some of your jokes were, that you would joke with people and say things that, you know, sounded angry in general or angry at them.

But you were so funny and you knew these people so well that it was just like great fun. So he figured, okay, I'm going to fit in by doing something similar, except it didn't come off that way.

It just came off as like really

rude. And so what I'd like to do is play a clip from that episode of Smartless and hear what Bradley Cooper had to say.
And then I want to ask you your perspective on it. Okay?

Okay. Okay, here it is.

And he was like, hey, man, you remember we had dinner the other night? And he goes, how'd you think that went? And I was like, and I remember being at the dinner thinking I was so funny.

And I thought these two guys who were my heroes were so, thought that I was so funny. I don't know if you remember this, Will.
And you're like, I was like, oh, I thought it was great.

I thought it was killing. He goes, yeah, man, you were, and Will, Arnett, tell me, he's like, you were a real old man.

And I was like, what? He's like, yeah. And by the way, have your dogs gone out to the bathroom? And I was like, what? No, what time is it? It's four o'clock.
Oh, no.

I think they have to go to the bathroom. They're literally standing by the door.
And that was like the first time I ever realized I had a problem with drugs and alcohol. And I'll just never forget it.

And I was like, oh, the guy that I think is doing mean humor is telling me like the truth about that. And it was like, it changed my entire life.

And that moment was when I stopped pursuing this sort of mean humor thing. Wow.

Yeah, I'll never forget. Do you remember that, Will? I do remember that, yeah.

Okay, so that was Bradley Cooper on the podcast Smartlist, which Will Arnett co-hosts with Sean Hayes and Jason Bateman.

Were you surprised he told that story? And I really want to hear your perspective on it. And I'm curious, like, what made you think that it would go okay and be helpful?

Because there's the flip side of that corn. It could go really terribly, and he could just be very resentful of you and angry at you and just kind of dig in deeper in defiance.

Well, yeah, I. I mean, it saved his life, but you don't know the outcome when you go into it.
Well, it's funny. I mean, I don't know if it saved his life.

First of all, he did it all. I didn't save his life.

I did not know he was going to bring it up, of course.

And I was surprised, but I'm also not surprised because Bradley is somebody who he does sort of, especially as we've gotten older,

he's one of those people who tries to be as open as he can about his experience and honest as he can about where he's at.

So having said that, I think that is an example of

that day

when I went into his place and we had that conversation. I had to be willing to risk it all because I love him.

And,

you know, I wanted him to be okay. And I know what it takes that sometimes you have to, you know, be brutally honest within reason.

I don't want to hurt him. I don't want to, I'm not there to judge him for what he's doing.
I'm there to be as honest as I can because I want him to figure out a way.

And luckily for me, but also mostly for him, he was open enough to the idea of this. And that's really a testament to him

and his ability to recognize in that moment. It's got nothing to do with me.
I'm just a messenger. And I'm just,

you know, the only reason I did that is because I've been the beneficiary of so many great people in my life in incredible relationships that I have, especially with a lot of great men in my life who've been honest and loving to me.

Your voice, I don't think it's just me the way I hear it. Your voice has gotten deeper over the years.
Am I right about that?

Yeah, probably. I think

has yours? Oh, my voice has completely changed. Yeah.
Yeah. I mean, you know, I always talk more to look.

Yeah, I really like it. You've got an option higher, I think.
Really, you think it's gotten higher? No, no, in the past it was when I started. Oh, yeah, yeah.

I, because I noticed it with, with Howard Stern, you know, who I've known for a long time, and I listened to some old clips and like Howard's voice. Yeah, I think that that's what happens.

But certainly, yeah,

I think it has gone deeper. Were you a smoker?

Well, I mean, no comment.

Who do you work for, Terry?

The tobacco industry.

So is how you're cast differently with the lower voice.

Well, you know, when I was

I think I always had a kind of a gravelly or whatever you want to call it, sandpapery. Some people might call it annoying voice.

I would not.

There are people. And

so when I was younger, when I first moved to New York, I had

I looked much younger than my age. I had a sort of a baby face and

weirdly enough, I knew back then that it was going to, that it didn't quite match and it was maybe going to affect getting roles. At least that's what I would tell myself if I didn't get a role

because of my voice. So it took a while to kind of grow, I think, grow into it a little bit.

I think your voice probably helped you get all the voiceover work that

was basically the way you made a living for several years.

Yes. Yeah, and so you were so funny with Conan O'Brien on his TBS show.
And, you know, you're both so funny.

So I want to play a clip from that show. And that goes back a few years to 2021.

And you were talking about your voiceover work.

And then

you

demonstrated some of your voices. So, okay.

And we'll hear Andy Richter, Conan's sidekick on that show,

say a few words during the clip. So here's you and Conan Brian in 2021.

You've got the best pipes in the business. His voice

is so incredible.

I try to get voiceover work and I'm like, buy this product.

That's the response I get. I don't get it.
Well, they also like the ads to be more specific. Yeah, I know, that's true.
That was a little vague. That's obviously for Granny Smith apples, right?

I need an idea. Granny Smith apples, they're real good.

You know, it's, no, I do, voiceover is a great thing, and I, and I do a lot, and

I actually, to be honest, coming here today, I'm kind of behind on a couple of jobs.

I just, you know, would you mind while I'm here, because you guys are mic'd up and stuff, would you mind if I just did a couple of things? Do you want to do some voiceover? Yeah, that's okay.

Don't worry about it. But I don't think it's appropriate to do that.
I just have lots of equipment here, and I brought my setup with me. Okay, that's fake.
I brought my setup.

I can't believe I didn't see that back then. Just a little.

So you're going to just do a voiceover or two. I'm just going to do a couple things and just stay within three.

Plug one. Headphones are

innovative, creative, and tough as nails. That's the American spirit.
And that's the all-new GMC Sierra 1500 pickup truck. Yeah.
Okay.

We're down.

We're just going to keep rolling here because we're rolling, girl.

We're rolling, rolling. Here we go.
Hey, girl, I love your smile. Crest white strips.
Yeah, that's good. We're banging them out.
We're banging them out. We're done.
Oh, we're not done here. Hang on.

We're still rolling here. Here we go.

Three, two, one.

Fleniman's racist butter. Spread it all around.

Wait a minute.

That couldn't be a product.

Is that butter for racist people or is the butter itself racist? I don't know. I do not know and I don't care as long as the check clears.
Okay, so let's do it.

That's so great.

And like the first one we heard was for GMC Trucks. And you've done a lot or you did a lot of voiceovers for them.
And, you know,

it's done in the style of like a rugged man who likes driving over tough terrain and wants a vehicle that can handle it.

So you have the voice for that, but do you ever feel like that kind of man?

Great question, Sarah.

It's not necessarily how I see myself, but yeah,

I still work with, I still do the, I'm the voice of GMC Trucks, and and it's something I'm really proud of. It's been a long time.

I've been doing the ads for GMC since 1998.

At home?

Yeah, I've been the voice of GMC Trucks since actually, this is the anniversary month, December of 1998.

I never realized that was you. Yeah, yeah.
Well, because my voice changed.

You changed from doing those commercials.

Maybe. But I do, it is something that,

yeah, there's something that I like. First of all,

I love working with the brand, and

they are great trucks. I mean, look, Terry, they're professional grid.

They are professional grid. Yeah.
Does it hurt your throat to do that?

No.

The only time that it really

got strained was

in that way where it didn't hurt, but I had to kind of be careful, was when I was doing

the Lego animated films. And we did two Lego films and a Lego Batman film, a standalone film.
And doing the voice of Lego Batman for extended periods of time was stressful.

So I would book a, I'd do a session, and then I'd have to make sure that I had nothing to do for the rest of the day and basically wouldn't talk because it was, you know, it was hours in there going through the script and doing stuff.

