Will Arnett: A Comedian's Open Wound Laid Bare

Alcoholism? Relapse? Sounds fun! (sarcasm.) But after despicably arch roles on Arrested Development and 30 Rock and big success in The Lego Movie and Ninja Turtles, Will Arnett created Flaked, a Netflix series borrowed from his painful, personal battles with sobriety (and it's why those reviews sting even more.)

- Lacey Rose

WILL ARNETT WEAVES THROUGH VENICE’S trendy eatery Gjelina to a table tucked way in the back, collapses into a chair and buries his face into his hands.

“It’s been a rough week,” he says, trusting that I’d understand what he’s referring to on this early March afternoon. His new, highly autobiographical dramedy, Flaked, which would officially drop the following day on Netflix, was greeted by unrelentingly harsh reviews, which Arnett, 45, has studied far more closely than I have. Before our water glasses are filled, he’s quoting from them, along with the barbs that have accompanied them on social media.

“Some guy tweeted at me, ‘From Arrested [Development] to BoJack [Horseman] to this?’ Like, shaming me,” he says, a smile unable to mask his frustration. “It’s like, was that guy with me for the 15 years where it was disappointment after disappointment? And when was it that I made a deal with everybody that I had to do what they wanted me to do?”

It would all be easier to stomach if Flaked were just another series that attached Arnett for his star power — and not something he’d poured his entire life into. He wrote, produced and co-created the show with pal Mark Chappell and plays the 40-something man at the center whose struggles with sobriety are drawn heavily from Arnett’s past. It is, without question, the most intimate, grounded piece of entertainment he’s ever been involved in, and the first day of shooting was set to coincide with the 15th anniversary of his own sobriety.