When actor David Cross found out that IFC wanted to renew his cult TV show, The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret, for a third season after a gap of four years, he was incredulous. "I [was] like, 'How? How can there be a third season? The whole world blows up,'" Cross told guest host Faith Salie on the Ask Me Another stage in Brooklyn. "I said out of professional common courtesy that I'd approach the writers... roughly an hour later, one of the writers came up with a brilliant idea." Cross says that this upcoming season pays off more than the first two.

Todd Margaret is the third of Cross's shows (including Arrested Development andMr. Show) to make a comeback years after its cancellation. "[I'm] not appreciated in my time," he said. "I'm going to have myself killed... but in a way that I can be cryogenically preserved, and then I'm just going to wait another five or six years, unfreeze myself, and everyone will say, 'Hey, I know you — you're awesome!'"

Cross is most famous for his portrayal of Tobias Fünke, a therapist-turned-aspiring-actor on Arrested Development. Cross says that he "got" the character as soon as he read the script. "I pitched him as a cross between an Upper East Side erudite Dick Cavett guy, like the guy who sees Wim Wenders films and sits in front of you, and at some weird place goes 'ha ha ha.'"

For his VIP quiz, we pitted Cross against his wife, actress Amber Tamblyn. In honor of The Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret, we quizzed AMA's audience on their poor decisions, and had Tamblyn and Cross guess how they answered.

Highlights

On Fox's initial dismissal of Tobias Fünke's mustache

[This executive] from Fox has three comedy rules, and one of them is no mustaches for men. And I was like, "What does that f***** mean?" They came back with, "OK, you can have the mustache, but it can't be bushy." Fine. Great. You win."

Heard in David Cross: Increasingly Poor Decisions

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.