Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers for the first two episodes of Barry Season 3.From co-creators Bill Hader and Alec Berg, the HBO dark comedy series Barry is currently in its eight-episode third season, as Barry (Hader) would prefer to focus entirely on acting but instead keeps getting drawn back into the violent world of contract killing. While trying to be a supportive boyfriend to Sally (Sarah Goldberg), who’s getting her own TV series off the ground, and give a helping hand to his acting teacher Gene Cousineau (Henry Winkler), who he’s feeling some well-placed guilt about, Barry can’t seem to stop being drawn back into the orbit of NoHo Hank (Anthony Carrigan), which complicates everything.
During this 1-on-1 interview with Collider, Goldberg talked about how the long break between Season 2 and Season 3 brought a whole new energy to the cast’s performances, why she never wants Sally to fall prey to the likability barometer typically used for female characters, what it’s like to shoot a show within the show, the Barry-Sally relationship dynamic, that scary moment between them in Episode 302, authentically capturing what a press junket is like, and what it’s been like to collaborate with Hader.
Collider: If the first few episodes of this season are any indication, Season 3 is going to be a wild one. What are you most excited about fans getting to see with this season?
SARAH GOLDBERG: Oh, that’s a great question. We all miss the show so much, being together and making this thing. It was such a long break, and we weren’t the only ones, it was the whole world, so we’re lucky and happy to be back. I think that it brought a whole new energy to everyone’s performance and that was matched with the writing. This season has pushed all the characters into a new place. Everybody is in a slightly new life place, and that met with our hysterical energy coming back, I think it’s gonna be exciting for the audience to see the new gears of the show. It’s got a slightly different tone, in a brilliant way. We’re moving into a darker space with all the storylines, so I’m excited for people to see that.
What have you loved about your character from day one?
I loved that when I read the pilot for this, I felt like, “Okay, here’s a woman that I haven’t seen written on the page.” We Trojan horsed her as the typical girlfriend part, sweet as pie from a small town. And we completely undercut it, immediately, with the truth of who she actually is. I love playing that duality of Sally. She’s somebody who’s really trying. She means well, and she doesn’t have bad intentions, but she just can’t get it right. She can’t see other people, so she has this myopia that transforms into narcissism.
I was excited to read a script with all of these morally gray characters and the female characters written as complex as the male characters. I’ve always been very clear that we’re not gonna let Sally fall prey to the likability barometer, and she’s not gonna be the moral litmus test of the show. She’s gotta be as morally complicated as the men on this show, and we’ve really fought for that. When Season 1 came out and people called her likable, I was like, “Fantastic. Great job. Let’s make her a monster.” Women are complicated. I wanted to play somebody who is not one thing, and Sally’s certainly not that.
She has her show going this season, and we get to see her working on it, acting in it, and being in the writers’ room. What’s it like to have a show within a show? How strange do things get for you, as the actor playing your character, playing another character on her show?
GOLDBERG: It’s so weird. I think the strangest thing was that the writers’ room for Joplin, the show within the show, was shot on the set that is the actual writers’ room for Barry, the show, but we basically just redressed all the boards. It went from our cast headshot and all these notes, and then it was just turned around and it was the cast of Joplin. You definitely had to do a head spin of like, “Wait, where are we? What are we doing?” It was a lot of fun. You had prop sides, which are the little bits of script you get for the lines you’re gonna shoot that day, but then you’d have your real sides. You’d be holding your prop sides in a take and someone would call for continuity and say, “No, we’ve got sides in the scene.” And we’d be like, “No, we need those there. They’re a prop.” It all got very meta. It was fun for us to shine a lens on it all and have a laugh at what we do.
I love how full-on it really is.
GOLDBERG: Yeah, we go in. Even that long shot in episode one, where we track through the entire soundstage, just choosing to open that shot with a real wide of the entire soundstage and to see the scale of those faces, and then zooming it all the way into a closeup, I thought it was fun to show all of that and how it actually is.
How would you describe the relationship between Barry and Sally this season?
GOLDBERG: Well, I describe their relationship as two people who are so bad for each other, and yet are perfect for each other. They are so functional, in their absolute dysfunction. We’ve seen them, for a couple of seasons, not see each other. They have a relationship based on projections. Barry thinks Sally’s a star, and that’s all she needs, at the end of the day. And Barry has a girlfriend who’s narcissistic enough not to realize he’s a hitman, which is convenient for him. The whole thing is functioning. And this season, both of them, individually, are cracking and their carefully crafted veneers are cracking, and that’s gonna affect their dynamic. A relationship based on projections has a shelf life, so the outlook is not great.
Barry is definitely not in a good place in Season 3. The scene between Sally and Barry, where he’s just completely losing his shit and yelling at her is terrifying, enough so that other people actually notice. What was that scene like to shoot? How many times did you have to shoot that? When you’re really in the moment of something like that, what is that like to experience?
