-I'm talking to the one and only Jason Bateman right now.
[ Cheers and applause ]
That's exactly right.
I want to talk "Ozark."
"Ozark" is a very spoilery show, and so I don't want to spoil
anything for anyone who hasn't seen it.
-We all die at the end. Is that a spoiler?
-You can't even -- you can't even joke and say that.
-But it's good to -- Yeah. -You can't even joke.
-It's an old coyote -- You know, the dynamite thing?
-No, that's not exactly what happened. [ Laughs ]
-It's fine. -That would be unbelievable.
Who -- Do people try to get spoilers out of you?
Because I wouldn't. I would not try to do that.
-No. My wife kind of.
And then I'll start to -- -She must know.
-She doesn't really know much of anything.
I -- I made such a mistake, Jimmy.
No, no. -Oh, my God.
You're going to be in big trouble.
-Oh, she knows I'm joking. -She's the greatest.
-She does try to -- -Oh, because you know why?
Because then she'll be in trouble,
because if she'll go to a dinner or something,
then she has to lie and go, "I can't tell you."
-Right, right. -So don't put her
in that position. -Exactly.
-That kind of -- Does that help?
-I -- No one really tries
to get the spoilers out, but I do like to just go ahead
and offer them, like I just did here.
I mean, but the death the four of us get --
-No, no, no, no, no. You can't.
But have you accidentally spoiled anything for anyone?
-Yeah, I was actually -- I was actually watching
a cut of one of these scenes
that we was working with the editor,
and I was watching it on my computer,
and Amanda, my wife, walked in.
And she walked in, she was talking to me.
"Hey, so. blah, blah, blah --" And she looks and she watched
one of the characters die,
and she was like "God, d--"
[ Laughter ]
-Like, "Why did I walk in now? And now it's ruined."
-Yeah. -Cause that's one of the --
the twists that come in, I remember --
Questlove, you saw "Ozark" in, like, a day or so?
-Yes. -And so --
-Come on. Quest was like, "Dude,
where are you at?" I'm like, "It's so interesting
and so fun."
And he's like, "No, no, no.
Have you got to anything crazy?" I go, "Nothing crazy yet."
-Didn't "SNL" do a sketch on that,
where like with streaming shows,
you can't talk about any show.
"Are you watching it?" "Don't talk about that."
And then they talk about it, and don't talk about that.
-No, you're not allowed to talk about anything.
-One of the bummers about streaming,
but I like having the choice
of being able to watch them all at once.
-How long has it been and when did you start doing "Ozark?"
Five -- And so, this is the fourth -- five years.
-Five years. -Yeah, but maybe six with COVID.
-Yeah. -I don't know.
-So six years. I think you should catch up and understand.
I think it's totally understandable
if someone does spoil it. I won't do it,
but I will tell you that it's one of the greatest shows.
Every performance is knockout. Laura Linney is a knockout.
A knockout.
[ Cheers and applause ]
Julia, a knockout.
You are -- dude, you're unbelievable.
I can't imagine any other human being doing you.
I tried to do an impression of you,
and now -- I know.
-Didn't you do one last time I was here?
-I did, and now people ask me to do it.
They go, "Can you --" -Wait, I kind of forget.
It's hurtful, I think, probably, right?
[ Laughter ]
-Most impressions are, but no, it's out of love.
-All you needed to do is put on slippers,
PJs, and watch a Dodger game and fall asleep. That's perfect.
-I was just more like,
[imitating Jason] "G-Gang? Gang? Gang? Guys? Guys?"
-[ Laughs ] -"Guys?"
[Normally] That's all I really did.
That's all. -That's pretty good.
-[Imitating Jason]"G-Guy-- G-Guy-- Guys? OK, guys? OK?"
[Normally] But I can't -- you know.
I got to -- I got to say, I also did some deep diving,
and I might be wrong in saying this,
but do you come up with the drawings?
The like -- kind of the graphics?
-The little symbols at the beginning?
-Yes. -Yeah, yeah, yeah.
-Is that you? -Yeah, yeah.
I work with this great graphic artist, Neil Kellerhouse,
who's worked a lot with David Fincher,
and I'm a huge Fincher fan.
And so I had reached out to him and I said, "So here's the deal.
We got to do Netflix -- we got to do an open --
I didn't want to do, like, a credits sequence.
Like, don't you hate you got to watch a minute
and a half of credits for a show you watch all the time.
It's like, let's get to the story.
