Bill Hader on Those ‘Barry’ Episode 3 Cameos and That Hank Call: ‘That’s a Huge Moment’

Those surprised to see Oscar-winning filmmaker Guillermo del Toro in the latest episode of “Barry” may also be surprised to learn the cameo was del Toro’s idea – not that he thought it would actually happen. Creator and star Bill Hader says the “Pan’s Labyrinth” director has always been a fan of the HBO series, and told Hader at the end of Season 3 that he’d love to be in the show.

“It just so happened we had a part of this guy who sets up Hank and Cristobal with Los Amigos Gadgets, so I thought that’d be great for Guillermo and then we named the character Toro,” Hader told TheWrap during our breakdown of Season 4, Episode 3. “He seemed surprised that I actually did it. I was like, ‘You asked me and I wrote you a part, it’s called Toro.’ And his reply was, ‘Oh s–t, I guess I have to do it!’”

Del Toro is one of a couple of cameos in the latest episode of the show’s final season, with Hader’s fellow “SNL” alum and “Documentary Now!” co-star Fred Armisen also making a surprise appearance at the end of the episode. During our chat, Hader told the stories behind these appearances and more as he also broke down that pivotal phone call between Barry and Hank, Sally’s acting class snafu and Hans Zimmer’s “Rain Man” score.

Read the full interview below, which contains spoilers for “Barry” Season 4, Episode 3.

Also Read:
Bill Hader Breaks Down the First 2 Episodes of ‘Barry’ Season 4: ‘The Mask Is Off Now’

Where did the opening shot of this episode come from?

For some reason, I was thinking of – there’s a shot at the opening of “The Bridge on the River Kwai” that has this truck with this train coming in, and these guys are sitting on it. It’s a shot you’ve seen a lot of times, it’s also in “Days of Heaven.” That was kind of in my head. Not like I watched that movie and went, “Oh I’m doing that,” but that’s always a shot I think of. It’s just nice to start an episode with an interesting image. Originally it was written that the warehouse was in the middle of nowhere. I think the original script was a Chechen and a Bolivian eyeing each other like they’re gonna fight, and then in the distance, they see the truck and they’re both overjoyed at the truck. But I don’t know, that image popped in my head, just a guy with machine gun on a truck. If I did it again – this happens all the time – it would have been an ordeal, but it would have been fun to have done that down La Cienega or Sunset Boulevard where it’s just L.A. and a guy with a machine gun and no one pays much attention to him.

How did Guillermo del Toro’s cameo come about? I know you told me you shot him on a really stressful shoot day.

Guillermo has always been a fan of the show and he told me during Season 3, “I’d love to be in Barry.” It just so happened we had a part of this guy who sets up Hank and Cristobal with Los Amigos Gadgets, so I thought that’d be great for Guillermo and then we named the character Toro. I texted him and said, “Hey, the character’s name is Toro”. And he seemed surprised that I actually did it (laughs). I was like, “You asked me and I wrote you a part, it’s called Toro.” And his reply was, “Oh s–t, I guess I have to do it!” He came in and it was an incredibly tough day in the warehouse location. We shot so much of Episode 3 and Episode 4 in that day, and we were running around and it was maybe 110 degrees outside. I just remember feeling terrible for all these guys out there. It was hard.

But Guillermo sat with Kim Morgan, his amazing wife who’s this wonderful writer, he was in costume, and that’s his own cane. We shot the scene incredibly fast. There was more to it, there was a moment where he got up and left and just the writing of that didn’t really make sense. It seemed to make more sense to cut it with Hank agreeing that he’ll pull the car over to click on the link (laughs).

Guillermo is really funny.

It was one of those things where you shoot it and you get into edit and you look at his takes and him listening was so funny. Just the look on his face as he’s listening. He’s really hurt that they say the gadgets don’t work. I also love how patient he is with Hank. But that’s a perfect example of, in the outline it says Hank and Cristobal meet with handler, hire assassins who will kill Barry. That’s all it says. And writing the scene, just because you’re bored, having Cristobal say, “You mean the guys with the podcast?” And then I’m by myself laughing and now I’m just writing it hoping that Duffy Boudreau and Liz Sarnoff and Emma Barrie will find it funny.