And

as this, as Batman.

My guest is Will Arnett. He co-wrote and stars in the new film, Is This Thing On? We'll continue the interview, and our TV critic David Biancouli will look back on the year in TV after a short break.

I'm Terry Gross, and this is Fresh Air.

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This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross.
Let's get back to my interview with Will Arnett.

He co-wrote and stars on the new film Is This Thing On?, which was directed by his longtime friend, Bradley Cooper, who also co-stars on the film.

Arnett is best known for his starring roles in Arrested Development, Bojack Horseman, and the Lego Batman movie.

He also co-hosts the comedy podcast Smartless with his friends Jason Bateman, who also starred in Arrested Development, and Sean Hayes, who has a small part in Is This Thing On?

When we left off, we were talking about his voice-over work. In addition to Bojack and Lego Batman, he's done the voices of characters in Monsters vs.
Aliens, as well as voiceovers for countless ads.

How about your voice on Bojack Horseman, where you play,

this is a world of

showbiz with animals and birds portraying the characters. And you're a horse who, when the series starts, is like a washed-up actor who was briefly famous for his role.

What sounds like a pretty bad sitcom? And he sits at home in the first episode watching videos of his old show.

And he's bitter, he drinks too much. And it's such a funny series, like satirizing everybody in show business, the agents, the directors, the actors, and all of their insecurities.

Did you do something with your voice for that character?

No. It's funny because that's one of those ones where I've had people say, wow, you

really sound like Bojack. And I'm like, well, yeah, it's my voice.

And you wanted Bojack to sound more human, probably, too. Because he's already not human, so you have to humanize him.

Yeah, that's exactly right. There's enough going on with the fact that he's a horse and that it's animated, so I think it was important to just try to

the way he spoke to be much more naturalistic.

Did parts of Bojak's life remind you of your own when you were at a low point?

No, and it's funny, that's a question I get all the time.

There were times when people would

I remember like there's like photos of my house went online, and people would say, like, it just looked it looks like Bojak's house.

And I'd just think, that's so absurd there's a lot of like retrofitting from people going on about Bojack and trying to hang it on my life

and they're very very different I love making that show Raphael Bob Waxburg's an incredible writer the guy who created it is just an amazing guy and

wonderfully written and I loved every moment of it but it's had this like sort of strange afterlife and I think a lot of that is due to the fact that a lot of people responded to it, which is amazing.

But I also think there's this kind of rush to people to try to connect dots that aren't there.

Sure. We always do that when we project a character's life onto the actor who's portraying that.

And I do that maybe too much when I interview actors, you know, because I always want to kind of connect the life and the work to see what created the sensibility that we love in the performer.

And, you you know, I think I probably hit a lot of wrong notes in trying to do that. Well, no, it's not wrong.
I think that that's natural, but I mean, that's the work, right?

Like, that's the job is to try to figure out. Certainly for, as a performer, you are trying to find moments where you can connect with it.

But at the same time, the job is to try to figure out a way to find your way in to

portray that character. And it's funny.
It's like I did a show, Arrested Development, for many years where I played a character who's completely untethered to reality. I've heard of that show.

Sure.

And

so I played a character called Job, Job Bluth. He's a failed illusionist.

And he's very, again, like, as I said, untethered. And he doesn't know how to live in this world that we live in.
And it's funny that people go, oh, yeah.

You know,

there are parts of Bojack, I'm sure, is that your or is that you? And I'm like, well, why don't they say that about Job?

Or a character I played on 30 Rock.

And

who knows why?

Because it was more absurdist. It was more absurd.
Yeah, so I mean, obviously it's about an actor, too. And also, also, Bojack was an actor.

Yeah, exactly.

So I do get that. But,

you know, apart from that, it's just, no.

Recent development was like your big breakthrough, right? 100%. 100%.

How did it change your life?

How long is this program? I'm looking at the clock.

In every way?

