Bill Hader on Barry's bleak Season 3: "Is it bleaker than anything you see...

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on the news right now?"

https://www.vulture.com/article/barr...rting-now.html

Hader says he specifically wanted Barry viewers to feel the experience of having a panic attack with last night's season finale. Did he want the audience to have any relief? "A friend at SNL said to me after watching this season, 'I feel like you’re trying to make the whole world feel as anxious as you are,'" Hader tells Vulture. "And he might be right. Maybe it’s just an instinct because I am a very anxious person. But it felt right. It’s a tough watch. I was warning people because we had a screening for the writers: Nicky Hirschhorn had a little panic attack; Emma Barrie looked at me and went, 'What the hell’s wrong with you?' I was like, “We’re all f***ed, right? Right, guys?' (Laughs.) I always appreciate things that I would watch and feel, 'Oh, that feels honest.' I did another interview and someone said, 'Wow. This is really bleak.' I said, 'Is it bleaker than anything you see on the news right now?' Living in the pandemic and where the world’s at and mass shootings and all these things — it’s all in there emotionally." Hader was also asked about the lack of comedy in the final episodes. "The very first shot of the entire series is not funny," he says." It’s a dead body and that was very much on purpose. You’re just trying to do what’s honest for the characters and the story. When we got to those last two episodes, it felt like we were forcing things to be funny. It undercut what you wanted the characters to go through. When you’re doing a show about a murderer and dealing with domestic violence and trauma and PTSD and conversion therapy of a gay man, you can’t really be that funny at times. If you’re going to portray it honestly, the comedy comes from other moments, like in life. Flannery O’Connor is a perfect example. Her work can be incredibly funny and incredibly grotesque. It feels like the human experience."

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• Should Barry still be considered a comedy when it's so bleak?: Season 3 "has been a season that’s less streamlined, less laugh-out-loud funny, and more melancholy than Barry’s previous installments," says Alison Herman. "There are still jokes, many rooted in a physicality that’s proved Hader’s bona fides as a director as well as a writer and performer: Gene fumbling with a gun while attempting to confront Barry in the premiere; the motorcycle chase in '710N,' culminating in a slapstick shootout at a car dealership. But the laughs feel increasingly like brief reprieves. Even Hank, Barry’s most purely comic creation, is now tied up in a tragically doomed romance with his Bolivian rival. The downbeat feel is amplified by a kind of dream logic that guides the increasingly heightened events. Barry is still a closely observed satire that thrives on detail; it’s a great character study that may also be the best portrait of the San Fernando Valley this side of Licorice Pizza."
• Season 3 finale wouldn't let viewers turn away: "In the first scene of Barry season three, Barry Berkman shoots two men in the head without giving it a second thought," says Jen Chaney. "One of them, Charlie, has hired Barry to kill Jeff, who had slept with Charlie’s wife. Jeff tearfully apologizes to Charlie and begs for clemency, which Charlie grants him, making it unnecessary for Barry to pull the trigger. 'He’s asked for my forgiveness,' Charlie explains to Barry. 'You know, he made some valid points. So I’m forgiving Jeff.' That’s when Barry puts a bullet in Charlie’s forehead, then Jeff’s, walks across the desolate hillside where this scene plays out and exclaims, 'There’s no forgiving Jeff!' On first viewing, this sequence plays mostly like a piece of Barry’s signature dark comedy. The abruptness with which Barry dispatches his victims, especially in contrast to the humanity they show one another, is morbidly funny. But it also plants the seed for one of the season’s primary themes, which is on full display in the season three finale: that a death, any death, should have an impact."
• Season 3 finale was a brutal half hour of vengeance, violation, torture, mauling, and overall existential dread: "In interviews, Hader warned episode eight was going to be intense with few laughs, and that’s about right," says David Cote. "It was a meat grinder, a nail gun to the heart—insert your favorite destructive appliance."
• Bill Hader doesn't consider Barry a hero: "I never felt that Barry was a hero," he says. "The biggest thing I felt that maybe you could relate to was someone was a murderer and try to not be a murderer, like a noble thing. The only thing he thinks that he’s good at is killing people, and so he tries to be an actor to get in touch with himself. But as time has gone on, as you’re writing a story and discovering more about him, it’s become less about that and more about watching someone with trauma and someone make really awful decisions, and then try to undo those decisions."
• Why did Barry almost abandon the idea of Barry Berkman as an actor?: "It just kind of naturally did that. I think that was the way into the story," says Hader. "And then as you start writing it, you go, 'Why would he ever go back to an acting class?' If the reason you’re doing it is, 'Well, that was the logline of the show,' well, why does that matter? The story doesn’t want it anymore."
• Midnight Mass turned Hader off to his original Season 3 finale opening: "The initial open to this episode was the beach, and no one’s on it, and there’s a rock and Sally is laying across the rock like a panther," says Hader. "She looks at the camera, like it’s her profile looking out, and then when she turns to the camera, her eyes glow, like a panther, and we were going to do that. Then I saw this show Midnight Mass, and they did that. I went, 'Oh man, this looks great. They did this really well. Forget it.' (laughs) I don’t know if it would’ve mattered or not, but it just made me not like the idea anymore. I was like, ah, forget it. Let’s just have them there. Then, oh, we can have Cousineau there. Oh, this is much better. That’s what happened."
• Henry Winkler on his key Barry Season 3 finale scene: "I knew it when I was doing it," he says. "In the beginning, as a young actor, I would be so frightened of that type of scene. I would be thinking of the result as opposed to the journey of getting there. When I first got to that set and I looked around, it was a full garage. I got my makeup done, I got my costume, and I came back and there were two chairs. And then I saw a crane, which meant it was all meant to be done in one shot. I had no idea what to do, so I did nothing. I just went and listened to my acting partner, Robert, who, in his silence, is a tornado."
• Winkler says recently watching the Season 3 finale for the first time was "stunning. It was jaw-dropping": "They don't lay out much of it; they send us the scripts," he says. "You know that it is an amazing journey on the page, but you can never see the power that is on the film."
• Anthony Carrigan says NoHo Hank wasn't supposed to be funny in the season finale: "It wasn't supposed to be cool whatsoever," he says. "It was messy, it was clumsy, and it was terrifying."
• How did Carrigan handle the shift in acting styles required for the finale?: "It was really rewarding to be able to see Hank, as opposed to being his sweet, lovable, upbeat self, to really being in a bind," he says. "A literal bind. It really throws the audience and brings this harsh reality into the situation. Another thing that I really love about it is that there’s nothing cool about this action sequence."
• Did NoHo Hank's wardrobe become more fun this season?: "Listen, his wardrobe has always been just something that I look forward to. I don't walk, I run to my costume fittings," says Carrigan. "And it's really funny, too, because when I go into my costume fittings, I know instantly when I put something on whether it's Hank or not. I'll put on a polo that's just very tight. And if I just start moving like Hank, then it makes the cut."