It’s not every TV show that could convince Liza Minnelli to play an aging socialite with debilitating vertigo or Carl Weathers to play himself – as an incredible cheapskate.

“Arrested Development” managed to pull off both those guest-starring turns in its first season, along with Henry Winkler as an incompetent lawyer, Julia Louis-Dreyfus as a blind attorney and, maybe most absurd of all, “Inside the Actors Studio” host James Lipton as a prison warden.

“It’s like this great collection that we’re building on,” creator Mitch Hurwitz told reporters at the TV Critics Association press tour. “… It reminds me of “The Sopranos’ in that way, or “The Simpsons,’ where, you know, “The Simpsons’ every year you get to know, I don’t know, Lenny and Carl a little better. But it’s still about a family of (five), it’s just their world keeps getting bigger.”

Hurwitz believes that audiences are so accustomed to the rhythm of television comedy that it’s becoming harder and harder to surprise them. “There’s certain things you know you’re going to be stuck with, so you end up reaching more and more to surprise,” he says.

But when viewers see, for instance, Lipton playing a prison warden named Stefan Gentles, that’s a little unexpected, and it adds to the deadpan loopiness that has made “Arrested Development” a critical darling and seven-time Emmy nominee.

With Minnelli, Winkler and Lipton, Hurwitz says he and his fellow writers had the characters pretty well shaped before they went in search of actors to play them.

It was a different story with Weathers, best known as Apollo Creed from the “Rocky” movies.

“We had a very unimaginative idea for Carl … which was just that he was going to be the acting coach for (Tobias, played by David Cross),” Hurwitz recalls. “… We just wanted to do them running on the beach in that kind of homoerotic “Rocky III’ way.”

When he met with Weathers, though, one of the first things the actor said was “I don’t want to do any “Rocky’ jokes.”

“And I said, “Good. OK, yeah,”‘ Hurwitz says. Then Weathers suggested playing himself as a skinflint, and a light went on.

“It was like it was dropped in our lap, like “Yes, you may be cheap. You may be incredibly cheap,”‘ Hurwitz says. “It’s something about this group of people, and the actors that have joined us have just liked poking fun at themselves, or just looking silly in this thing.”

Now that the show has made it through to a second season and earned some laurels, Hurwitz says several actors have asked about guest-starring on the show, which he says makes the job easier.

He won’t, however, divulge whom he’d like to see on the series next season.

The series is up for outstanding comedy series, and Hurwitz is nominated for writing the pilot.

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