Bill Haderthe multi-hyphenated star of Barry – who has earned two Emmys for his leading role and earned a third acting nomination this year, as well as nods for writing and directing the series – don’t get too excited about whether his show is still a comedy. Yes, the show is classified as such, and its Emmy-nominated co-stars Anthony Carrigan and Henry Winkler deliver wonderfully comedic performances as Chechen mobster NoHo Hank and washed-up acting teacher Gene Cousineau, respectively. But the show, which follows the eponymous hit man as he combines a life of crime with his ambitions to make it in Hollywood (and living a normal life with his girlfriend, Sally, played by Sarah Goldberg, who also has dreams of stardom ), always has balanced dark themes with equally dark humor. For Hader, the story comes first – the jokes second. In conversation with THRHader talks about the joy of making a show that defies genre, how the humor comes from ridiculing its own seriousness and Barryliterary influences.
This season was postponed due to COVID-19. Did that give you extra time to really capture season three?
Secure. It was a big advantage. I think if we had included the original scripts, it would have been a completely different season.
How?
I don’t think it would have been so sharply or thematically connected. Overall, the thematic tone and everything about redemption and who deserves to be forgiven – that was all really focused when we were rewriting.
This season was much darker than the first two. Was that a tone shift you had in mind from the start, or was that something you discovered during the making of the season?
It was always like that from the start, especially after the way season two ended. You never want to make a decision when you’re telling a story based on what your genre is, where you’re going: “This is what the characters would do, but it’s a comedy, so it has to be funny.” I really wanted to stay true to the characters.
That binary, either a drama or a comedy, doesn’t leave much in the way for a show like Barry.
It’s a marketing thing. When you look at a streaming platform, there are now so many different categories. I sound like an old man, but it’s like going to a video store — those genres were a form of marketing that helped people make a decision, “What are you in the mood for now?” You don’t get that when you go to a cinema; you have a horror film next to a romantic comedy, a science fiction film next to a documentary. “Barry is not really a comedy anymore” is something I hear a lot, but for me it’s just about telling the story correctly. HBO has enabled us to do that, for which I am very grateful.
Courtesy of Warrick Page/HBO
Is there a part of you that likes to play with the expectations the audience has for this show? The dark comedy has always been there, but is it more fun to play with the mixed tones?
Sometimes you get a series together that you write as a straight drama or a straight action scene. The fun comes from going back a few times and thinking, “What if this happens?” It’s like hanging out and watching something with your friends, commenting on it and making jokes like Mystery Science Theater or something. Instead, we enroll those things. An example is the motorcycle chase in episode six. There is a moment when someone hands a giant machine gun to the man on the motorcycle. Initially, the man took it and started shooting it. It was a very large action set. When that moment came, I think I audibly mocked, “There was no way he could get that shot!” (laughs.) [In the final cut, the motorcyclist clumsily drops the gun and veers into a car.] You need to get rid of it so you can say how lame your original idea was.
I like that approach – the humor comes from the absurdity of the reality you’ve created.
The same thing happened in a scene between Barry and Sally. Her show has been canceled and he wants to scare her boss. What can he use to help her? He’s a killer, a former Marine, so he says, “I can scare her.” Initially that was very straightforward and a bit of a scary moment [for Sally]. While we were rehearsing it, Duffy Boudreau, one of the writers, said, “Do you want to try this, really sweet?” I improvised some, and we changed some things, but [the same dialogue] was there, the same structure was there. You get it on paper and say, “This makes sense,” and then you get bored and start making fun of your own work.
I read that Flannery O’Connor was an influence this season. Were there other literary or cinematic references that inspired your writing?
Flannery O’Connor’s [short story] A good man is hard to find – people quote the line all the time: “She’d be a great woman if someone held a gun to her head every day.” It’s something we can all say. Can you become the best version of yourself at the moment of death? We used that in a scene in episode five, when Cousineau says, “I’ve changed a lot. … It takes someone to put a gun to your head to realize what’s important in life.” Liz Sarnoff, one of the writers, talked about that moment in the room, but during the pandemic, I re-read some of O’Connor’s stories and was incredibly moved. Her voice is so specific, and although some of the stories are so similar, it doesn’t matter. There’s something very real about her voice – it’s very honest and true. That’s also a lot in Russian literature, in Chekhov and Tolstoy: a kind of subdued humor. I think of a scene in Anna Karenina where she comes home after falling in love with Vronsky; she sees her husband and there is a long passage about how ugly his ears are. It’s incredibly relatable because when you get tired of someone, every little thing about that person suddenly drives you crazy. Tobias Wolff and George Saunders do the same thing: they can be so incredibly funny while having so much humanity. I would like to live there as an artist.
Just as O’Connor wrote mainly about people on the fringes in the South, Barry captures what it’s like to live in Los Angeles – not just the way it portrays the entertainment industry, but the city’s strange cultural corners and its sprawl. What attracts you to Los Angeles as a writer?
I’ve lived here occasionally since 1999 and was very active in the industry, working until now as a PA, as an actor and now writing and directing. As in any industry you work in for a while, you just see the things that drive you crazy. (laughs.) You can’t have that kind of satire either without loving the place and [experienced] some of those things themselves.
As Sally and Barry slowly find more success in their careers, does that open up more ways to denounce the entertainment industry?
Yes. You can take someone who is essentially innocent and then keep an eye on him [discover] the man behind the curtain. I’ve seen this happen with so many friends: you come here totally enamored with movies and television and music, and then you start. You learn the trade, and then [become jaded]. That’s probably why I watch so many old movies or foreign movies, and I’m such a snob. It’s like being in film school, when everyone presents their movies – that’s what it feels like to live in Hollywood. “Oh, so-and-so has this going on, I should text them!” (laughs.) That’s nice, not bad, but it does put you off watching a movie. It’s fun to just watch TCM because for the most part, all those people are dead.
Interview edited for length and clarity.
This story first appeared in a standalone August issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine.