Bill Hader appears on my screen from Los Angeles, unshaven, a little groggy and in an uncluttered white room. Faced with this pixelated version of him, I’m instantly reminded of his role in the 2008 Judd Apatow-produced romcom Forgetting Sarah Marshall, for which he appeared almost exclusively on video call, in the days before Zoom was a thing. “It was such a novelty back then,” he says, that furrowed brow unmistakeable. “It was like, ‘Whoa, this is new.’”
Saturday Night Live’s erstwhile Man of a Thousand Faces is here on my laptop to talk about his greatest creation, Barry Berkman, a marine turned assassin turned aspiring actor in the HBO comedy-drama Barry, which Hader writes and directs as well as playing the title character. The show has won multiple Emmys; critical adulation; obsessive fans. What began as an apparent riff on the hitman-with-a-heart-of-gold trope has evolved over four seasons into something richer: a thrilling synthesis of showbiz satire and character study, with pitch-black humour and nail-biting suspense. As we get to know Barry, the notion of him as simply a stoic, ruthlessly efficient killer slowly dissipates.
