Jason Bateman juggles Emmy bids and new dark comedy

Jason Bateman’s – Jason Bateman is balancing Emmy-contending limited series—HBO Max’s “DTF St. Louis” and Netflix’s “Black Rabbit”—while preparing to direct two more projects: the dark comedy “The Cackling of the Dodos,” starring Woody Harrelson and Sam Rockwell, and the John G

Jason Bateman is still riding the wave of two limited series that look tailor-made for Emmy conversations—yet he’s already looking past them.

On HBO Max, he plays Clark, a guileless St. Louis weatherman in “DTF St. Louis,” a murder mystery that unfolds alongside David Harbour and Linda Cardellini. On Netflix. he goes in a different direction as Vince. a gambler with facial hair in “Black Rabbit. ” where he serves as the Cain to Jude Law’s Abel and drags their New York restaurant into trouble.

Bateman isn’t just showing up for those roles. He produced both shows, and he also directed “Black Rabbit,” a project that has already earned him DGA and Actor Award nominations.

Now he’s prepping to step behind the camera again—this time with two new films that, by their titles alone, feel like they were built to keep audiences unsettled.

The first is the dark comedy “The Cackling of the Dodos,” starring Woody Harrelson and Sam Rockwell as farmers who discover a body in a grain bin. Bateman describes it as a surprise call that landed exactly where he wanted to be.

“They are two of my favorites, and the fact that they called me to direct them in this was just kind of a mind-blower for me,” he says.

After that, Bateman will direct “The Partner,” a John Grisham adaptation starring Tom Holland as Biloxi lawyer Patrick Lanigan. The movie begins with a familiar source—a 1997 novel—but Bateman is thinking about how to translate it into something that feels current.

“What does it look like today? What’s the combination between, say, Jason Bourne and Bond and Michael Clayton, and what does that kind of stew look like?” he says. “Tom is going to be a great partner throughout. He brought it our way, and so I’m looking forward to collaborating with him.”

In the middle of that busy slate, he also talks about what kind of set life he wants to create—and what he thinks can quietly break it.

His first rule is blunt: try not to be an a–hole.

“To try your hardest not to be an a–hole. because a–holes are just incredibly disruptive to what is already a very fragile environment. ” he says. He points to the pressure that comes with making something unreal: “There’s a lot of stress and insecurity and doubt that exists when you’re trying to create fake life.” He emphasizes how complicated it is to build a believable world with a few hundred people who often don’t know one another. layered on top of technical demands.

“I mean, everybody’s lying,” he adds. “You’re trying to create a big fake world… and you’ve got all of that sort of social awkwardness compounded by the technical efforts. When you have an asshole, it’s just incredibly disruptive.”

The lesson, he says, stuck early enough to become instinct. He also describes having parents nearby to read the room—specifically the crew’s reactions to poor behavior.

Plus. he credits his first set experience on “Little House on the Prairie. ” where Michael Landon led as the writer. director. producer. and star—and he recalls Landon as “incredibly kind to everybody.” As Bateman later got older. he says sets could be more volatile. with more screaming. and he seems to have carried that contrast with him.

Another set lesson came from Katharine Hepburn, in what he calls a lucky job—her last job, he believes.

“I was very, very lucky to do a job with Katharine Hepburn,” he says. He played her driver in the CBS movie of the week “This Can’t Be Love. ” which also starred Anthony Quinn. Bateman recalls a scene where he had to get emotional and. in the middle of the take. Hepburn stopped him in front of the crew.

“She stopped, and she said, ‘Oh, stop acting!’” he remembers.

He says the moment landed like a hit.

“It was crushing to hear in front of the crew and everybody,” he says. He responded by asking whether she meant it professionally.

“You mean for good, like professionally?” he recalls asking.

Hepburn’s reply, he says, was clear: not professionally—just in that moment of performance.

“Just say the words. You’re great. Just you don’t need to push and add the stuff. Just be human and say the words and be emotional. Don’t act emotional,” Hepburn told him.

Bateman says it took him a while to fully decode it, but now he sees the usefulness of the instruction: “an economical way to tell an actor to stop acting and be a bit more real.” He adds he was “maybe 19 or 20 at the time.”

If Hepburn shaped how he wants emotion to land, his Emmy-era roles have shaped what kind of characters he craves.

