Catching up with Tony Hale: Fear, Forky, and Matching His Costars’ Freak in ‘The Decameron’

If you’re as terminally online as I am, you see Tony Hale’s face every day.

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The actor best known for “Veep” and “Arrested Development” is a household name for comedy fans, even if he enjoys a degree of anonymity in his day-to-day.

“People are just really nice,” he told IndieWire, along with an anecdote of the previous night when a restaurant hostess shared her appreciation of his work. “But then — my wife is from Alabama — I go to Alabama and no one’s watching or has watched ‘Veep’ or ‘Arrested.’ So it’s not that kind of really high fame.”

It’s the kind of fame that prompts people to shout “Buster!” at him in the street, or character-specific things like “You’ve got two hands” — the kind of fame that comes from being on two heavily-memed shows, at least one of which was all over social media on July 21, the day before Hale’s interview. The visibility and repertoire sees him working consistently, most recently as the voice of Fear in “Inside Out 2.” It made Hale the perfect choice for a Super Bowl team up with Beyoncé, and for the disgruntled servant Sirisco in Netflix’s “The Decameron,” out today.

“If you think of like a ‘Downton Abbey,’ I’m kind of the Carson of the of the group,” Hale said. “I’m kind of the leader of the downstairs. Something happens in the pilot that kind of throws everything afoot, and I’m trying to manage everything.”

The eight-episode series from Kathleen Jordan is set at an idyllic Italian villa during the Bubonic Plague in 1348 — an environment primed for chaos, with desperate characters and disparate social classes thrown together amid anxiety, fear, and lots of wine). Ahead of the show’s Netflix debut, Hale spoke to IndieWire about filming the series on-location for six months, his crazy costars, and the latest turns in his career.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

IndieWire: What level of fame do you have day-to-day as you’re going about your life?

Tony Hale: I have to admit, even the word fame sounds like — I just put that in like, the Hugh Jackman category. It’s weird to even attach that word to me… That sounds, I would think that would be — I know it sounds weird to say, but — kind of hard. There’s a fishbowl component to it. I think we as human beings need the safety of those private moments, and to not have, or to get those more limited, as more famous you get, I think that would be tough.

At a certain level it’s difficult to cope with, and you can never go back. But at the same time as an actor that also means you’ve reached a certain level of success and security.

When they when someone does recognize me, they’re typically very kind. One of my favorite things to do is when someone has little ones and they’re fans of “Toy Story,” I’ll send a voice memo from Forky to their kid and saying their name. And then sometimes they’ll send me a video back showing the kid listening to it, because they’re in that sweet age where they think Forky’s real, and so their face is like, “How in hell did you meet Forky, and how does he know my name?” So if you have any nieces or nephews that want that, I’ll fully send that to you.

Wow, I will consider that. I know yesterday was weird for me, being very online. What is that like to be accidentally the face of global news?

I have not seen that! Social media can get kind of daunting to me. It does make me think when I did that Verizon Beyoncé commercial, and there was a round of like, me with Beyoncé, me with Lucille Bluth, me with Selina, and I was like, ‘Oh, there really is a through line to my career.’ I guess I do codependency really well.

I can’t move on from Beyoncé that quickly — talk about levels of fame! Was she familiar with your work? Did she know you?

Honestly, she was so sweet, so kind. She had like nine costume changes in a day and I just had one, so I just kind of stood around and and ate snacks. We didn’t have time, really, to talk. It was just such a whirlwind. It was really wild, because my daughter had just been to her concert. Finding something that my teenager thinks is cool about me is always a hunt, so I finally had a piece of something that was, deemed cool, and I signed an NDA, and I couldn’t talk about it until it came out. I was like, “I finally have something!!”

Let’s talk about ‘The Decameron.” Can you tell me about the casting process and how you got involved?

I guess it was like November of ’22 and they mentioned it to me as just this dark comedy about the bubonic plague in 1348, and I was like, “Oh, man, that’s interesting.” I heard that Kathleen Jordan, the showrunner, she wrote it during the pandemic, just as a way to process her own fear and anxiety, all the fear and anxiety all the fear and anxiety that we were all experiencing. And very rarely do you get this opportunity to step back into those kind of characters. Also, I’d never been to Rome. I was there for six months and it was really exciting.

But what I mostly appreciated was — when you think about “Veep” or you think about “Arrested Development,” these characters get kind of stuck. They’re so funny, but they’re stuck. You don’t really see much of an arc. You don’t see much growth. Buster, I think is still in some corner, probably crying and panic-stricken. So to talk to Kathleen and see this full arc, and see where he’s going, and seeing how he has a self awareness about him. He retreats, he comes back, and it was just nice to play that arc. I was really excited about it.

You mentioned the through line of codependency, but Sirisco is a fun extension because when we meet him, he doesn’t really have a master.

He doesn’t have a master, but he’s always looking for one. He latches on to just someone to connect, because the base of everything and a lot of our pain is we just want connection. He’s just desperately looking for some kind of connection and to feel validated, to feel seen. So even though, yes, that did happen, he was just like, “Okay, who’s the next target? Where can I dive in and find my validation to be seen?”

You have some really incredible scene partners in this show, especially Zosia (Mamet) and Saoirse (Monica-Jackson) — you’re all matching each other’s freak, as the kids say.