I love the car crash where Gene tells Tom that he did a one man show for Lon O’Neal.

Yeah, it’s kind of like a silent movie thing or pretty slapstick. It’s funny because there’s no music there but that’s almost something you would see in a 50s movie or something, or “Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World” or something. Kyle Reiter, our editor from seasons 1 and 2 who also edits “Atlanta,” he watched the episode and that was his one big note was he felt that the car crash was way too long (laughs). But I like how long and dumb it is. It really captures that he doesn’t realize he veered off.

The scene with Barry and Lon in prison is great, and gets to a really charged place where Barry is extremely upset that Gene is telling his story.

Yeah, I think that’s a big issue for Barry the whole season. That I have this out, which is Sally and witness protection, and I now have a new version of my life which you saw on the previous episode where they’re dancing as an old happy couple and he’s just like, “That’s my life.” And now Cousineau is, in his mind, going to change the narrative basically by telling the truth. In his mind, in his denial, Cousineau is exaggerating things.

But the main reason for that rage and his flip out and then subsequently going to Hank to have Gene killed is that he doesn’t want Gene to be telling his story. He wants to be able to control the narrative of his own story, which is a thing you’ll see some of the characters deal with in a very big way. I think for Barry, it’s kind of more the father figure that rejected him and caught him, in his mind he’s like why is he still f—king with me? Why is this still going on? It’s over with. Why are you mad at me? And Barry’s a victim in his mind.

I really like the scene of him yelling in the prison yard where he decides to kill Gene.

Yeah, it’s just this weird, crazy person (laughs). I had an image of Barry in an empty yard like that, just yelling by himself at nothing. He has nothing to rage against. He’s stuck with himself and if he just had the ability to reflect — he looks at a mirror in Episode 1 and he hits himself and that’s like, “Oh boy, you’re getting there. He’s figuring it out. Maybe he’s on the verge of taking some responsibility,” and now he’s just victim screaming at God or whatever it is. He’s just mad. And then that guy looking at him was always supposed to be kind of red herring of, “Oh that’s one of the Los Amigos Gadgets maybe,” just trying to keep the tension up of the people in the prison are trying to kill him you just don’t know where it’s coming from.

Did you glue your eye shut for these episodes or was that you just holding your eye down?

I didn’t use glue, I just closed my eye the whole time.

It really drives home this monstrous aspect of Barry.

Yeah especially when you see Sally in the last episode, she’s seeing kind of the real him as this monster. Initially, my makeup was going to be even more crazy. But for me to be able to direct and everything I couldn’t have the full Paul Dano in “Prisoners” look.

Tell me about bringing back Batir and the Chechens and the effect this has on Hank.

Yeah, that was a big scene. That scene initially had a very, very weird thing that did not work. Batir took out an ice cream cone and then he had two scoops on it and he knocked the first scoop off, then he took the single scoop and he put it in a velvet bag and he handed it to Hank and Hank goes, “You don’t mean that.” (laughs) And Batir goes, “This is where we’re at,” like it was some signal for the Chechens, but it just took too long. JB Blanc, that actor, was great and he was just crestfallen when I told him it was cut.

How did you put together the scene where Gene and Tom break into Lon O’Neal’s house and it’s all in one shot?

It was a very boring scene for a long time in the writing. We couldn’t figure that one out of how to make that interesting. That shot did not come about until I saw that location. The minute I saw the location I went, “Oh you know what we could do?” and it’s the shot you see in the episode. And being able to see right out to the pool, I found it really funny that Fred Melamed’s character said everything was stored on the monitor and he throws it into the pool.

Tell me about the phone call between Barry and Hank, which feels like a pivotal moment for the series, and both sides of the conversation are just one shot.

Yeah, I mean that’s a huge, huge moment. I love that it happens in Episode 3. For Barry, he’s using Hank again, he only calls Hank when he needs him. Anthony (Carrigan) and I were talking about the way to play that scene is him telling an ex-boyfriend who he loved wholeheartedly and who he felt used by, finally having the strength to go tell him to go f–k himself. Anthony played it that way and it was amazing.

