At the end of May, the cast of Arrested Development once again made headlines when actress Jessica Walter broke down during an interview with the New York Times. In the interview, which included costars Jeffrey Tambor, Tony Hale, Jason Bateman, Alia Shawkat, Will Arnett, and David Cross, Walter accused Tambor of verbally harassing her on set.
The incident Walter was referring to came up in Tambor’s long interview withThe Hollywood Reporter, where he continued to deny the sexual harassment allegations that got him kicked off the Amazon series Transparent. "He never crossed the line on our show, with any, you know, sexual whatever," Walter said through tears during the interview. "Verbally, yes, he harassed me, but he did apologize. I have to let it go. [Turns to Tambor.] And I have to give you a chance to, you know, for us to be friends again."
During the interview, some of her costars quickly jumped to Tambor’s defense. Bateman later apologized for "mansplaining" Walter’s experience, saying, "In the entertainment industry it is incredibly common to have people who are, in quotes, 'difficult.'"
Walter pushed back against Bateman’s comment. “But it’s hard because honestly—Jason says this happens all the time. In like almost 60 years of working, I’ve never had anybody yell at me like that on a set. And it’s hard to deal with, but I’m over it now," she said. "I just let it go right here, for the New York Times."
Now the show’s creator Mitch Hurwitz has finally spoken out about the incident in an interview with Deadline, admitting he didn’t understand how much Tambor’s "outbursts" had impacted Walter. "I’m guilty of not realizing how deeply upsetting that was for Jessica," Hurwitz said. "I heard about it and saw parts of it in the dailies, although the part I saw didn’t seem that—I don’t know—momentous. But fights and outbursts always start with things that are smaller."
He explained that the incident was a misunderstanding between creative approaches. "It was something minor, like he was doing a speech and Jessica wanted to redo something in her speech," he explained. "She’s a perfectionist, which I have a horrible case of myself, and he’s sort of loose with it, finds his way back if he gets off course within the speech, for instance...and she was resetting and he got upset and was like, 'Oh, come on! You always do this!' He continued for a bit and she apologized. 'I’m sorry, Jeffrey, I’m sorry.' But he continued and then walked off—the set apparently, but he walked out of frame."
Still, Hurwitz stood by his decision to recast Tambor after he was accused of sexually harassing two women while working on the show Transparent. "Jeffrey refutes those claims, Amazon hasn’t shared details with us, and we’ve never had any sexual harassment allegations of any type on our show—a point that Jessica Walter has made as well," Hurwitz insisted. "To be clear: In saying this I’m not defending sexual harassment. It is and should be a job-terminating offense. I just don’t have any information on whatever happened there. Nor do I have any evidence of him ever sexually harassing anyone in the 20 years, off and on, that I’ve worked with him."
