What Phase Is Will Arnett In Now?
It might be required somewhere in Will Arnett’s contract that in exchange for starring in Bradley Cooper’s new film Is This Thing On, the comedian must do a sexy photoshoot for GQ. Well, it might not be required, but it certainly did happen. In a multi-photo spread, the comedian sports a new, longer haircut, rugged denim clinging to his legs, and a cigarette coyishly hanging out of his mouth. It looks like a shoot for a Brad Pitt-type, not the voice of Lego Batman. But the photoshoot accompanied a profile in the publication about Arnett’s star-turn in the film, away from the typecast asshole to a bonafide leading man. As GQ puts it, Is This Thing On is an Oscar contender for the coming awards season. The movie follows a man going through a marriage rough patch—maybe even a divorce—who tries to address the turmoil in his life via stand-up comedy. The story is inspired by the life of British comedian John Bishop and the screenplay was written by Arnett, Cooper, and Mark Chappell.
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In just the trailer for the film, audiences can already get a hint of a new side of Arnett—it is the widest array of emotion we’ve seen from his career thus far. The Arrested Development alum is known for his roles in Bojack Horseman, Blades of Glory, the animated Lego franchise. Comedy stuff. Kids stuff. Not a lot of serious stuff.
Is Thing On is Arnett’s opening to change that. And not just because he gets to pose as debonair for a glossy magazine spread to promote the film. The comedian also explained the new film is the first time he’s doing the work he’s always thought himself capable of, beyond his job of hosting SmartLess.
“Other than the podcast, certainly, I wasn’t doing the stuff that I wanted to do,” Arnett told GQ. “I’d done lots of other stuff, but nothing… I used to make the joke on the podcast that if it wasn’t for bad movies, I wouldn’t have made any movies at all.”The movie, which he worked on with Cooper over the course of several years, was something that made Arnett finally feel recognized as someone who was smart and talented—a feeling he didn’t have after stepping away from the hit show where he played the sociopathic loser Gob Bluth. “I made some choices early on coming off of Arrested Development that I might not make again,” Arnett added. “At the same time, everything conspired to bring me to where I am today, so I can’t really question it.”
Arnett wasn’t shy about what his turn at Bluth did for his career. “I kind of fell into doing stuff,” he explained. “People would say, ‘Oh, he always plays the asshole.’”It’s not that he hated working on Bojack or Flaked. But they weren’t the roles Arnett envisioned. “I was just kind of doing stuff and I don’t know what standard I felt like I wasn’t meeting, but there was a certain feeling of dissatisfaction,” he said. Hopefully this new phase of Arnett’s career will provide that sense of satisfaction. At the very least, he’s got some great new photos of himself for the mantle.