We had to shoot fast in that prison. So we woke up in the morning and shot me being led out into the prison yard, which is at the end of this episode with the “Rain Man” music playing over it and then the shot of the cops running past the cages, and then we had to go and shoot me in the yard screaming at myself, and then we had to rush in and shoot me on that phone call. We had to do it all within an hour and a half or something like that, since that is an active part of that prison. So my memory of it was that it was a lot of pressure.

So my side of that phone call was all one move. It’s a dolly move. And then I get to the phone and then once he says I’m a liar, we push in so I was able to do it in one shot and performance-wise, it’s great so you can kind of just be in the moment. And then I’m talking into an empty telephone and Gavin Kleintop, our first AD, is reading lines off camera for me.

Also Read:
It’s the End of ‘Barry’ as We Know It – and Bill Hader Feels Fine (Exclusive)

It’s a great performance there, Barry gets unhinged.

Yeah he’s lost it. He’s kind of like laughing, he’s using the dog thing again. I was improv-ing a little bit, like the bit about the dog I think I improvised and then I improvised the thing where Barry says, “Now why are you lying?” When Hank says, “The day you get out is my birthday” and Barry goes, “Oh you think you’re a tough guy now?” I think that sums up where they both are. Hank’s saying what he thinks he should be saying. It’s “Heat,” you know?

And then on Anthony’s side, I initially had had it where we were going to shoot a close-up, a profile shot, and a shot behind him but we were running so late so I said, “Well what if we just have the shot behind Anthony and Anthony moves into those shots?” So he moves into a profile and he turns completely around into a close-up. You have to have a really wonderful actor like Anthony Carrigan who understands how that’s affected because there are a lot of actors that are going, “I don’t understand why I’m doing that. What’s the motivation for doing that?” He got it. He was like, “Oh, I know that my back is to the camera, one move profile and revealing a little bit more of myself, and then I reveal myself completely to camera,” and it’s like three levels of emotion. That was awesome because I’ve worked with actors as an actor and other people who would just not be into that at all. So I was very happy Anthony was down to do that.

It’s so dynamic. He’s so good.

Yeah, it’s really dynamic. He’s amazing. And that scene, so he’s actually talking to me, I’m at video village. We just shot the scene with Guillermo then it was like quickly set up. We did it in like 30 minutes because we had to move so fast, and I just read with him and he was super prepped, and we did I think three takes and he was amazing. Every take was amazing.

Hank realizes plainly that Barry does not care about him. It’s a breakup.

Yeah he goes, “Are you looking out for me?” and Barry goes, “Yeah, why do you think I’m calling?” He’s never really given a s–t about Hank. Hank’s just somebody that gives him money and will help him. And then Hank has always really loved Barry and idolized him and thinks about Barry way more than Barry thinks about him. So I think it’s, he’s mad at Hank, and I think really in that moment is like, “I’m gonna f–king kill Hank,” because he just wants to kill everybody who gets in the way of him being with Sally.

How did you hit upon the storyline that brings Jim Moss, Gene and Lon together?

I think that came pretty early. There were a couple of iterations of that. One was Jim and Lon are sitting in a Starbucks and Lon goes to the bathroom and you see Jim Moss really quickly take two vials out of his pocket, and then he has to mix them, and then he has to put them in a syringe and then he shoots it into Lon’s coffee and then puts it back. It was kind of this weird thing of you saw Jim Moss actually being kind of hurried and not really professional. It never really sat with me well, but it was making us laugh on that day. And then you go back and read it and go, “No, that kind of f—ks this character up.” And so, again, the simplest solution was Lon just shows up at his house and he says, “Let’s go talk in my garage” and that’s it.

Let’s talk about Sally. In this episode, we find her teaching Gene’s acting class. How soon did you come up with the idea that Sally would end up teaching the class?

