David Cross on doing his own stunt as Mrs. Featherbottom on Arrested Development
In the Mrs. Featherbottom run, I’m trying to impress Maeby, who’s reading. And I have the thing like Mary Poppins, the umbrella, the parasol, and I’m going to float down and land on my ass. I never got shot out of a cannonball or had to dangle out of a helicopter or anything like that. But I love doing my own stunts. So they literally flew a fuckin’ guy from Seattle, I believe, or Portland to do this stunt. And I was — that’s about as frustrated and angry as I’ve been on any production. “Guys, listen, this makes no sense. You’re going to take an hour to get him dressed up and you’re going to have to cut. This is not going to look good. And you know it. Everybody here knows it.” Well over an hour of pleading. I just wouldn’t back down: This is insane. I can do this. I’ve done this a million times. Without padding, I have jumped from higher places. I’ve been fine. Put the pads below camera, it’s fine. And eventually I got my way. It took way too long for them to fucking acquiesce. This guy had flown in and he had even gotten dressed. The guy went somewhere, and we were like, “Let’s do it now.” And there was a safety meeting and all this bullshit. It was ridiculous.And so we shot it, one take. And the thing you see is what I did. I don’t think landing on the table was a part of it. I think it was supposed to be just sort of landing there. And I kind of made it to the coffee table in my jump. And of course, I break it into a million pieces. And of course it didn’t hurt. I got up, it’s fake glass, it’s breakaway furniture, and I fucking dusted myself off, and we kept shooting.
