Jessica Walter excels at playing the comically despicable Lucille, the matriarch of the Bluth family on “Arrested Development.” But Walter couldn’t have been nicer or more gracious in person.
Walter expressed genuine excitement to be talking with Crave Online and made sure to mention us by name throughout the conversation. Late last month, Netflix brought back “Arrested Development” for 15 original episodes; which people have been binge watching since they all became available at once. Prior to the release, we spoke with Walter about the return of Lucille and the rest of the Bluth family.
CraveOnline: Is Lucille still drinking?
Jessica Walter: Yeah, where’s the poster? You’ll see it’s right in the poster. She’s drinking and she has an ankle bracelet on so you know she’s being surveilled in her home. She’s drinking.
I always wonder when you have to drink fake drinks. Obviously vodka can be water, but when it’s other drinks, what do they give you?
Well, Chardonnay is apple juice. Red wine is grape juice. Scotch is tea. Look how I knew all that so fast.
You’ve probably had a mix of all of those.
You know something, no. Lucille only had Chardonnay, champagne which is ginger ail, and martinis. Those were the three drinks. I never had anything but those things.
Yeah, she mostly has vodka drinks.
Grey Goose. Little plug for them.
What did you think of Kristen Wiig as young Lucille?
I thought she was great. I was so flattered that Kristen Wiig wanted to do it. I never met her but I’m dying to now, and she really nailed it. I thought she was great.
I was going to ask, did you even meet her as part of her preparation for that?
No, no. She must have looked at some of the tapes of the show because she really nailed it.
Did you ever think about young Lucille when you were playing her on the series? Did you ever think about what she was like as a young mother?
Yeah, I did think about it. I did think about it and of course young Lucille in these episodes is 40. So young, young Lucille as a young mother would’ve been like 25. Big difference. But I thought about Lucille as a human being from the day she was born, on.
When you thought about her early life, how did that inform the character we saw?
Well, I gave her backstory. We always give our characters a backstory. We make it up so that we can relate to it. I figured that the way she was written was really a cover for a very insecure person who had her own problems with her own mother. Her mother probably put her down all the time. The only way she could feel important was by having total control over everything she was involved with. That kind of thing. Extensive research, when she was born, where she was born, you know what I mean? I do that with all my characters. I take them very seriously.
Where did you decide she was born?
Brooklyn. Guess why? I try to relate things so I can relate to myself.
Has that ever come up on the show?
No, no. I think that the frozen banana business was in Queens. Interestingly enough I grew up in Astoria, Queens. Where she was born has not come up. The only person who knows it is me, and now Crave.
That’s for us. I was very glad to see Lucille 2 back. Did you feel there were still unresolved issues between Lucille and Lucille 2?
You know, I didn’t have much to do with Lucille 2 I’m sorry to say, but there’s a whole thing that you’ll see that I really can’t talk about with Lucille 2.
In the smoking with Buster scene, were those the herb cigarettes we hear about?
Those were not real cigarettes. They were herbal, like herbal teas; which is just as bad. My lips were numb for days afterwards.
Did it take a lot of practice with Tony Hale to get it to work?
Yeah, the lips have to be like this [pursed]. I think we actually could’ve done it better, but towards the end it got better. He had to really be, forgive me, in my mouth. Forgive me, I know that’s going to be on Crave and I’m never going to work again. My image is gone. You know what I mean. It had to be totally lip-locked so the smoke could be totally in my mouth. The smoke!
I’ll be delicate about it, but I was thinking smoke flows all through the air. You’d have to be really choreographed to transfer it to him.
Yeah, we were, we were. I think still if we’d had another day we could’ve done it better.
How has Lucille kept her hold over Buster in the seven years since we’ve seen her?
Well, that’s another thing you’re going to have to tune in because if I give that away, forget my image, it’ll be gone because I’ll never work again. You can put that on Crave.
The first episode seems like a lot of setup. What should we pay really close attention to in the first Netflix episode?
Well, that penthouse scene that you saw was really almost like a 10 page scene that only little bits of it were in episode one. Then there are parts of it for Gob’s episode, parts for Lucille’s. That explains a lot. Keep your eye on the penthouse with all the family in it.
So the other nine minutes of it will appear alter?
Yes, yes.
Did you shoot it all at once?
Yeah, that was a very long day and night. That was long. That was the first time we all got together too.
You’ve done all these classic episodic shows and you had the lead as a voice on “Dinosaurs,” but how big was “Arrested Development” for your career?
Well, it was great because first of all, it’s a whole new demographic now that doesn’t think I’m dead or sick. Young people come up and say, “Hello, how are you?” It’s been wonderful for me. I owe this show a lot. It means a great deal to me in many ways. That’s a small part of it. A large part of it is the opportunity to play such a great role. I feel very emotionally grateful to them.
Were there moments you thought this would never happen again?
I never thought that. I always thought the odds were against it but I think when you hope something’s going to work out, I never really lost hope.
Do you recommend we binge watch it or savor it one at a time?
You know, I think it’s different for each person. I know when I started to watch “House of Cards,” I thought okay, I’m going to watch one episode. Then I couldn’t stop. I binged. I hope people binge on this. I really do because then they can always go back and find new things. I think that was one of the attractions with the original that people would watch the DVDs over and over because they kept finding funny things that they had not seen when they originally saw it. I binged on “House of Cards” and I love it.
Right after the third season went off of Fox, there was talk of Showtime maybe coming in and picking it up. Did you ever entertain any offers from Showtime?
Nobody came to us. The deal fell through. We thought it was a done deal at one point but it fell through.
It got that far that it seemed like a done deal?
Walter: Not to me, nobody ever called me about it, but we’d heard that there were serious negotiations, but then it didn’t pan out. That’s what we heard.
If all goes well and we know there are plans to see the Bluths again, when would you expect or hope a movie would come?
Boy, I have no idea. The only thing is I’ve heard Jason talk about maybe a year, a year and a half, but I have no idea.
Hopefully not another seven years.
Hopefully because how old will I be then? Oh my God. There’s an old Hollywood saying, “Thank God you’ve lived to this day.” So first of all thank God I’ve lived to this day that we’re sitting here talking about “Arrested Development.” Thank you so much, what a pleasure.