For “DTF,” he calls it a part he always wanted—or at least a part he needed, given the roles he’d been playing for years. He notes that for “the last 10 or 20 years” he often played “a sardonic, cynical guy who knows everything, or thinks he does, that kind of dick.”

Then “DTF St. Louis” offered something else entirely: a character who feels safe to be vulnerable.

“He hasn’t learned any tricks to seem confident or have this kind of fake swagger,” he says of Clark. “He’s a St. Louis weatherman, so any of the assumed polish that might go into somebody like that, there was a bit more of that to the character on paper, a bit more vanity.”

Bateman wanted the end result to soften into something more human, less condescending.

“I wanted to make him a little bit softer, and I was really happy that Steve let me do that because it was nice to play that, somebody so lovely,” he says.

He also points to the support of Steven Conrad, the director-writer behind the show, and how the character’s vulnerability wasn’t fully written at the level Bateman believes he needed to play it.

Across all of it, there’s a theme that ties the on-screen work to the off-screen directing choices: the environment matters. The tone you build affects what performance can even become.

That’s something he’s felt in his career highs, too.

He says the most fun he’s had on set was “Arrested Development,” calling the group “incredibly funny and talented and kind,” and praising the daily writing momentum—“if you’re not howling with laughter in between takes, you’re trying to keep yourself from laughing while you’re doing the takes.”

It was also, he says, a “career-saver.”

And when he talks about what moves him, it gets personal in a quieter way. He says he now cries more easily. especially around “little kids.” After he had children. he says he “got really soft. ” even admitting he cries at commercials with infants learning “how to walk.” He also says he can still put on “Kramer vs. Kramer” and “start bawling,” and that classical music has become an emotional switch.

“Sometimes, when I have to cry in a scene, I’ll listen on my iPhone to some classical music, and it just kind of drops me into it,” he says.

He’s got other preferences. too. from the shows that feel most like him to the way he thinks about eccentric people. He says he tries not to be hypocritical about the acting he doesn’t like on others. and he shapes characters into something closer to himself. When he names the roles that fit best, he points to “Arrested Development,” the “Horrible Bosses” character, and “Game Night.”.

He also says he loves being around eccentric people. but that it can become a problem—because “you do have to stay on your toes and keep one foot in reality. ” he adds. That dynamic. he says. is fun to play when characters are surrounded by people they consider less-than. only for their own stupidity to get revealed.

In terms of which role people quote back at him. he says “Arrested Development” used to be the answer. but “Ozark” took over. He doesn’t claim that its character is especially quotable. but he points to how the show keeps its protagonist and family relatable while still pushing into an “extraordinary situation.”.

“I do get a lot of comments from folks… repeating scenes and moments and instances that have stuck with them,” he says.

And away from scripted worlds, he says his guilty pleasure is reality TV. He’s especially into a survival show called “Alone,” and he’s “patiently awaiting the next season” because he “gobble[s] them up so fast.” He also says politics has become hard to look away from.

“It’s very difficult to stop watching because the narrative, just the escalation, is remarkable,” he says. “Each episode tops the last, and you keep thinking it’s outdone the last, and you can’t stop watching because you keep thinking the ending is right around the corner.”

His biopic answer lands with the same self-awareness: he admires actors who play “the everyman” and identifies Ben Stiller, Paul Rudd, and Ryan Reynolds as the kind of performer that could do the job—then adds, “but I’m not dead yet.”

Even his desert island list is classic and old-school: “The British Office,” “Fawlty Towers,” “All in the Family,” Martin Scorsese’s “The King of Comedy” with De Niro, “2001,” and “Fargo.” He also says he’s a huge Fincher fan and “so take your pick.”

For Bateman. the work right now is clear: two limited series in Emmy contention. one directed project already earning nominations. and two more films—“The Cackling of the Dodos” and “The Partner”—that will bring him back into that fragile. high-stakes space where tone and trust can make or break the performance.

And beneath the credits and the planning, his message is simple. The sets are busy, the pressures are real, and the smallest choices—how people behave with one another—can ripple outward into the stories they’re trying to make.

Jason Bateman DTF St. Louis Black Rabbit Emmy Woody Harrelson Sam Rockwell The Cackling of the Dodos Tom Holland The Partner Patrick Lanigan John Grisham Katharine Hepburn