Every possible way. Yeah.
I mean, that was 2003. And I'd been living in New York for about 13 years at that point.
And leading up to Arrested, the few years leading up, I'd done a bunch of pilots.

I'd had a series that went on to air and aired twice and that was canceled. And I'd...
I'd had tons of frustrations like a lot of other performance. My story is not that different.

Just, you know, it's tough out there, et cetera. And

Arrested Development came along and

really changed my life.

So when you got the script, however much you got for Arrested Development before the edition, did you have any sense of how to play the character? It's such a quirky way that you play him.

And, you know, he's kind of like lost in his own world. He uses his little magic tricks in some totally inappropriate ways.
Like, this this is not the time for you to barge in and do a trick.

And so, you know, your performance, the way you shaped the words on the page and embodied it physically, just being given a script, it's probably hard to do that without all the other actors there and without really understanding

how unusual a series it was and how off-kilter the comedy was.

Well, yeah, I'll take it a step further. I didn't even have the benefit of reading the full script.
I was given a sort of a slight character breakdown, I suppose, that didn't really say

how he behaved. It just kind of said who he was.
He was the eldest of four kids of this family that had fallen on hard times.

Their father had lost all their money, etc.

And I was sent these sides.

The thing that I grabbed on to, and I was really lucky, you know, every once in a while something comes along along that you just there's something about it that kind of grabs you and there's a line in it there's a scene where my character Job

enters a scene where

the character of Michael played by Jason Bateman is talking to the captain of this ship

and Michael says to Job something to the effect of you know how are you job

And on the page, it's written, incredible. I'm having an incredible year.

And I it was so I don't know why it was so funny to me I just kind of got it for whatever reason and I just remember and

I did in the audition and and subsequently in in the pilot I just understood the bravado of that who

who says that

right about their when they're asked how are you and I just thought what a what a kind of

sociopathic blowhard goes in goes goes incredible I'm having an incredible year. Right? It says so much.
It's clearly somebody who is

covering up for a lot of deep pain.

And I just got it. And that was it.
It was that line that was my entry point for the character of Job.

My guest is Will Arnett. He stars on the new film, Is This Thing On? We'll be right back after a short break.
This is Fresh Air.

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This is Fresh Air. Let's get back to my interview with Will Arnett.
He co-wrote and stars in the new movie, Is This Thing On?

Let's talk about your formative years. Your father, James Arnett or Jim Arnett.
I don't know what. Yeah.

Okay, so here's a graduate at Harvard, and he was for a few years president and CEO of Molson Breweries.

So when you, I know a lot of people, they look at their parents' lives and they think, I want a different life.

And your life is very different. You're both very successful, but you went in an opposite direction, not corporate, not law, and it's a more artistic world.

Did you feel like he led an interesting life, but you wanted a different life? Or did you see his life as

it must be uncomfortable to be asked this question when your father's alive.

So

I realize

I don't want you to

ruin your relationship with your father. No, no.

No, I'll do that.

Yeah,

you'll ruin it yourself? I'll ruin it. Or you'll less anti-I don't need any help.
No.

No, my dad,

you know, I have a lot of respect for what my dad did. My dad came from,

both his parents were teachers.

And his dad at one point was

a teacher in a one-room schoolhouse

in Manitoba, not even in Winnipeg. And my dad worked really hard, and he got everywhere on his own merits.

He got into Harvard on his own. He became a partner at this law firm, Steichman Elliott, in Toronto on his own, as a kid from Winnipeg.

And

he didn't have a fancy background. So I've always respected how much of a sort of a self-made guy he is.

And he's always, you know, my dad said to me once, I asked him once years ago,

he's, you know, he's long since retired. And

I said to him, I said, why didn't you move to the States? Because you could have made a lot more money in the corporate world.

You see how CEOs are compensated in this country and how absurd it is.

And he said, because I have an obligation to give back to the system that allowed me to come up.

And that's the kind of guy he is.

You went to a prep boarding school and you were expelled for being a troublemaker. What kind of trouble did you get into?

