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Arrested Development, the nostalgic Fox show about a highly dysfunctional family, aired 22 years ago, and its initial run lasted just three seasons. The fact that it lasted even that long — and that so many jokes still stand up today — is surprising to one of its stars.
“We never had the eyes on it initially,” Tony Hale tells PEOPLE. “The critics were on our side, for sure, but we never got the audience. I was thankful Fox even kept us around for those first two and a half years. They didn’t really have to. It was really the critics that kept us alive.”
Hale, 54, played the socially awkward Buster Bluth on the highly-regarded sitcom, which was his breakout role.
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“It was my first big show, so I was hoping it was going to last,” the Emmy winner admits.
Following its initial run, the show found a second life on Netflix, which aired seasons 4 and 5.
When the Sketch actor initially got the script, he fell in love with its nuances, layers and depth.
“At the time, comedy was kind of not so layered. It was not as layered as it is now,” he says. “And I was like, ‘Ooh, this is good. This is too good to be true.’ So I’m just going to audition and then kind of let it go. Of course, when do you ever do that?”
“And then when I got it, I was like, I cannot believe that I’m it,” he adds. “By the way, it’s been 20 years and I’m still getting jokes that I missed back then. It was so dense. It was so smart.”
Hale appeared in 84 episodes across the show’s five seasons.