So I wanted to do something that was just, like,
5 minutes -- 5 seconds long.
But Netflix was like, "We got to see the name of the show."
Like, people have already clicked.
They know what show they're watching.
-[ Laughs ] Yeah, like, "What? Is this 'Bozark?'
We never heard of that." You go, "No, no."
We know what we're watching.
-So I said, "All right, all right, all right.
So we're going to put the name of the show in this --
in this little 5-second thing, but we're going to not do it
with O-Z-A-R-K,
we'll do symbols that are in the shape of Z-R --
Z-A-R-K. Which I don't know
if a lot of people know that --
-I didn't know that. -The symbols are in the shape.
So it's -- you got the "O," and then the first symbol
is, if you look closely,
it's a "Z" then an "A," then an "R."
-Are you serious? -But those symbols
are also harbingers of things
that are coming in the episode.
-Right. That's why Neil
is such a genius. He can work all this stuff out.
-I watch -- I go through every episode
and I give him, like, 10 or 12 things that are important
in the episode, and then he decides
which one of those things lend themselves to a symbol.
Like I'll say, a fish plays a big part.
And so he'll go, "Oh, yeah, okay.
So a fish can bend into an 'R' or a 'K,' or..."
So he works on it, then he sends them to me.
I go, "Yeah, I make -- that's too obvious.
Make that a little less so -- it looks too much like a 'K.'"
So that's a fun thing we do together.
It's brilliant because you're like,
"Wait --" You try to almost guess what the episode
would be about. Why?
I'm not even -- I'm never close.
-The only rule is that it can't be something that existed
before you go to that card.
In other words, that little cold opening,
it can't be anything from there.
-No. -So it's from that point
forward.
-And so you're doing this, the series finale.
You do -- I don't know what it is, but your last scene
with Laura Linney. I don't know what it is,
but when you do that, there are tears.
-There some -- the actual -- the last scene
we shot of everything was a --
was a big moment in the show.
It's not the last scene in the show,
but it's the last scene that we shot.
So, yeah, there was some melancholy.
It was kind of -- but you know, it's bittersweet
because we were all really happy that we kind of made it
to the finish line without screwing things up
too bad, I hope. -You made -- No.
You made great TV. -Thank you.
-I mean, that's even bigger than TV.
I don't know what -- it's like the movies.
Like mini movies. They're unbelievable.
-A bunch of incredible people in that crew
and the incredible writing,
and it was -- we were very, very lucky.
-Is there any world where there's a happy ending
to the show?
-It is. Well, that's what Chris Mundy,
who is our incredible writer and his staff and our showrunner,
he wants -- you know, because he and I, we talk
before the beginning of every season
about what are we going to try to get done,
and then I don't mess around with the writing.
I'm not smart enough. But we talk about the themes.
And with the final season, the whole thing was like,
"Well, how are we going to end it?"
Should the Byrde family pay a bill?
You know? Like, should they get away with it?
Should they not?"
And so he said, "Well, I want it to be
a happy ending, but there's got to be
a little bit of a, 'Well, is it happy for them?'"
And so hopefully, the audience will think,
"Ah, they've kind of threaded the needle
between a happy ending, but that there's a little bit
of -- they're limping. -Yeah.
-Did you -- Do you know going into it
where it was going to end up? Like, from the first season?
You're like, "Let's do this. Let's hope that it's a hit."
-We didn't have the finish line done at the very,
very beginning, but we were pretty clear
that it should be a family show --
not a family show -- Not an AA -0-
[ Laughter ] -It is so not a family show.
It is far from it.
[ Laughter ]
-A show about a family. -Yeah, it's a morning show.
You really got to watch it with the kids.
You got to get the kids over. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
They love it. Oh, my God.
-Yeah. A lead-in to "Alf." -[ Laughs ]
Oh, my gosh.
Congrats, buddy, on everything.
You know I love you. I want to show a clip.
Here's Jason Bateman and Laura Linney in "Ozark".
Take a look at this.
-You suggested this life.
-Long time ago.
-You knew better than me what this was.
They cut out a man's eyes in front of you.
-Hey. I got us into this.
You're getting us out of this.
Yeah, we --
We chose this together.
Nobody talked you into this. You were excited about this.
-You were a good salesman.
-Oh.
[ Cheers and applause ]
Come on. Jason Bateman.
"Ozark" returns for its final episodes
April 29 on Netflix.
Steven, hello.
More "Tonight Show" after the break.