A lot of it was, Terry,

I'm loath to admit, a lot of it was smoking-related.

What were you smoking? Cigarettes. Oh, okay.

Yeah,

I was never like a real sort of weed guy.

It was smoking

kind of bad grades because I was... goofing off, defying curfews,

all stuff like that.

And

there were a group of us, and I think that they just, at a certain point, people say, oh, you were kicked out. And I always maintained that I was asked not to return.

A great question.

There's a real distinction there, Terry. But

so, yeah, it never really.

It's funny.

I went to boarding school when I was 12. And again,

My dad, who came up through public school system in Winnipeg,

my My dad was really,

he was a little reluctant to send me there because he thought it was a bunch of rich kids.

And

he struggled with it, this idea, because he was bound and determined that even though he did well and he was successful,

that his kids weren't going to be a bunch of spoiled brats. And that was important to him.
And so when I left,

he wasn't all that upset that I left, to be honest.

You were mostly known for comedic roles.

And although in the new film, Is This Thing On?, you play

somebody who is just getting started in comedy.

There are funny moments in the movie, but it's also just a character study about how people change and come together and then maybe break apart and then come together or not.

So

you didn't intend to be a comedic actor, as far as I know. You wanted to be a dramatic actor.
Did you have to learn things like you have great comic timing and you're naturally funny?

And I've heard you on Smartlist. You're really funny on that.

Did being funny in real life,

was that mostly like your training to be

funny in roles?

Hmm.

I didn't have any training, and

there have been times where I regretted that I wasn't like in a a sketch group or that I didn't do improv as part of an improv group in some sort of more formal setting.

You know, a lot of my friends came up through Second City and Improv Olympic in Chicago, etc. Aaron Powell, well, that includes Amy Poehler, who you were married to for a while.
That's right.

And she created Upright Citizens Brigade, which has been an incredible training grant for plenty of really successful and funny people whom we all know.

So

I do wish that I had had that. At the same time,

I kind of fell backwards into comedy. I wanted to be a serious actor.
I'd gone to Lee Strasburg.

I was young and I thought that I wanted to do stuff that would sort of be,

I don't know, important or dramatic or emotional or whatever that heck it was at that age. And then I started reading sitcom pilots because I needed to pay the rent.
And

weirdly enough, I was... when I started doing that, kind of 24 or 25.

At the time, I thought, oh, well, I'm not going to do a sitcom. It's like beneath me because I knew nothing at that age, right?

And so hilarious now to think back on how embarrassing that position is. But anyway, and I started reading for sitcoms.
And

that doing that, I was like, oh, you know, okay.

And I could kind of understand the timing and there was something about it that I kind of got.

Can you look back to your first audition? How nervous were you? What was the part? What was your confidence level? How did you present yourself?

Even if it was a kind of front you were putting on. Did you present yourself as confident? Did you dress for the role?

Did you sleep the night before?

I can think back on a lot of those early auditions, like first sort of paying gigs for like a sitcom

and being very nervous and almost like out of body, like feeling not being present and just because I'm so nervous.

But I also think that like

in the last year, you know, doing this movie has reminded me a lot. It's brought me back to that place.

I feel much closer to that kid I was when I was 20 when I first moved to New York. And, you know, doing something like this were

all the stand-up stuff aside, which was its own kind of thing, but doing all these scenes that were really vulnerable and revealing and felt very scary.

And, you know, it's funny, nervous and excitement, those two senses, they're really close to each other. And so I was excited, but I also didn't know.

And I've realized now as I'm older that I don't have all the answers, and I'm not sure if I knew how to do it. And I was scared.
I was intimidated at 54. And I've been doing this a long time.

And I was,

you know, I was unsure if I could do it or if I could be available in that way, be vulnerable in that way in these scenes.

I can remember being a younger man and being a younger actor and feeling nervous, and I kind of am back to that now, which is I think I've shed a lot of that stuff and hopefully a lot of the ego stuff over the last year, especially doing this movie where

it's good to feel nervous.

