Jason Bateman has revealed the new series of 'Arrested Development' has been strongly influenced by Donald Trump's presidency.
Jason Bateman
The 48-year-old actor insists he has "no idea" of the specifics of the show's upcoming fifth season - in which he plays Michael Bluth - but admitted show writers have been drawing parallels between his on-screen family and the controversial US leader's administration.
He said: "None of [the similarities] are lost on [creator] Mitch Hurwitz. He's aware of all of that stuff.
"And he and his writing staff have been in a cave for the last two or three months crafting these episodes, and they're going to lean into a lot of that [Trump] stuff for sure. They can't wait."
An earlier season of the show featured a storyline following a seemingly-ridiculous idea of building a wall between Mexico and the US and Jason is stunned it's become a reality.
He told The Daily Beast: "It was a little bit more about Bush. But my god...the f***in' wall between Mexico and the US?"
Season four of the show - the first to air on Netflix after it was previously broadcast on Fox - faced criticism that the characters didn't interact with one another very much, but Jason has promised that will change this time around.
He said: "We're all together. We don't have the same limitations that we had on us back then.
"There were series exclusivities back then. Tony [Hale] for one, on 'Veep', couldn't be on two shows at the same time.
"Also, Mitch [Hurwitz] thought it would be interesting to utilise the interface of Netflix at that time, where you could drop all the episodes at once like an album, and with all the action being simultaneous, you could click out of one guy's episode and start another one and see a different perspective on the same scene.
"Editorially, I think that proved to be a little bit more of a challenge than he anticipated, and I think as a consequence it ended up having some more complications and wrinkles in it than maybe he intended. But this time, we'll all be together and it won't be like nine spin-offs."
Tagged in Jason Bateman