Alia Shawkat Used to Be ‘Bitter’ About Being Recognized for ‘Arrested Development’

Alia Shawkat took time to make peace with her Arrested Development past.

Shawkat, 36, opened up on the Dec. 22 episode of the Happy Sad Confused podcast, hosted by Josh Horowitz about her long career. After starting out as a child actress, at age 14 she was cast in the pilot of Arrested Development as Mae “Maeby” Fünke, the daughter of Portia de Rossi’s Lindsay Bluth and David Cross’ Tobias Fünke. The series premiere in 2003 and originally ran for three seasons, until 2006. The show also had two revival seasons, in 2013 and 2019, on Netflix.

Shawkat said that she was “incredibly lucky” to be cast in the series and it was her mom, who has “amazing taste,” who first read the script and knew it was “next level.” She called working on the series “very formative” and “very positive,” and noted she and costar Michael Cera (who played her cousin George Michael) are still “best friends” to this day.

But once the series ended (the first time), Shawkat tired of being asked about it. “There was a period of time in my life where it felt like an albatross, in the sense of ‘I do other stuff, too,’ ” she said. 

She remembered that when she was starring in Search Party, which ran from 2016 to 2022, “I’d still get just recognized for Arrested and I was like, ‘But I’m f—— starring in a TV show! I work really hard, what else have I got to f—— do? But that’s the thing about this industry. It’s never enough.”

But her perspective eventually changed. She said, “I’ll always be proud of being recognized as Maeby. I love it. I don’t bat an eye. I think when I was a little younger and still feeling a little bitter, sometimes I’d be like, ‘Oh that.’ But no, it doesn’t bother me.” She joked, “I mean, if they recognized me for a show I was 15 on, that means my plastic surgery is working really well.”

Shawkat also said that when Arrested Development ended, she was upset that she didn’t, at first, get the kind of roles she wanted. Now, she thinks it was just a “timing thing.” 

“There’s so many highs and so many downs for this kind of industry, but you can do this until you’re 90,” she said. She said, “It all happens when it’s supposed to,” and it taught her to value life outside work, too. 

As for making Arrested Development as a teen, Shawkat said she was so glad to have Cera, 37, to go through it with. “Me and Michael were in a world to ourselves,” she said. “. . . We just like hit it off right away. And we were both not from LA, so our moms became great friends. And we’d literally shoot, go to Cheesecake Factory every night and maybe go see a movie if we were lucky and then go home and see each other and do it all over again.”

She and Cera, she said, were starstruck every day on set with Cross, who was one of their comedy heroes because of his ‘90s sketch comedy series Mr. Show. “He was like our God,” she said. “We looked up to him and if we could make him laugh, that was like the biggest thing.”

Over time, she also felt encouraged by showrunner Mitchell Hurwitz to improvise her own jokes. She said, “I feel very lucky that the projects I was drawn to, the ones that were drawn to me, that hired me, were just like really amazing quality, really amazing people, like talented and kind.”

Arrested Development also starred Jason Bateman as Michael Bluth, Tony Hale as Buster Bluth, Will Arnett as Gob Bluth, Jeffrey Tambor as George Bluth Sr., the late Jessica Walter as Lucille Bluth and Ron Howard as the narrator. The show also featured frequent appearances by Henry Winkler, Judy Greer and Liza Minnelli.

Shawkat stars in the new satire Atropia.