Will Arnett, it's been a pleasure to talk with you. Thank you so much.
Congratulations on the new film. Thank you so much, Terry.
I really appreciate it.

Will Arnett co-wrote and stars in the new film, Is This Thing On? After we take a short break, TV critic David Biancoule will look back on the year in TV. This is Fresh Air.

This message comes from Vital Farms, who works with small American farms to bring you pasture-raised eggs. Farmer Tanner Pace shares a moment that brings him a sense of purpose.

I think that when the barn doors open and the hens run to the paddocks, you can truly see what a happy hen really is.

I love pasture-raised eggs because you can see the work and the pride that the farmers have and have put into these eggs.

To learn more about how Vital Farms farmers care for their hens, visit vitalfarms.com. This message comes from the International Rescue Committee.

Co-founded with help from Albert Einstein, the IRC has been providing humanitarian aid for more than 90 years.

The IRC helps refugees whose lives are disrupted by conflict and disaster, supporting recovery efforts and responding within 72 hours of crisis. Donate today by visiting rescue.org slash rebuild.

This is fresh air. Our TV critic David Biancouli is taking a look back at the year in television.

But he says he's not doing a top 10 list because there's been way too much good TV to limit to just 10 titles.

And he's not doing a best of the year list because he says it's impossible to have seen everything. But he's seen a lot.

Of everything I saw on TV in 2025, the one show I thought was the very best and has haunted me ever since was the four-part Netflix drama Adolescence.

It's the story of a young teen accused of murdering a classmate, and it's told in such a way, emotionally and technically, that I can't and won't forget it.

It's the show I recommend most highly, but with a major caveat. It's grim.
and it's almost unbearably intense.

Intensity, it turns out, is a common factor among many of my very favorite shows from this year. HBO Max's The Pit was a medical show with an impressively credible tension factor.

So was Netflix's The Diplomat with its unpredictable, high-stakes plot twists. And so was FX's The Bear, even though it wasn't about life or death, just appetizers and entrees.

The Bear even calls itself a comedy, but it's not. Much, much too dramatic for that.

A couple of my other favorite TV dramas, almost equally intense, featured ragtag, mismatched investigative teams thrown together to solve specific crimes.

One, HBO's Task, was headed by a brooding, intelligent guy with lots of emotional baggage, played by Mark Ruffalo.

Another, Netflix's Department Q, was headed by a brooding, intelligent guy with even more emotional baggage, played by Matthew Good.

His character is returning to work after being shot and almost killed.

And at first, he's openly hostile to his police-appointed therapist, played by Kelly McDonald, who's as sharp and brittle as he is. Have you been feeling depressed, Carl? No more than normal.

If I was shot in the face, I might feel depressed.

I might feel angry. Not me.
So all good then. For my hand, yeah.
So no need for me to ask about anxiety or sleep problems because, of course,

you've experienced none of that. I don't sleep much anyway.

So then this is just a giant waste of our time. Well, those are your words, not mine.

And maybe it's just me, but this year I definitely gravitated to dramatic shows that made me uneasy. It was another great season for Netflix's Black Mirror.

And the end-of-year final episode of another dark Netflix fantasy series, Stranger Things, is eagerly awaited by many.

Including me, because I've seen all the new episodes leading up to it, but the finale is being kept under wraps. That show's been around since 2016, almost a decade.

But other terrific genre shows were new takes on old ideas. Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein on Netflix was an excellent and very different adaptation.

And what Noah Hawley did by reinventing the alien movie franchise for the FX TV series Alien Earth was thrilling. and at times truly scary.

And still churning out weekly episodes, brilliant ones, is Pluribus, the new indescribably original Apple TV sci-fi series from Vince Gilligan.

The comedies I like best this year?

Some were set behind the scenes of Showbiz, like the new Apple TV series The Studio, starring Seth Rogan as a bumbling but well-meaning studio head, and the returning HBO Max series Hacks, starring Gene Smart as a female comic landing a job as a TV talk show host.

