This sounds obnoxious,” says David Cross, wincing, “but the show’s doing very well. It’s been very well received.” The comedian and actor known to many as Arrested Development’s preposterous Tobias Fünke has a look of wiry confidence as he speaks down the camera at me. The show he’s talking about, Worst Daddy in the World, is his latest stand-up tour, and the reason he’s coming to the UK. “I’ll get standing ovations and people are very happy with it – except for the people that walk out,” he adds, dryly. “They’re not happy.”
Speaking from his home office, Cross is flanked by two posters: one for the 1990s American sketch show Mr Show with Bob and David, the other for the cult 2010s sitcom The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret. On camera, the 59-year-old is often cast as timid, put-upon characters – a consequence, perhaps, of his uniquely nasal speaking voice. Emanating from some of his characters, this tone takes on a clerkish quality (there’s a reason he was cast as the “white voice” in Boots Riley’s 2018 race satire Sorry to Bother You). But off camera, and onstage, Cross would never be mistaken for a buzzkill. This is, after all, the man who admitted to taking cocaine in the same room as the president, during the 2009 White House Correspondents’ dinner. Today, he’s boasting an unruly white-grey beard; a half-sleeve of tattoos peeks out from beneath the arms of his shirt.