Oh my gosh, I love that! My daughter would be so proud you said that. If I went home to her and I was like, “Hey, we all have the same freak, she’d be like, ‘You never need to say that again, Dad.'” A big inspiration for Kathleen was “Amadeus,” because she loved how there were all different dialects represented, and that kind of melting pot. You take someone like Zosia’s character, Pampinea — she’s pretty much from the valley, she’s a valley girl. You take Saoirse, she’s just like an Irish Bulldog, and then my character. Working off those energies — Saoirse Monica-Jackson is so hilarious. Off-camera and on-camera, but off-camera, the one liners that would come out of her mouth were — I had a running list of stuff that was she would just randomly say, and I would show it to people. I was like, “Saoirse just said this.” Writing her own script for her life. She is so funny, so Zosia and I were just constantly entertained by her.

She’s such a good face actor.

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Ugh, she’s great. And that little wig, what is it — Lord…

YEAH, Lord Farquaad!

That Lord Farquaad wig. It was just perfect, she put it on and we were like, that’s the one. Also, by the way, I had a great wig. I started to get a little bit of self conscious about it, because the Italians would always come up to me, like, “Oh, Tony, that wig is so beautiful,” and I was like, “Thank you. Thank you.” Then after a while, I was like, “My hair is does not look this good, and I can’t keep this wig on for the rest of my life.” And this one Italian guy goes, “Eh, maybe you should.” Thanks?

You grew your beard out, too.

I grew my beard out. Turned into a full disaster, but it that was really fun. I grew it out just matching that time period. The thing about the Italian artists is their artistry is on a different level. The show is so beautiful, and the wigs and the makeup and the costumes, it’s just another level. So to be around that was really, really a gift.

Let’s elaborate on your relationship to all of that — the production value, the sets, the costuming. For all these really iconic roles you’ve played, they were very much set in the present.

I don’t recommend wool tights during the summer. You always hear all these actors talk about how the costume and hair and all that really helps you get in character, but it really is something; putting on that wig, putting on that wardrobe, them spending time and hair and the makeup — and even the wool tights, there’s something, it just so helps define the character when you get into it and just get the essence of it. You just can’t help but walk different and approach people differently. It really is such a huge part of the process.

What was a sequence that was particularly exciting or challenging to shoot?

I do have an allergy to horses. So when I was around the horses, I was like, I’m gonna pop about five Allegra that day. So that was tricky. As a whole, when I think about what was challenging about the experience, it’s when you’re away from home, really. That’s the first thing that pops into my head. My wife and my daughter, my daughter was in high school, so they couldn’t come, so I would go back and forth. As an actor, I’m always just like, “Thank you, thank you. Thank you for the job” — but to be away from home is tough, and you’re just so hoping that we all get along. I remember going in thinking, “God, just give me one friend.” And when the whole cast really gelled, and Kathleen is so cool, man, you’re just like, “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.” Thank you. Doing like group scenes makes it fun. It’s hard not to break — there’s one time I’m like, feeding Zosia grapes the whole time — it’s so random, but I’m just so grateful that I really got along with them, because that’s not always the case.

That’s such a gift, especially because you mentioned that your daughter’s going to college, so you must have been aware that there was only so much time left.

We shot this her junior year, and she just finished her senior year, so I’ve been home her whole senior year, which was a total godsend.

You mentioned the legacy of Forky, and of course, you got to voice Fear this summer. Having kids of your own, I guess, just what is it like having that balance in your career with the more adult material?

I can’t even put in words how honored I feel to be a part of something like “Toy Story” and “Inside Out 2.” “Inside Out” wasn’t just one of my favorite animated movies, that was like one of my favorite movies of all time. The way that they structured the emotional life in a really tangible way, in a real digestible way — it’s obviously a very complex, very complicated issue, emotions — I just thought it was genius. To be a part of that and have my friend’s five-year-old love it and at the same time the parent is like, “This feels like therapy.” The whole having more compassion to your emotions, inviting them in rather than trying to push them out. Wow. That took years of therapy for me. So just stuff like that, to be a part of that, I feel incredibly honored. Honestly.

What are some pros and cons of voice acting versus being on camera?

The con of being on camera, it’s this mug they gotta see all the time. Voice acting, the challenge at first was that being a comic actor, I relied on my physicality with comic beats. I remember having an anxiety of thinking how is that going to be delivered, just through the sound, just through the microphone. Over time you realize I did the same performance in front of the microphone that I did in front of the camera. You did the same whole thing, and just trust that it’s going to be conveyed through the microphone, so that was a big lesson for me.

The challenge in front of camera — my gosh, on “Veep,” the biggest challenge was not laughing. I can take a break with voiceover and start laughing. I remember there’s one scene on “Veep” where Selina asked me to break up with her boyfriend for her, and I was so close to her, and my entire body was shaking, and I was like, this takes supernatural strength to not laugh during this. I’ve said this before, but she said to me once, because I was laughing so much, she said, “Tony, you know you’re not watching the show? You’re in the show.” I was like, “I know, but it’s a really funny show!” Hard not to laugh.

Very Selina of her, gotta say.

Please, she was throwing it down.

It does feel like you’ve had a lot of work coming out this summer, “Veep” is having yet another resurgence — so if Lorne Michaels calls…

My wife was a makeup artist on “SNL” for seven years. I mean, my gosh, you kidding? That’s a dream. I was a huge “Carol Burnett Show” fan growing up, and it’s such a rare thing to see a live action sketch show. Man, I don’t even go there in my head. That would be too exciting.

“The Decameron” is now streaming on Netflix.