Portia De Rossi on ‘Arrested Development’ Season 4

Portia de Rossi shook my hand for asking about her hair. I haven’t seen her new “Arrested Development” episodes yet. Netflix had only provided the first episode of the new season prior to this interview, so I didn’t know if the awesome sleek hairdo she’s rocking in real life appears on the show. Turns out I was smart to ask.

The long-awaited Netflix season of “Arrested Development” premiered yesterday. We have a few more interviews with the cast coming soon, but here’s our exclusive catch-up with the woman behind Lindsay Bluth Funke.

CraveOnline: How is Lindsay’s marriage to Tobias these days?

Portia De Rossi: Oh, it’s just as good as ever. It’s just as solid. Lindsay and Tobias are such poor, pathetic creatures. It’s actually quite funny because when I got the script, I was like, “Wait, we’re still together?” I couldn’t remember where it actually left off, but I think that’s the point. We kind of tried to branch out, we get really scared and we just come back together out of fear rather than love.

How is her relationship with Maeby now?

Uh, who? [Laughs] Yeah. I mean, it’s kind of hilarious that I play a mother on this show and there’s not one parental instinct that this woman has, nothing that would resemble caring for her child. She’s just a hands off mother as I put it.

What was your feeling when you got the new scripts? Did you get all of the episodes at once?

No, actually, I got maybe four or five around the same time and two of those were my episodes. I can’t even describe what the scripts looked like because in bold type it would be your episode, and then in kind of like a lighter gray or sometimes a different kind of typesetting, it would be the same scene but the part that was in the other episode would be in this gray. It was so complicated.

I’m seeing it in my head.

Honestly, I had a floor about this size, I was trying to trace all of my scenes throughout the seven episodes that I got without getting the whole 15, which incidentally was 14 until about three weeks ago. Now it’s 15.

I mean, I was doing the press line the other night for our premiere saying we have 14 episodes, and I was being corrected. I was like, “No, you don’t know. It’s 14.” But yeah, it was absolutely impossible to trace this through line for me, so I just gave up actually. Just gave up, concentrated on my episodes and just went to work each day and said, “What are we shooting? What do you want from me? Where do I stand?”

Should we binge watch these or savor them one at a time?

You should watch only my episodes and you should keep watching them over and over. You have to watch as many as you can in one sitting because you won’t be able to not do it I think. It won’t matter how you watch them. You could take a year to watch 15 episode but I think you’ll get the nuances and subtlety and kind of density of the jokes when they’re a bit fresher in your mind. If you see episode seven, you’ll remember the same joke or the other side of that scene in episode three or two if you’d seen three or two in the last week or so.

I can tell the first episode is setting up a lot, so what should we really pay close attention to in the first episode?

The first episode isn’t really setting up as much as you think.

Okay. That’s fair. When I see more together it will make more sense. Having only one, I was trying to extrapolate.

We’ll see, the thing is we’re so used to watching TV in a very linear way where it starts somewhere and ends somewhere in a sequential way, like if you haven’t seen episode one you couldn’t understand episode two, but you can. So that’s what makes this so interesting. It’s just a very different experience than you’re used to and it kind of does take a little retraining of your brain because basically it doesn’t set it up. It happens concurrently. So we’re all living in the same day or the same week, in the same timeframe. If it’s a sunny day in Michael’s episode for this thing, it’s going to be a sunny day wherever we are because it’s the same day.

Will Lindsay’s chicken caw appear in the new series?

That’s just rude. [Deadpan] I don’t know.

Will anything make Lindsay try to cry?

Possibly.

Was this shot the same way the old network episodes were?

In what sense, really? No. It wasn’t because it felt more like an independent feature to me. It was a little bit looser. It was a little bit more creative, collaborative. It was fantastic. The experience was amazing. It was definitely different, and because we didn’t have the pressure of a network or studio putting parameters and boundaries and expectations on us, it felt like even a student film sometimes. Just something that was incredibly creative and fun. Oh God, it was a blast. It really was.

The tone of your performance, Lindsay seems obliviously happy when maybe she shouldn’t be happy.

Yeah.

How did you come to that and nail that tone?

Well, I think it just starts with her outlook on life which kind of starts and ends with her perspective. So whatever makes her happy, she pursues and she doesn’t really have any kind of self-awareness or conscience or concern about anybody else. So how can you not be happy if you’re not worried about what other people think or feel or how they’re affected by your actions. I mean, blissful, right?

I realized going back and re-watching that your hair changed a lot in the original series. Did you come to this with your current awesome hairdo, or is your new awesome hair dictated by the series?

You’re the first person to ask.

Are you serious?

Yes. You’re the first one to ask and I wasn’t even thinking about that because I will say, my hair has a huge role in the Netflix season. Huge.

So, spoilers!

Yep. Yes indeedy.

I almost didn’t ask that because I thought am I just being silly talking about hair?

No, it was a huge, huge thing. It was a big thing. Because I showed up with short hair, Mitch of course had to make something of it that was extremely complicated. Couldn’t just be like oh, Lindsay got her haircut.

Were there any moments where you really thought this would never happen for “Arrested?”

Nope. Not really. This particular structure, Netflix, I could never have seen that a few years ago but I always knew we’d get back together again because we love it so much.

When would you hope they go ahead with a movie?

Let’s just do it now. Really?

You’re all here today.

I know, we’re all here. It could be like Bluth family on vacation in a hotel in Los Angeles. I don’t know, I just hope we keep making this, whether it’s another season of Netflix. I’d do anything. We all would. We all love Mitch so much and we love this show so much, we’re all on board.