Tony Hale Shares His Favorite 'Arrested Development' Memories

Tony Hale figures his tombstone will read "brought a plastic fork to life like no other," and he has made his peace with it. Back on the show ahead of Toy Story 5, which opens nationwide Friday, June 19th, Hale leaned all the way into Forky, the wide-eyed spork who deals only in blunt facts. "We're all going to die, guys," he deadpanned. "This is fleeting." Forky, it turns out, is a realist.

The timing of his involvement carries some weight for Hale. The original Toy Story arrived in 1995, the same year he moved to New York to chase acting, never imagining he would one day be invited into the franchise. "For 30 years it was my mission," he joked. "You need a utensil."

The conversation detoured, gloriously, into childhood toys. Chris revealed he still owns two stuffed animals, a raccoon named Rocco he has had since he was three and a dog named Sparky since he was six, both of which made the trip to college at Syracuse. Hale declared it the plot of Toy Story 6. He offered his own origin story too, a Muppets kid who loved Scooter so much, glasses and all, that he was convinced Scooter had asthma and would tuck his inhaler into the puppet's hand. He also adored Beaker, who he realized reminded him of his Veep character Gary, the aide who mostly stood silently behind the boss going "meep meep."

That Veep connection became its own thread. Asked about a revival, Hale said he wishes, missing those people dearly. He also made a sharp point about why the show landed. Veep gave you permission to laugh at politics because none of it was actually happening. "Now you really can't laugh at the news," he said, "because it's happening." He confessed the algorithm serves him a Veep clip about once a day, most recently the autopsy scene where every bullet point explaining Selina's defeat traces back to her refusing to accept any responsibility.

The richest stretch was Arrested Development, especially with Henry Winkler booked on the show next week. Hale called Winkler a model of character and integrity, the kind of gracious veteran who, when Hale arrived overwhelmed in Hollywood in 2003, showed him the business did not have to be cutthroat. On the show, Winkler played the gloriously incompetent lawyer Barry Zuckerkorn, who tangled often with Hale's Buster. Hale admitted he is still catching jokes years later. The famous one, where a doctor assures the family Buster will "be all right" after a seal takes his hand, only clicked for him 15 years on, once he understood the line meant Buster simply has a right arm. He marveled at the layered wordplay, right down to the seal being a "loose seal," a pun on his mother Lucille.

The deep cuts kept coming. Hale recalled getting to make out with Liza Minnelli, whose character was also named Lucille, and remembered pitching jokes to creator Mitch Hurwitz only to be told, "Yeah, that's funny, but I think I'm going to have a seal bite off your hand." He brought up Tobias joining the Blue Man Group while mistaking it for a support group, and noted that David Cross, on the show a couple of months ago, confirmed he wore real blue paint that was a nightmare to remove, only for Jeffrey Tambor to later get away with just a mask.

Hale even floated a real Toy Story 6 pitch, inspired by the Olympics handing stuffed animals to silver medalists like the Canadian hockey team after their overtime loss, a fitting fate for the toys nobody picked. Through all of it, the running gag held: Hale promised to sit front row whenever Rich finally does a stand-up set on the show. For now, he is rooting for the toys, and one plastic spork in particular, starting June 19th.