With Barry Season 3 starting this Sunday night on HBO, I recently conducted an extended interview with Bill Hader, where he broke down the making of the series and revealed what goes on behind-the-scenes to bring one of the best shows on television to life. During the wide-raging conversation, Hader revealed how they write Barry, why Season 3 jumps ahead six months, how they balance the drama and comedy, what the new season is about, why eighth-of-a-page scenes kill you, why Barry is the toughest to write for, what it was like for him to film really motional scenes as Barry while also directing the episode, how they filmed the incredible oner in the first episode of Season 3, and how he worked with Carl Herse (his director of photography) to have the light reflect Barry’s mood. He also talked about his love of Goodfellas, Children of Men, Spinal Tap, how the show changed in the editing room, and so much more I could never list it all here.

I got to watch the first four episodes of Barry Season 3 before talking to Hader and they’re brilliant. Once again, Hader, Alec Berg, and everyone that works on the show have crafted a season that mixes the drama, comedy, and fantastic filmmaking to create one of the best shows airing on any channel. In addition, Season 3 is a real departure from the first two seasons because Gene Cousineau’s (Henry Winkler) acting class has closed, which leads to a completely new structure for the series. Trust me, if you’re a fan of Barry, you’re going to love the new season. For more on Barry Season 3 you can read our review. Barry also stars Stephen Root, Sarah Goldberg, Anthony Carrigan, Sarah Burns, D’Arcy Carden, and Michael Irby.

Since I know some of you like watching video, while others prefer reading the text, I’m offering the Bill Hader interview two ways: you can either watch it in the player above or read the conversation below.

Again, Barry Season 3 starts this Sunday night so set your DVR.

COLLIDER: First, let me start with congratulations. I've seen the four episodes that HBO sent out and they're what we call kind of good. Did you guys feel any pressure with the success of the first two seasons?

BILL HADER: Did you feel any pressure with Season 3? Like, "Oh my God, there's an audience now and people love the show. And it's critically acclaimed. And how are we going to do something even better?"

Or were you in a little bubble, "We're just going to make our show."

BILL HADER: Yeah. It's the latter. You just, I think I learned at SNL that it's always, it's a roller coaster. One week they would love you and the next week they would hate you. And if you read stuff online about what people think and everything. And so I stopped doing that and just go, "Well, this is what I can control." And you just try to do your best on that day.

I really like this season. I would definitely say it's, we definitely tried to, the best stuff I always feel are the people who are making it for themselves. For us, within the writer's room, it was just saying, "Well, what would just happen next?" And trying to go deeper. And make sure that it's growing. That we're not doing the same things over and over again.

Can you talk about the balance of, well, we love Stephen Root and we want him to be on the show. But there's an element of, "Is it more realistic on the show that he gets killed?" Can you talk about, is there balancing the actors that you want to of work with, with making the storyline follow what should happen?

HADER: Yeah. I think it's, you just try to take it step by step. And then you do go, "Well Barry tried to kill Fuches at the end of Season 2. But Fuches is really savvy and he escaped." And it's so he, I say this a lot in the writer's room. Well, if I'm playing Fuches, what I would say is I would say, "Well, my character would probably do this." Or if I'm playing Sally it's this. Or if I'm playing Cousineau. And you try to approach it, hopefully, with that in mind of, "Every character has a reason to live."

So even when we have small parts, I think, "Well, I've played those parts before." So you want to make sure the actor came down there to play it, you give him something to do. Even if it's one line, you try to give them something to do that's interesting. And you see what they bring to it.

But to really answer your question, no. I mean, I feel Glenn Fleshler is an amazing actor, played Goran, and it just became really apparent by the end of Season 1. Where it's, this won't work if Goran's around for him. And it's how the writing went. That was awful. That was really tough, because we all really loved working with Glenn.

As an actor, I can't imagine what it's like to tell another actor, "Yeah, we're going to be killing you off."

