Back in 2003, Charlize Theron starred in a role that would later become one of her most acclaimed performances: she played real-life serial killer Aileen Wuornos in Monster, and the actor famously let go of vanity in order to change her appearance for the role. Her work earned Theron her very first Oscar statue, and fans and critics got excited to see what the South African actor would do next. That’s why it was a surprise when she decided to take on a role on a niche comedy sitcom called Arrested Development.
In an interview to The Hollywood Reporter, Theron talked about the weird decision and revealed that it was a calculated choice. During the time she was cast in Arrested Development, she had also taken on the lead role in sci-fi action Æeon Flux, which came out in 2005. The movie did poorly at the box office, earning a little over $50 million. Theron says she knew that the movie wasn’t going to do well, and she also had on the back of her mind that her childhood story combined with poor box office numbers could end her career – so she decided to try something different in order to showcase her talent:
“It was one of the scariest things, to walk onto a set of a show that’s so developed and so brilliant. But I think I needed that, to put myself out there in a different way, because people thought of me as someone who was fucking depressing, like my mother shot my father. [When Theron was 15, her dad came home drunk and threatened her and her mom with a gun, prompting her mother to shoot and kill him in what officials later determined was self-defense.] And I just fucking loved that show, and this is going to sound so “poor me,” but I do feel like sometimes, as women, we get one shot and I knew that ‘Aeon Flux’ was going to be a fucking flop. I knew it from the beginning, that’s why I did ‘Arrested Development.’”
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Theron also commented that not being a producer and not having the clout she has nowadays didn’t give her powers to speak up and say what she thought wasn’t working on Aeon Flux. She underscores that this was made even worse by the fact that she was a woman in a time when the industry frequently ignored female opinions: “I didn’t really have the experience to say what I believe Tom Cruise has maybe said for the past 20 years, which is, ‘Shut this shit down, get four more writers on it and let’s figure this out.’"
Æeon Flux was adapted from a popular MTV animated series, and told the story of a woman who discovers a conspiracy in the 2415 utopian world she lives in. Arrested Development, albeit overwhelmingly acclaimed, is a comedy series that had a limited audience and got canceled prematurely. The series was revived by Netflix in 2013, and served as one of the flagship original titles to catapult the streamer’s popularity.
You can watch a clip from Charlize Theron in Arrested Development below:
