EXCLUSIVE: ‘Veep’ Star Tony Hale Sits Down with Decider to Talk About TV Anxiety

In real life, Tony Hale does not have the dopey look of acute distress that he wears like part of his costume as awkward man-children with mommy issues on Netflix’s Arrested Development and HBO’s Veep.

In real life, he’s more relaxed. Mostly.

“It is loud in here,” he says at a restaurant in Glendale, an L.A. suburb just north of Hollywood. “Sorry.” He laughs, and I laugh at him laughing. “I love that I’m apologizing for that. That’s a true codependent.”

As Julia Louis-Dreyfus’s bag man on Veep — which won the Emmy last year for Best Comedy and returns for Season 5 on April 24 — Hale’s Gary Walsh is the very embodiment of codependence.

Hale is sipping hot tea, and we talk about his current favorite show (Canadian comedy Schitt’s Creek on the Pop network) and why he likes doing voice work for children’s cartoons (“You’re in a voice booth acting like a moron and nobody’s judging you!”). We also talk about the extremely funny viral moment that he and Louis-Dreyfus had at the Emmys in 2013.

When Louis-Dreyfus won the Emmy for best actress in a comedy that year, she walked halfway toward the stage and stopped. Hale, who plays her bagman on Veep and had won his own Emmy for supporting actor earlier in the evening, ran to carry her purse. He stood behind Louis-Dreyfus and whispered reminders to her as he does on Veep while she gave her acceptance speech.

“She called me that morning,” Hale says. “She said, ‘Why don’t you carry my purse if I win?’ In my mind, I’m thinking, ‘you’re gonna win’ and also ‘this could bomb — disastrously.’ That’s what’s fun about this business. It’s terrifying, but you just do it and see what happens.”

Hale, who has two Emmys of his own — both for Veep — has been on two hit shows, but Veep was the first to afford him any measure of job security.

Arrested Development won the Emmy for best comedy in 2004 after its first year on FOX but spent three seasons in a state of perpetual cancellation panic. Netflix revived the show for a fourth season in 2013, and multiple people with knowledge of the show’s plans say that a fifth season in 2016 is likely. Hale said he would love to do another season — partly because he wants to know what’s next for Buster Bluth and partly because it’s work.

Hale is uncomfortable with the suggestion that his career success and his Emmys give him any measure of job security. A question of whether he prefers the 22-episode seasons of network TV or the shorter seasons on cable shifts the conversation to the precarious nature of having a job at all.

“If you have a full season of 20-something shows, I’d be thankful to have that gig,” Hale says. “I’ve lived enough years as a starving actor to not be like, ‘Eh, the season’s too long.’ I’m thankful for a job.” After a discussion about his voice work on the upcoming Angry Birds movie, Hale comes back to job security. “I’m still thinking about your question about being worried. I don’t think most actors ever lose that. You’re a freelancer, and you never lose that desperation.”

Hale says his anxiety about what work is around the corner was the idea behind Archibald’s Next Big Thing, a children’s book he wrote last year. “It’s about a chicken who’s got to find his next big thing,” Hale says. “A bee travels around with him and is like, ‘Just beeee, man. Just beeee.’ It’s always a challenge for me to stay present. I’ve always got my antenna out for what’s next, and it’s hard to just be there.”

[Watch the Season 5 premiere of Veep on HBO Go or HBO Now on April 24, 2016]