[MUSIC PLAYING]
SPEAKER: Thank you for coming out today.
BILL HADER: Oh, no.
Thanks for having me.
SPEAKER: It's unusual to do press at the end of a season.
BILL HADER: Well, no.
Yeah, man, I wish we just did at the top of the season.
No, it's like--
I always do press and I'm like, oh good,
I'm done before the show airs.
And then it's like, no, no, no.
You've got to do press every week
while the show is airing to get people going like,
there's a new episode.
SPEAKER: Do you get that reaction a lot?
Do you classify this as a drama with comedy or comedy
with drama?
BILL HADER: Well, my favorite stuff
doesn't have any classification.
It's just-- it's a story.
And there's elements of all those things.
But we did have a very conscious--
Alec Berg, who I created this with,
we had a very conscious-- the very first shot of the pilot
be something that was more disturbing,
which is Barry in a room and a man's been killed,
and he's just getting his gun and leaving.
That almost was there for a purpose, not only
to say this is what he does, but also to give you a sense of--
here's the tone.
This isn't-- I think you hear Alec and I are doing a show
about a hit man who wants to be an actor,
you think this glib kind of comedy thing.
So we were like, no, we want to make it very real.
Lead with the drama.
Lead with his existential crisis and the emotion,
and then have the comedy be behind that, and that
will work.
SPEAKER: Did this come from any real-life existential--
BILL HADER: No.
What, I wanted to murder somebody, or--
No, no, no, no.
I think it came a bit from--
I don't know.
I don't know where it came from.
Alec Berg and I were always--
Did someone just die?
SPEAKER: Fainted with excitement.
BILL HADER: Someone fainted.
They're like, Alec Berg, oh!
I've always been interested in people's violence and people's
propensity to violence and how it affects
you and things like that.
I just have been.
I don't know why.
But it's just a thing that--
and from someone who watches a lot of movies
and a lot of genre-type movies, you
do go like, well, what's that guy like, though, in reality?
What would he be like?
The hit man you see in a movie, and then he's
being dashing or whatever.
I'm like, isn't he fucked up?
Like, he's murdered people.
Isn't he-- what if he actually thought about that
and what he's doing and the amount of people
that he's affected and all that?
And if he became aware of that, what would that do to him?
SPEAKER: Well, it's interesting because the trailer we just
watched, it's very-- it's upbeat music.
And Henry Winkler is also known for comedy and whatnot.
And so, obviously, you went into this,
or whoever did the casting--
I assume you had a part in it--
BILL HADER: Yeah.
SPEAKER: --went in looking for the certain type of characters
and a certain type of people.
And even NoHo Hank is one of the audience's favorite characters,
aside from Barry of course.
BILL HADER: No, he's better than Barry.
I'm a bigger fan of him than--
yeah, no.
We did not pick the music in the trailer.
No.
I was actually back there just going like, what is this music?
No.
No, but Henry Winkler was like casting against type.
It was like we knew he had this acting teacher.
And I'll be honest, Alec Berg and I wrote it very arch.
He was-- I think he had a cape.
It was very John Barrymore, like, listen you--
it was just too much.
And we knew that, but we were like, I don't know,
it's making me laugh, but this is probably wrong.
And then Henry Winkler came in and read.
He auditioned, which was crazy.
And then he read, and he immediately
brought this humanity to it because he's
an incredibly nice man.
And it immediately was like, oh, failed actor.
That's who this guy is.
He's a failed actor.
And inside his studio, inside this building where he teaches,
he's the star that he wanted to be.
But the minute he leaves this, he's just an out-of-work actor.
So he's got to stay inside this place.
And he has all the status that he wants.
And it was like, oh, that's a good character.
But that all came from his read.
SPEAKER: In the scenes, you're often
looking down or looking away because he's
making you laugh during--
BILL HADER: Well, yeah.
If anybody's seen episode 6 this season,
there's a scene where he yells at an accordion player.
If you watch it, I'm going like--
I'm fully turning away because--
yeah, he's-- every time he would yell,
he would say something different.
You just whipped out your accordion
and just fucked this moment!
[LAUGHTER]
SPEAKER: So does he do a lot of improv, or do
you do improv with him, or how--
BILL HADER: Yeah, he improvises a little bit.
And sometimes-- a lot of it is we'll write it,
and then Alec and I will get there,
and then we immediately go, what the heck were we doing?
This isn't good.
There is a scene at the end of episode 2
when I come back to my apartment,
and Stephen Root is there and we get in an argument.
That whole scene we rewrote on set.
Hiro Murai, the director of that episode, sent me a picture.
And it's me and Alec on the set of that.
I'm in the Barry costume and Alec has a laptop,
and we're rewriting it.
And Stephen Root is just staring at us,
so angry, like, get your shit together!
Like, I have to learn all new lines now.
SPEAKER: It's so fascinating to me
to watch them, watch you, and everybody who's in the acting
class with Henry Winkler.
Because everybody else, their main characters in "Barry"
are very just ditzy, I guess, for lack of a better term.
BILL HADER: They're actors.
SPEAKER: Yes.
[LAUGHTER]
And then for the most part, when they get on stage,
they go into character, they're really good!
In real life, they're real good actors.
BILL HADER: Yeah, yeah.
That's the only way it's interesting.
It's like he is a good--
Cousineau is a good teacher.
That's a thing I learn.
When you're writing, it's more interesting if they're flawed
but they're actually good at something.
When they're shitty at everything, you're like,
why am I hanging with this person?
SPEAKER: Season 2, episode 5, you wrote and directed
that entirely yourself, yeah?
BILL HADER: Yeah.
SPEAKER: So was that a different experience for you?
Why did you decide to do that for that particular episode?
BILL HADER: Well, again, spoilers.
I'm sorry, everybody.
Barry has to kill-- we knew Barry had to kill this guy
Ronny Proxin for Loach.
And initially, it was just going to be, I think, just one part
of that episode.
It would be like a scene or the end of the episode
is he has to do this hit.
And then I remembered that our stunt coordinator, Wade Allen,
said, I have this little girl who could do martial arts.
[LAUGHTER]
SPEAKER: They've all seen it.
BILL HADER: And he's like, she can do crazy martial arts.
And he showed me this video of her,
and she was running along a house,
and then she jumped onto a moving car.
And it was her doing all these crazy kicks.
And her parents were stunt performers.
And I was like, whoa, cool!
Why do you have this on your phone?
[LAUGHTER]
But Wade was like, so, I don't know
if you ever need a little girl or somebody
to do some crazy shit.
Let me know.
I was like, well thanks, man.
And so then when we were doing--
what was it?-- episode 5 and I was thinking about it,
I suddenly went, oh, what if he went in to kill that guy,
he doesn't want to kill him?
He inadvertently kills him, and then as he's leaving,
his daughter's there.
And you're like, oh god, Barry has to kill a kid.
And then she kicks the shit out of him.
And so I went off.
We usually write in a writer's room,
and I went off and wrote that and came back and presented it
to the table.
And they were like, what?
But they were into it.
They dug it.
[MUSIC PLAYING]