The Morning Journal (Lorain, OH)
Cracking open Bill Hader
Actor talks ‘Addams Family 2,’ the return of ‘Barry’ and his favorite Halloween movies
When Bill Hader got the call to see if he’d like to voice a character in “The Addams Family 2” animated feature, he said he just looked at his three daughters and answered, “Yes.”
“I watched the first one with my kids and they really loved it. It was so fun,” he said during a phone interview on Oct. 1, the day the movie opened in theaters and hit streaming services.
Hader said he was a fan of the Barry Sonnenfeld Addam’s Family movies back in the ’90s. While his favorite character is Lurch, he was excited to take on the role of scientist Cyrus Strange who befriends young Wednesday Addams at her school science fair in an effort to gain Addams’s family secrets.
The film is directed by Greg Tiernan and Conrad Vernon, the same duo Hader worked with on 2016’s definitely-not-for-the-kids animated feature “Sausage Party.” “The Addams Family 2” features Chloë Grace Moretz as Wednesday, Charlize Theron as Morticia, Javon Walton as Pugsley, Oscar Isaac as Gomez, Snoop Dogg as Cousin It, Nick Kroll as Uncle Fester and Bette Midler as Grandma Addams. Though the Addams Family is a little spooky and kooky, the overall sentiment of the film is warm and fuzzy.
“It’s very sweet,” Hader said. “It’s about family, so it’s inherently kind of relatable on some level, even if
they are insane. But what family is not?”
Hader said he’s not sure what his kids will decide to be for Halloween this year, but they always surprise him. He’s not that into dressing up himself and said he’s pretty boring this time of year.
“I’m the kind of dummy
who leaves the candy in a bowl out front with the sign that says ‘Take one,’ which never works,” he said. “I mostly just walk the kids around, but I’m kind of no fun on Halloween because a lot of parents like to get dressed up and I feel like as an actor you do that all the time so it feels like work
to me. I should get over it and do that for the kids, but when I ask them they don’t like when I dress up either. It’s super embarrassing to them and they’re like, ‘Just be a dad.’”
Though he’s best known for comedic roles and being part of the “Saturday Night Live” cast for eight years, Hader did star in the terrifying blockbuster “It: Chapter Two,” so he has some experience with the horror genre. He’s a big fan of scary movies, just not slashers.
“I do like the original ‘Texas Chainsaw Massacre’ and ‘Psycho’ is good, but I like things a little bit more like ‘Alien’,” he said. “There’s a movie that came out a few years ago called ‘It Follows’ that’s good and a movie that came out last year that I liked, ‘Relic,’ with Emily Mortimer, that was really good. I liked this old British one called ‘The Devil Rides
Out’ that’s about devil worshipers, but I think the best horror movie ever made is ‘Rosemary’s Baby.’ That one really, really gets under your skin.”
While he waits for “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown” to eventually air on television, Hader is hard at work on the third season of his multiple award-winning HBO television series, “Barry.” It’s a dark comedy created by Hader and Alec Berg that also stars Hader as Barry Berkman, a hitman who inadvertently joins an acting class taught by Gene Cousineau, played by Henry Winkler.
“Oh the third season, it’s dark,” he said with a big laugh. “Alec Berg and I go, ‘Oh, yeah, a half-hour comedy … yeah? All right.’ ”
The second season ended on a cliffhanger and the third was set to go into production just before the COVID-19 pandemic shut it down in early 2020. HBO has not announced a premiere date for the new season.
“We’re up and running and it’s a lot of work, but it’s been a lot of fun and everyone has been so great,” he said.
“We were two weeks away from shooting when the pandemic happened and everything shut down and we couldn’t start back up until almost a year and a half later. But we were all ready to go, ‘It was like, ‘Oh man,’ but also it was nice for us to write and work on the story even further.”
Though he doesn’t recommend it to others, Hader is a true crime junkie. He’s been watching videos on the JCS Criminal Psychology channel on YouTube because he finds these glimpses at real-life interrogations to be fascinating.
“It’s either people just lying or they’re just psychopaths and have no problem at all with what they did,” he said. “The problem with watching that stuff is you don’t wanna leave your house.”
He said he tends to stay away from any of the crimes involving children because it’s much too heavy, but when he hears an episode intro that loosely translates to “He was an idiot and she hated him …” his interest is piqued.
“The whole true crime thing is kind of an awful thing to engage in,” he said. “You watch it and you go, ‘Oh wait, someone died. Guys, this is awful, someone died, it’s not funny or interesting.’ Then I’ll go, I’m not gonna watch this anymore and I’ll turn it off and get stressed out and then you’re back like, ‘He was an idiot and she hated him …’”
“Oh my God, how can I fall asleep to this? People say ‘Oh, you like true crime?’ because I’ve said it and I’m like ‘No, no, I don’t think it’s a good thing.’ I never want me or anyone I care about on one of those shows. It feels like you’re taking part in their pain and it’s all sensationalized. I feel terrible, so I’m trying to ween myself off of it and I’ll go ‘I can’t watch this (stuff), I’m gonna go read the classics’ and next thing you know ‘They found DNA on the ceiling …’ ‘Wait, what? Jesus Christ! The ceiling?’ It’s really terrible.”