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Emmys: Six Nominated Actors Dish the Details of Character-
Building   JASON BATEMAN on playing Michael Bluth Arrested
Development (Netflix)  The good part of auditioning is that you
basically get to play the character any way you want, and then
they get to decide if you guessed right, and that's what they
want for the rest of this character's life.  In this case, I
auditioned, and I just happened to guess right about how they
would need this character to be played based on having just read
the pilot. And [creator] Mitch Hurwitz really liked it, and we
were kind of off to the races. I ended up playing the character
really from what my first instinct was, and we were on the same
page from the very beginning.  I have to give credit to Mitch
and the way that he wrote the pilot; it was very much from my
character's point of view. And coupled with the narration, it
just established this very down-to-earth, real observation of a
bunch of eccentric peop