Best of 2022 (Behind the Scenes): Barry 's Bill Hader breaks down that bonkers bike chase in '710N'

All Barry wanted to do was bring some beignets to a dinner party.

In the HBO comedy's bleak yet hilarious third season, Barry Berkman (Bill Hader) is a hitman without a purpose. His nascent acting career is stalled, and his former acting teacher and mentor, Gene Cousineau (Henry Winkler), now loathes him for killing the woman he loved. Barry's girlfriend, Sally (Sarah Goldberg), dumped him after he missed her TV show's big premiere event — and because she finally realized he had a violent temper.

Depressed and reduced to finding assassin jobs on Craigslist, Barry is understandably excited to get an invitation to dinner from Sharon Lucado (Karen David), the widow of one of his buddies from the Marines. What Barry doesn't know is that he's about to hit some killer traffic.

Written by Duffy Boudreau and directed by Hader himself, Barry's sixth episode, "710N," finds the titular hitman ambushed by a gang of armed bikers as he drives to Sharon's for dinner. Both Sharon and the motocross masters are part of a "vengeance army" made up of grieving family and friends set upon Barry by Fuches (Stephen Root), his one-time handler and father figure. The riveting, 6-minute chase sequence — filmed over three Sundays on two sections of the 710 freeway in Southern California — immerses viewers in the tense pursuit, as Barry and the bikers zoom between the cars on the freeway, before taking their showdown to a used car dealership. And all the while, Barry never lets go of that bag of beignets.

HBO The bike chase from '710N'

Less than a week after wrapping production on Barry's upcoming fourth season, star-writer-director-co-creator Hader joined EW for a conversation about the challenges of crafting his character's bike battle, his no-frills approach to directing action scenes, and why he sometimes needs to be yelled at in the writers' room.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Barry's past is catching up to him this season — and in "710N" that manifests itself as a literal chase scene with the biker gang. When you and the writers came up with the idea of a "vengeance army," did you always know you wanted a chase sequence to be part of that?

BILL HADER: I think that chase sequence was actually in my mind when we were doing season 2. I remember going with Gavin Kleintop, the first AD, to a Dodgers game before we even started writing season 3, and telling him like, "Hey, I want to do something where there's a motorcycle chase on the freeway, and they split lanes." And he was like, "Uh, okay." [Laughs] I couldn't tell if he was excited by that or if he was like, "Please don't do that. That's a lot of work."

And I remember the first day of talking about season 3 with [exec producer] Liz Sarnoff on the phone, and I kind of just had these notes I'd been taking, and one of them was, "I don't know who's chasing Barry, but he is being chased on a motorcycle on a freeway," but also doing it in a way that wasn't like that Mission Impossible 5 chase, which was amazing, but it wasn't in that realm. I find merging on the freeway to be very stressful.

Yes! And the moment Barry merges onto the freeway is so stressful. The way his bike wobbles — yikes! So this was partly rooted in your personal fear of merging?

Yeah, it's wobbling and then you have these cars flying by and they're very loud and big. That moment was one of the reasons to do it. When I watch these motorcycles, especially in Los Angeles, merge onto a freeway, I just get so anxious for them. I just don't know what would compel someone to do that.

I don't know if you're a fan of Clueless, but it did kind of remind me of Dionne's disastrous detour onto the freeway.

Oh yeah, and they start crying and everything? I remember seeing that in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and I'd never been to Los Angeles before. And then coming to LA and going like, "Oh gosh, this is just like Clueless." [Laughs]

While fleshing that episode out in the writers' room, how much detail did you all get into when discussing the chase?

Duffy Boudreau and I worked on that script. When we were working on it in the [writers'] room, it was more just [to develop] the overall story. With that episode, I think the bigger issues were what's the Sally storyline and what's the Fuches storyline? The motorcycle chase, I had it in my head and didn't really share with anybody. I was like, "Yeah, then there's a motorcycle chase, and then he gets to Sharon's house, and she poisons him."

Before we started shooting on season 3, Aida Rodgers, our producer, got on with Justin Ball and Laura Hill, our amazing effects people. It was still during the time of COVID where people weren't meeting in person. So over Zoom, with, like, a stapler and one of my daughter's toys, I was like, "Okay, so this stapler is Barry's motorcycle, and then this toy is one of the Taylors' motorcycles," and I would just try to explain it to them. [Laughs] And they put together an animatic, which is kind of a crude, three-dimensional cartoon with sound effects and everything. That was massively helpful to then sit and show that to Wade Allen, our stunt coordinator, and say, "So here's what I want to do." And he went, "Okay. Let's figure this out."

You never sat on a motorcycle in this entire sequence, right?

No, that's a guy named Dave Castillo. [Laughs]

Was there ever any discussion of you getting on the bike or was that just never going to happen?

Wade Allen at one point wanted me to. He goes. "We gotta get you on the bike." And I said, "Oh, not if Barry has a helmet." [Laughs] "That sucks, now you won't be able to see my face. Oh man, I guess it just needs to be the stunt guy the whole time. Darn. I was so looking forward to taking my life in my own hands."

After rewatching the chase in "710N," I found myself going back and watching that fight scene at the beginning of "ronny/lilly," which you also directed. Both scenes are these intense action sequences that unfold at a very deliberate pace with a lot of sustained shots. What interests you about shooting action scenes in this very distinct way?

I grew up loving movies. I still love movies, and I loved action movies. And then as you get into real life and you see a fight, or you see something terrible happen like a car crash, I was always amazed how it never felt like the movies. That might sound naive, but I was so entrenched in movies, I kind of was amazed by that. And now with YouTube, people send you videos of awful car crashes or people getting in a fight or whatever, and there's some sort of power in just watching the thing unfold, you know?