That was one of the very first ideas we had for Season 4, that she would go back and teach that class. The scene where she eviscerates Kristin was the first thing I wrote for Season 4. That was during the pandemic before we even shot Season 3. You outline these things and you feel like they make sense, but sometimes you just want to write a scene to see if it feels right. I wrote that probably in the summer of 2020. It was originally way longer and in the edit we cut maybe a third out of it. It was important to see Sally try to start over and try to do what Cousineau did, and it was really funny to see the difference between them. She’s a really amazing actor and she has a lot of integrity, but I don’t know if she can teach acting. She’s just kind of good at it. Whereas Cousineau I don’t know how good he is at it, but he knows how to teach it and he likes the hero worship of it.

Sally feels she should still be working and this beautiful model comes in who can’t act, but is Sally saying all of this to get a reaction or is that how she really feels? The way I pitched it was what if Sally does the same thing Cousineau did to her as a student but instead of the class thinking it’s great, they now would be like that’s bullying or that’s abuse. It was interesting that half the writers room loves that she does that because yeah, that’s how you get good work, and then the other half of the writers room is with the class. That’s really nice when that’s happening because you’re getting both sides of the argument.

There’s a cameo in that scene too, right?

Yeah if you look hard, you’ll see the guy that that Sally killed is sitting in the class. That’s Anthony Molinari, the nicest guy on the planet, who played Shane Taylor. He’s having a big year, he’s also the guy in “Everything Everywhere All at Once” where he gets kicked into the head and turns into confetti.

Let’s talk about the ending of the episode, which gets very intense and funny very quickly, and now Barry is on the run.

Yeah it was just this idea that the hit goes wrong. I like the idea of the guy in the ceiling. It’s a very weird plan, but just as far as a surprise is concerned, it’s kind of nice to be writing those things. You’re trying to surprise yourself. We shot that sequence the day after the Emmys and we were all exhausted, and I was very annoyed because I was so tired.

Your line reading of, “That guy’s here to kill me” is so funny.

Yeah, I like that shot where they all turn back and it reveals Fred and he’s just terrified. He doesn’t want to be there. It’s like this theme throughout the whole series of these guys having to do stuff and they’re scared. They’re not expert assassins or they’re terrified because it can all go wrong. I just like how confusing it is and how it all goes to s–t so fast. But that was a really fun sequence to shoot, it was just a blast. I think everybody was so exhausted it was like everyone was kind of punch drunk, just having just a ton of fun. I didn’t get hurt shooting that sequence, but then I walked outside and I hit my shin on this piece of equipment. Just walking (laughs). I was, like an idiot, on my phone not paying attention and I just barked my shin on this thing. I looked down and it was bleeding all over the place. I didn’t need stitches, but I had a terrible, huge gash. We were all zonked.

When did you know Fred was going to be in that role?

I think just while we were getting closer to it, I was like, “Oh, what if it was Fred?” I don’t like having cameos for a cameo’s sake. That always seems like a producer move. I always like cameos where you get Guillermo del Toro because this guy is supposed to be someone you respect, so you cast somebody who’s very like that. You respect Guillermo del Toro. Or you get Fred so when it cuts to Fred you go, “Oh my God, I know that guy,” because Barry is recognizing him as somebody who’s going to kill him. You don’t know who it is so the minute you cut to Fred you go, “Oh, that’s gotta be the killer.” So if I do cameos it’s usually for that reason, to give the part some weight, some importance. Then yeah, Fred’s always down to have fun and he loves monster movies like I do, so he was so excited to have his hand cast and get it blown off.

Well, the other big cameo here is the “Rain Man” score. Where did that come from?

(Laughs) I just think what’s funny about that is in that scenario, Fuches sees himself as Tom Cruise. He’s the Tom Cruise character, like the dashing savior guy who takes advantage of him sure, but he loves him. And that music, I had forgotten how funny that music was. When we were listening to the music while we were editing, me and Ali Greer the editor were just crying laughing. Initially, over the end credits I wanted the sound of the alarm going off, and we watched it and it was like, “Man, this is really shrill and annoying after five seconds.” Then we were in the mix and just all the mixing and sound guys, they were all kind of looking at me and I know what they’re thinking. I’m like, “Alright, let’s do the ‘Rain Man’ music.”

This interview has been edited and condensed.

Also Read:
‘Barry’ Season 4 Review: Bill Hader Crafts a Collision Course of Chaos in Final Episodes