The other comedies were light-hearted mysteries benefiting greatly from their veteran cast members. Who Lu's Only Murders in the Building and Netflix's A Man on the Inside.

Both of those shows made me feel good, which is a lot to ask of any TV show these days. Non-fiction TV also offered many excellent options this year.

Artistic profiles to seek out from 2025 include Apple TV's Mr. Scorsese about film director Martin Scorsese and HBO's Pee-Wee as Himself about actor Paul Rubens.

Most recently, there's the short but powerful Netflix documentary All the Empty Rooms about a TV feature reporter and photographer who visit the families of children killed during school shootings to memorialize the children's empty but still intact bedrooms.

It's as tough to watch as adolescents. and oddly touches on a similar subject.

TV reporter Steve Hartman talks about the power of visiting these bedroom shrines, trapped in time, and saying so much with their silence.

The whole point of this is to not have to say much.

I just want people to see the pictures

and just let the pictures speak for themselves.

Other great documentaries this year included Sunday Best, a new Netflix program about Ed Sullivan's contributions to popularizing black entertainers, PBS's The American Revolution, the latest and perhaps greatest epic history lesson from Ken Burns and Company, and the new installment of the Beatles anthology presented by Disney Plus.

On talk shows, I loved the feisty topical spirit invoked by Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel, Jon Stewart, Seth Meyers, and John Oliver, and especially the well-aimed irreverence of the current season of Comedy Central South Park.

Wow.

Many of these shows were attacked or censored by their corporate owners in well-publicized clashes that exposed and fought against the interference.

The CBS Late Show franchise is being retired from the schedule, but most of the time this year, the comics and their programs persevered. Finally, my favorite TV moment of 2025 came courtesy of CNN.

Not for a news bulletin, but for televising, live from Broadway, a production of Good Night and Good Luck, starring George Clooney as veteran CBS newsman Edward R. Murrow.

At the end of the play, Clooney recites Murrow's actual speech to news and TV executives from 1958, urging them to use TV wisely. These instruments

can teach, they can illuminate,

they can even inspire.

But they can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use them to those ends. Otherwise,

they're merely wires and lights in a box.

In the year 2025, the best of television, from the American Revolution to adolescence, is living up to Ed Murrow's inspirational ideals.

We all just have to find the best that's out there, then find the time to watch it.

David Biancoule is Fresh Airs TV Critic.

Tomorrow, we kick off our end of the year series, featuring a few of our favorite interviews of the year, with Mitch Album, whose book Tuesdays with Maury became a best-selling memoir and was adapted into an Emmy-winning film.

His latest novel, Twice, is about a man who discovers he can relive any moment but must accept the consequences of reliving it. I hope you'll join us.

To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram at NPRFreshAir.

Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham.
Our managing producer is Sam Brigger.

Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Roberta Shorrock, Anne-Marie Bodonado, Lauren Krenzel, Theresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Daya Chaloner, Anna Bauman, and Nico Gonzalez-Whistler.

Our digital media producer is Molly C. V.
Nesper. Susan Yacundi directed today's show.
Our co-host is Tanya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross.

This message comes from Vital Farms, who works with small American farms to bring you pastor-raised eggs.

Farmer Tanner Pace shares why he believes it's important to care for his land and how he hopes to pass the opportunity to farm onto his sons. We are paving the way for a future.

We only have one earth and we have to make it count. Like my boys, I want to see them taking care of the land for them to be able to farm and then generations to come.

I really enjoy seeing, especially my whole family up there working with me and to be able to instill the things that my father, mother, and then grandparents instilled in me that I can instill in the boys.

That's just the most rewarding thing that there could ever be.

Vital farms, they're motivated for the well-being of the animals, for the well-being of the land, the whole grand scope of things, they care about it all. You know, and that means a lot to me.

To learn more about how Vital Farms farmers care for their hens, visit vitalfarms.com.