I also like the idea of having this weird, distant feeling to what the action is — moving back and almost judging it. I don't really love violence and I don't really love what Barry's doing. So, that "ronny/lily" fight, it's almost like the camera's from the standpoint of a third person in the room going, "Guys, guys, come on, please stop!" And then they go out of frame and that's like, "Oh, what the f--- are you guys doing?" You want to give it that feeling as opposed to, "Look how badass this is!" I should say, the sequences usually start out as "look how badass this is," and then it's like a slow subtraction.

HBO The failed handoff on 'Barry'

Initially [in the script] with the motorcycle chase, the guy does the handoff of the gun, and he actually handed it off and the guy is shooting it. It was like, "Oh, look how fun this is!" But then when watching the animatic, I thought, "Oh man, there's no way that guy would be able to hand that off. That gun's massive."

So you've got to create that moment and then underscore it with how dumb it is. That's the idea with Barry — there's this inherent violence in people and inherent violence and culture and action. And it's like, okay, can you do one of these sequences but at the same time hold true to the essence of the show? A lot of the action scenes in Barry, I always feel it's nice when they're just brutal and stupid. That somehow merges in my mind — the brutality of it and the stupidity of it.

There's no score or music in this sequence; we just hear the motorcycles, the whooshing air, the horns, and it really elevates the tension. What gave you the idea to do it without music?

There's something really dynamic about when something actually like that unfolds. Like if you're sitting at a corner and you're waiting across the street and you see a car run a red light and hit another car — if some storefront is playing music, that music doesn't stop. It doesn't turn into, like, Hans Zimmer music. [Laughs]

I said the scene happened without music, but that's technically incorrect, since Barry is singing his little "you're my buddy, you're my pal" song along the way. Where did that come from?

I just did that on one of the takes when I was driving at the beginning. It was like 106 degrees outside. We were in the Valley and I was burning up inside that car, and I just wanted the take to be over. To be honest, we did two takes of that driving shot, because it was so hot. I was directing it, and I was like, "That's great!" And the editor was like, "Well, in both takes, you're singing this song, so I guess we have to use it." [Laughs] So then in retrospect I was like, "Well, when I'm on the motorcycle I can be singing it, and then when I leave [the car dealership] I can be singing it." It kind of just happened out of me trying to put my mind on something else other than the fact I was cooking inside that car. And then of course our producer Aida ran up to me. "Is that song from something? Do we have to pay someone for that?" "No, I just made it up." She's like, "Thank God."

Mr. Kleintop, the used car salesman played by Bob Turton, is so great. He only has a few lines, but they paint such a fascinating picture of who this guy might be. He's having an affair, he's aggressively ready to confront an intruder. What was your goal with him?

He's feeling guilty about his affair and he's just dumping that on everybody. That guy Bob was so funny, and it was like, let's just let him have his own little moment, because he was just making me laugh so much. I love it when he says, "Not today!" because it kind of purports like that this is either something that has happened before or something that he has thought could happen — that someone might ride a motorcycle on top of his car lot and start shooting down at people. [Laughs] What I found funny was that he knew what to do, as opposed to just running off scared. Barry doesn't save the day. It's this other guy, Mr. Kleintop, who's named after the first AD, Gavin Kleintop, and Barry has zero to do with [stopping the shooting].

That's one of the nice things about keeping [the chase scene] in my head and being intuitive about it. In a writers' room — and I'm not saying this is a bad thing — that would be a note. Like, "Shouldn't Barry be the one that kills the person?" But when you're doing a sequence like this that feels kind of weird and dreamy, you want to just stick to the intuition of it, and just make it entertaining. Because sometimes those rules are right, but they can also make things predictable.

HBO Mr. Kleintrop gives his pitch on 'Barry'

A lot of the action happens in the background, like when Barry crashes into the trash cans as Mr. Kleintop is in the foreground trying to sell a car. It really gives the sense of Barry being one guy in a larger world, and his experience is just one of many things happening.

That's always fun. We kind of do that through the show a lot. It's the idea of things happening in the background, and that Barry is one LA story, and there that are all these other stories. There's the couple in the house who are breaking up while Henry Winkler is being attacked by dogs. And when Barry has Henry Winkler in the trunk of the car, you push in on that woman on her laptop. I can't tell you why we did it. It just felt right to single out these people. Going with our gut and being more intuitive has definitely happened more each season — maybe to our detriment in season 4. [Laughs]

Well, since you brought it up, now you have to give us a quick season 4 tease.

Oh, um… I can't really describe it, but it's really interesting to see where all of the characters go. Every season's this way where you go, "Well, we wrote ourselves into a real corner here." [Laughs] And then you have to get through the bad ideas, and then just ask, "Well, what would these characters do?"

Duffy Boudreau and Liz Sarnoff are writers on our show. I can really spin my wheels, like, "Well, it could be this, or it could be this," just flailing around with ideas. And Duffy and Liz will be the ones that go, "What does this character want? What would they actually do?" And out of frustration, you say, "Well, he'd put Cousineau in the trunk of his car!" And it's like, "Then that's what should happen."

Or we had this mother and son who were going to kill Barry, and we had all these ideas — and then finally they're like, "Dude, what would actually happen?" I'm like, "She doesn't know how to work a gun and she'd probably shoot her son." And then everybody's like, "That's f---ed up." But that's what would happen! You've got to have those people [in the room] who just get sick of you trying to think of a cool sequence or way of getting Barry out of a situation, so they'll say, "Dude, f---ing get with reality."

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