Jason Bateman’s awkward ‘Arrested Development’ banana stand moment

If you’re an “Arrested Development” fan, you are probably already counting down the minutes until Sunday, when 15 new episodes of the beloved sitcom will premiere on Netflix, more than seven years after it was canceled by Fox. And if you’re not, well, you’re probably wondering why everyone suddenly seems mad for frozen bananas.

Jason Bateman, who plays level-headed Michael Bluth on the series, has witnessed the feverish “Arrested Development” anticipation firsthand. Tuesday on “The Late Show,” he opened up to David Letterman about a rather uncomfortable photo op he experienced at one of the “Arrested Development” frozen banana stands that have popped up around New York, Los Angeles and London.

Of their own accord, Bateman and co-star Will Arnett decided to pay an impromptu visit to the stand in Times Square last week. It was, he explained, their way of saying thank you to the show’s obsessively devoted fans.

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But, as they found out the hard way, not all good deeds go unpunished. Bateman and Arnett’s visit happened to coincide with a so-called never nude convention – a gathering of fans wearing nothing but short, fitted denim cut-offs in the manner of Tobias Fünke.

As Bateman explained to Letterman, the presence of the “never nudes” and the abundance of phallic fruit made for an awkward scene.

“Will and I are out there and we’re pressing the flesh, as it were, and we’re signing autographs. This particular group, they thought it would be a real funny thing if we took a bunch of pictures with them,” he recalled. “It’s a dodgy photo op, but on top of that, they want us to hold their bananas and, ‘Hey, what if I feed you this banana.’”

Sounds just like something Tobias might say.

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