How to make your hitman a hit
BARRY star/co-creator Bill Hader on what he’s learned (or not) from playing an assassin
BILL HADER ISN’T a hitman. He just plays one on TV. Which is probably a good thing, as it turns out that the co-creator/star of the dark and violent Barry, which has earned him two Emmys, wouldn’t last five minutes as a gun-for-hire. “I’m worthless,” he laughs. “If you saw me exercise, it’s like, ‘I’m 43, it’s officially just Dad exercises.’”
Still, as Barry, an expert assassin who finds a new home among an amateur acting troupe, he’s acquired a particular set of skills. Or, at least, the ability to fake them, as he tells us on the cusp of the show’s third season.
SHOOTING
Barry is an ex-marine who constantly finds his attempts to carve out a new life as a thespian compromised by the odd murderous rampage. Barry never misses, unlike gun-hating Hader. “I show up on set and a guy does this [mimes shooting quickly], and I go, ‘Alright,’” he explains. “I’ve seen those videos of Keanu Reeves shooting shit. Not only can I not do it, I would be very anxious.”
FIGHTING
Barry’s lethal physicality was most obviously on display in the bravura Season 2 episode (directed by Hader) ‘ronny/lily’, in which Barry found himself in a protracted life-and-death struggle with a mysterious stranger played by Daniel Bernhardt. “I thought it would be interesting to watch two people fight and it not be a Jackie Chan thing. I wanted to design it in a way where the camera’s kind of judging it. ‘Stop it, what the fuck are you guys doing?’”
MINDSET
Barry begins with its protagonist killing for cash, but Hader has always been more concerned with showing the ramifications of his character’s life as an ex-marine, psychologically scarred by his service. “It was more [about] the overall loneliness of this particular guy, as opposed to something I had read about actual hitmen,” he says. “He’s a lonely guy searching for some sort of emotion.”
ACTING
That search is what leads Barry to try out at an acting class run by Henry Winkler’s Gene. There, Barry finds his special purpose: he’s actually pretty good at this acting gig. “Well, he has to kill somebody and then feel terrible about it, and then he’s great,” says Hader. So, if he hasn’t learned much about being a hitman, has writing and playing Barry taught him anything about acting? “I don’t know that it’s helped me at all,” he laughs. There is one thing, though. “Actors are nuts. All nuts! I’m right there with them. We’re all crazy.”