Jay Chandrasekhar Shares His Favorite Liza Minnelli ‘Arrested Development’ Story

Jay Chandrasekhar directed four or five episodes of Arrested Development, and he can still name them. Two with Julia Louis-Dreyfus. One called My Mother the Car. One called Hermanos, the one where the three brothers end up in a brawl at the end while everybody is trying to get to court.

Rich noted that this describes a fairly high percentage of Arrested Development episodes.

The show has aged into something close to permanent. Rich mentioned how often it still surfaces in his algorithm, one brilliant moment after another, which raised the obvious question of whether anyone could make it now.

"I think they could," Chandrasekhar said.

He was ready for the follow-up about the edginess, and he went straight to the matriarch.

"Lucille Bluth is an aristocratic, I wouldn't call her a racist. I would say she has racial tones to her barbs," he said. "But she's fabulous."

What Chandrasekhar keeps returning to is that the situation itself was unrepeatable. The writing was great. The cast was a collection of people you could not assemble again at any price.

"We all thought we were making the funniest show on television that nobody was watching."

Which brings us to the best story he told, and it involves being 25 years old and walking onto a set full of actors who have been famous longer than you have been alive.

"When you're a 25-year-old, you walk on the set and there are older actors, they instantly resist you," Chandrasekhar said. "They're like, who are you? Why are you here?"

Enter Liza Minnelli, who had a line she was supposed to deliver. Something simple. Chandrasekhar's example version of it was, I'll call the doctor.

She would not say it.

Showrunner Mitch Hurwitz did what showrunners do, which is make it somebody else's problem. Get her to say the line, he told Chandrasekhar, because that is your job.

So Chandrasekhar went in and explained, politely, that the line was I'll call the doctor.

"She goes, you got it, boss. And I'm like, okay."

She still would not say it. They went again. Nothing. So Chandrasekhar planted himself next to the camera and simply started repeating it out loud, over and over, into the take. I'll call the doctor. I'll call the doctor. I'll call the doctor.

Finally, Minnelli delivered.

"I'll call the doctor," she said, before turning and adding, "Happy?"

Rich supplied the only correct response, which is that as a matter of fact, yes.

Chandrasekhar has clearly made peace with the transaction.

"As long as she says the line eventually, I'm happy."

He stopped by alongside Kevin Heffernan with Super Troopers 3 arriving in theaters nationwide on Friday, August 7, and by the end of the segment Rich had upgraded the two of them from guests to professionals who stuck the landing.