GOLDBERG: We really approached that scene like we approach every scene on the show, which is that we have the luxury of rehearsals. We’ll sit around a table and work through the beats, and we’ll rewrite stuff. When we came in on the day to shoot it, we were prepped, which is always really helpful. And then, of course, you don’t know how far someone’s gonna go, and Bill went very far. It was very effective, so it didn’t require a huge amount of acting on my part. He was quite scary. But we just approached it like anything.
Both Bill and I try to stay incredibly focused, but then equally, we goof around between takes because it helps us both to keep the energy up. We didn’t do many takes. I can’t remember exactly how many, but Bill is very good, that way. Once we’ve got it, we’ve got it. We don’t keep working something to death, which helps. It’s complicated to say I enjoyed shooting that scene, but I did. Seeing them in that kind of extremity, it’s such a shock for Sally. It’s also playing with, what does she do with this new information from this person? Does she take action, or does she fall on old patterns? That’s what was interesting and fun to play. She’s somebody who, sadly, in that moment, is falling into an old pattern.
How has it been to work and collaborate with Bill Hader on this? What’s it been like to work alongside him, as your characters evolve, but to also have him be so creatively involved and directing episodes and wearing so many different hats?
GOLDBERG: It’s interesting. It was something to pull from, when playing Sally this season. That long shot, where we see her being asked by every department head for something they need, and then they call, “Action!,” and she’s gotta go, that’s Bill’s day. All of us have been very impressed with how seamlessly he switches the roles, or changes hats. In a scene like that one, in particular, that we were talking about, where he gets angry, it’s more difficult to jump from that to video village and watch the monitors. He’s good at knowing when it’s those moments, and (co-creator) Alec Berg is then always there, to help him and direct him. We’ve got Duffy Boudreau, who’s one of our writers and Bill’s best friend, so he’ll always have people who are facilitating an outside eye for his performance.
He’s a very present performer. We all know he comes from sketch comedy, so he’s used to working in a group, and I think that’s really helped him in this leadership role, where he’s a real best idea wins kind of director. There’s no real hierarchy. Everybody’s allowed to pitch ideas, all day long. We throw out nine bad ones, and then we get a good one. I think that kind of atmosphere has really helped everyone on the show and helped everyone really live in their characters. It’s a really special and great way to work.
I think this is the first time since Notting Hill that I’ve seen a press junket portrayed.
GOLDBERG: Yes. I forgot about Notting Hill.
And Barry feels like it got it very accurate. So
GOLDBERG: Did you feel represented?
I just hope I’m not like that.
GOLDBERG: Your questions are far more intelligent.
Thank you. What was it like to shoot that? Did it feel accurate to you? Was it fun to just get to poke fun at all of that?
GOLDBERG: It was all fun. It was really fun to shoot. All the actors who played the journalists were really funny. We always shoot a lot that doesn’t make the cut because it’s only a half-hour show. A lot of them did a lot of improvising that day, that was really making me laugh. There’s a certain type of nerves and adrenaline that go into your first press junket. I remember it very clearly, so it was fun to get to explore that with Sally. This is what she’s always wanted, but it’s not actually so straightforward. All of it was fun.
That whole day was a real riot. Jessy Hodges, who plays my agent, is an amazing actress. Some of the stuff that we got to do this season, poking fun at what we do for a living, was really fun. And the way Alec directed that episode, he set up this tight, hot room that, if we were doing this in person, what it’s often like, and it was very meta. We had these two cameras, and we were using the prop cameras as actual cameras. It didn’t require any acting. I was very real.
I even loved you and Elsie Fisher comparing notes together.
GOLDBERG: That’s a very Sally moment. She’s exhausted, but she’s really in her head like, “What did I say? Did I get it right? Did I say the funny thing?” And then, this kid who’s fresh on the scene is nailing it. Sally is even competitive in her fatigue. That was fun to shoot.
How do things work with the show? Are you told prior to the season starting, what the arc of the season will be? Bill Hader has said that he took the time during COVID to figure out Season 4 and then went back and to rework Season 3 with that knowledge. Did he have you fill you in on those changes?
GOLDBERG: It’s changed, season to season, but at this point, we’re a well-oiled machine, and we all have a lot of input on our characters. Way before we’re ready to shoot, they’ll call and pitch what they’re thinking for your character, and they give you a chance to pitch back. That’s a real luxury. That’s not every show. We brainstorm a lot of ideas, and then they walk away and write something really smart and that’s our baseline. So, we had scripts that we were going in with when the pandemic hit, and they were ready to shoot scripts. And then, we did have the luxury of time on our side, albeit for horrific reasons.
The changes that were made were very smart. We all had a lot of time to talk about where the characters were at and make changes. And then, we come in and we workshop the scenes in the room with writers and actors present. We goof around, and we try things out, and we improvise. It’s a special process. I’ve never had that on anything else. It’s a very wonderful way to work because you end up with a really cohesive piece. You’ve got all this chemistry of all of these people bringing their ideas to the table.
Barry airs on Sunday nights on HBO and is available to stream at HBO Max.