At Friday night’s Cinema Society premiere of The Oranges, in which Leighton Meester starts an affair with her dad’s best friend (Hugh Laurie), Alia Shawkat was quick to rule out the possibility of a similar relationship. (“No. Definitely not. No matter how attracted I was, I would swim outside that pool.”) So with that all cleared up, Vulture moved on to next spring’s most-anticipated television event: the revival of Arrested Development. “It’s very surreal and awesome,” Shawkat, a.k.a. Maeby Fünke, told us of life on set. “I still feel like a teenager who’s insecure when I’m on set around all of the funny adults, trying to talk, but at the same time, everything has changed, and you’re trying to catch up.”
“It’s like the weirdest flashbacks,” she continued, “and it’s been six years since we wrapped and it feels like no time has passed, and that’s what’s even weirder.” Shawkat assured us that show’s spirit remains the same: “The scripts keep getting funnier and funnier, and you know, we just get to do some crazy shit.” On the subject of Maeby, we asked if Shawkat had seen the Carly Rae Jepsen/”Call Me Maeby” T-shirts. “There’s been lots of suggestions for ‘Call Me Maybe’ jokes, but I don’t think they’ll make it in there.” The shoot doesn’t wrap until November; there’s still time to reconsider, Mitch Hurwitz!
