For Will Arnett, Is This Thing On is not a dramatic pivot but a homecoming

Will Arnett could not have made Is This Thing On five years ago.

He stars in and co-wrote the film with Bradley Cooper, who also directed, and Mark Chappell. He plays Alex, a father and husband going through a separation.

Unable to express all the roiling emotions he’s feeling about the momentous changes in his life, one night, Alex almost accidentally ends up onstage at an open mic stand-up night, and shares with a room full of strangers what he’s going through.

The story was inspired by the real-life experiences of UK comedian John Bishop, including the part he only ended up doing stand-up because it got him out of paying the cover charge.

But it’s hard to not draw parallels between Alex’s experience and Arnett’s experience. As one of Hollywood’s most high-profile – and beloved – couples of the 2000s, his divorce from Amy Poehler, with whom he is now good friends and co-parents, it’s tempting to wonder how much of his own life he brought to the dramatic role.

After all, divorced dad energy, it’s a thing.

“This story that inspired the film existed, of course, but for me, personally, this is something that is told through years of experience,” Arnett told The Nightly. “I don’t even mean my own personal experience necessarily in that way, specifically with the themes of divorce and children and stuff.

“Really, it’s years of being on the planet. We all have our experiences and relationships.

“We really wanted to make something that felt genuine and a real reflection of the things that we all go through, but, to be honest, I don’t think I could have made this five years ago.

“I’m a slow learner, and I don’t think I had enough insight into my own experiences. When it comes to introspection, I think I’m a late bloomer. I didn’t have, even five years ago, the ability to connect a lot of the dots in my life, to be able to be open and well enough to connect the dots that Alex has to.”

The Canadian actor and filmmaker, 55, spent almost a decade toiling in small roles and doing voiceover work when he had his breakthrough role as Job, one of the Bluth siblings on the universally critically acclaimed comedy Arrested Development.

It ran, initially, for three seasons from 2003, and supercharged his career because while it was little seen, as his co-star and friend Jason Bateman, once said, it was watched by the right people. People such as casting directors, who recognised Arnett’s onscreen magnetism, wily physicality and his killer ability to land a joke, sometimes with a caustic edge.

The opportunities started lobbing his way with film and TV projects including a memorable recurring role on 30 Rock as Devon Banks, a TV executive rival to Alec Baldwin’s Jack Donaghy, series including The Millers and Up All Night and films such as Blades of Glory, Let’s Go to Prison and Show Dogs.

There was a theme emerging, and it had to do with big laughs. If you were a casual observer, then Arnett was a comedy guy.

But if you were paying closer attention, you would have seen an actor and filmmaker who had different sides. His voice performance in Bojack Horseman, as a depressed and self-destructive cartoon steed, Arnett revealed himself as someone capable of exploring the different textures of pain.

There was also the 2016 streaming series Flaked, one of Netflix’s earlier original offerings, a two-season drama-comedy Arnett co-created and produced with Chappell.

Inspired in part by Arnett’s journey from alcoholism to sobriety, you could see in Flake, a personal statement from an artist who through his work tried to engage with something in his own life.

“We are always just the sum of our experience, and I wouldn’t make a show like Flake today because it’s not where I am,” Arnett said, reflecting on the progression of his artistic expression between then and now.

“The kind of issues I want to talk about in Flake had to happen for me. It was my first experience of really being a showrunner. I’m very proud of what we did at that time, with the limited resources of Flake.

“I haven’t rewatched it in years, and I imagine if I rewatched it, I would look back and think, ‘Oh, that’s where I was at that time’. I guess we all have these shifts in our lives, where we move through them, and we’re different.”

If Flaked was where Arnett was in 2016, Is This Thing On is where Arnett was in 2025.

Even from what listeners have heard from him on Smartless, the podcast he shares with Bateman and Sean Hayes, he’s a man more at ease, more introspective, more aware, and able to be as open and vulnerable as the character and the film demanded.

To play Alex, he took himself to comedy clubs around New York City and, for the first time in his life, performed stand-up.

You might think that was something he was accustomed to, but it was new to him, standing in front of a crowd, no script on a teleprompter, trying to evoke the feeling of connecting to those strangers in that moment with something authentic.

“It’s very scary because it’s very vulnerable, and I’d never done it,” he recalled. “I will admit, I was super scared. I’m always a little bit scared when I go on.”

He caught a bug, because even with the production of Is This Thing On done, he recently went on stage again. He called Liz Furiati, the manager at the Comedy Cellar, which the film shot at, and asked if he could go up that night at 10pm.

“I just did it because I wanted to get that kind of thrill again. It was exciting and it was scary.

But it wasn’t as intimidating as playing Alex, of being immersed in a role that couldn’t use comedy as a smokescreen. Even if his character sometimes did, Arnett could not.

“Tackling, and getting into the emotion of this film, and the vulnerability, and exposing myself in that way as an actor was way more terrifying, truthfully,” he said. “That was the part that was really hard, starting every day and being vulnerable, and starting at zero, and having to get in there and be honest in those moments.

“That was frightening for me.”

Despite Arnett’s genuinely affecting performance, one that’s devoid of overwrought sentimentality yet is still brimming with relatable pathos, Is This Thing On has strangely not generated much heat in the awards season conversation.

But he never did this film to push some sort of publicity narrative about breaking out of a typecast or trying to prove he could make it as a dramatic actor. That side has always been there.

“It was just a natural progression,” he explained. “The fact that I was interested in this story in the first place showed that there was, for me, the early signs that as an artist, I wanted to do stuff that was a little bit different.”

Drama is where he started, having moved from Toronto to New York City when he was 20 years old to study at the famed Lee Strasberg Institute. There, he was part of the city’s theatre scene.

“I moved (there) to be a dramatic actor, and my life kind of went in a different direction, which is fine, but this is actually what I’ve always wanted to do. There’s no part of me that’s like, ‘Oh, I’m here because I want to prove something and I want to be taken seriously’.

“It’s just what interests me, and I feel really fortunate.

“I already admitted I was a slow learner, and this was always my dream. Somewhere along the way I got lost, I did other things and things that I really liked, but this was the place I always wanted to go.

“I know it might be a surprise for other people who might think that I’m outside of my lane. For me, I feel like I’m coming home.

“It took me a long time for me to find my way.”

Is This Thing On is in cinemas on January 22