HADER: Oh, it's the worst. It's the worst part of the job by far. Having to tell or having to tell somebody, "Hey, you were recast." which we've had to do. Or "Your part got cut." Because I've experienced all those things, for the most part. Or I've had, I won't say the movie, but I mean, I've been on a red carpet of a movie and the producers are like, "Did you see the movie?" I go, "No." And they're like, "You're not really in it." And, It stinks. But now I've been on both sides that I get it, when you're trying to make big story work, those things happen.

I can't imagine being on a red carpet. I can't imagine that happening. That's brutal.

HADER: It's a tough one. That's a tough one. And that was someone's mistake. That was a mistake. That wasn't them being callous. That was them going, "Oh God, no one told him."

I'm sure no one wanted to do that. So you were shooting Barry up until the end of last year, and it's coming out in a few weeks, or it's coming out at the end of April. Have you been sleeping?

HADER: Oh yeah, no. Not at all. We're posting Barry. So today we've mixed Episode 6. So I'm going to that after this. So we're mixing episodes right now. And then I'm also this morning writing Season 4 and doing press. So, it's a lot of work.

Has HBO actually said to you, "A season 4 is a go." Have they given you positive signs?

HADER: No. It's not the way it really works. It's all like, "Hey, let's see how things go and..."

There's no F-ing way that people are going to watch Season 3 and be like, "This show's not bad. We don't want more."

HADER: You never know. I mean, we're tempting it.

RELATED: ‘Barry’ Season 2 Recap: Where We Left Our Favorite Hitman and What You Need to Know Before Season 3

I watch an awful lot of movies and TV and I can tell you when something is, you know what I mean, man? There's no chance that HBO doesn't want more. 0%.

HADER: I'm glad you dug the first four episodes. It's really weird to be... They are kinda in our little lab, and you're thinking about it like [you're] just alone in your room with a little project. In this case, it's a project that involves hundreds and hundreds of really talented people, and it's our own little thing that we know about and then suddenly people are seeing it now and that's surreal.

Yeah. The thing that Barry does so exceptionally well, and I commend you and Alec and everybody who works on it is that you manage to make something that is very funny and also very dramatic. And the filmmaking behind it is also just so well done. It balances all these different things. And each part is just so exceptionally well-made. I wanted to touch on that with the writing, which is, when you guys are writing the scripts, how are you figuring out the level of the drama and the comedy that's in each episode? Can you take me through a little bit of the writing process?

HADER: I would say that most of it is kind of by feel. You're going, "Well. Okay." First day of writing Season 3, I mean, the first thing I think I said was, "Okay, so Cousineau knows, we wrote ourselves into a corner. What happens?" And then it's just a conversation. Everybody's just throwing things out, and we're talking about it and we talk about it. And then I like to be wrong fast, because you're going to be wrong. So I like to be wrong as fast as possible.

I tend to immediately go up on the whiteboard and just start writing out possible episodes. Like, "All right, in episode one could look like this. And episode two could look like this." And it's just big tent pole moments. And you go, "This, this and this. By the end of the first episode, this could happen. Okay." Then you come back in, and then you go, "You know what, maybe this should move here."

A good example I could talk about is Season 2. I was doing that for Season 2. I put up what could be the first four episodes. And in episode four of Season 2 was, "What if we see Barry in Afghanistan and you see the first time he killed somebody. And that he was really lauded for it, they gave him a feeling of acceptance." Then someone in the room was like, "Now, what if that's in episode one? What if that's the end of episode one?"

And you go, "Whoa! That's played better." Now all suddenly all this stuff that we were kicking down the road, now it's all moved up and now this is cooking. But you have to go through the process of making it. Building a thing and then tearing it down and then building it up again and tearing it down. Then you just basically talk about it ad nauseam. Then by that point, writing it is very quick, because you've talked about it so much.

When you go into the writer's room for that first day to talk about the season, have you been subconsciously or writing at home all these ideas? Or, is it just all in your subconscious, and you're just letting it out on that first day?

HADER: Some yes. I don't think it's a spoiler to say this. But I do think one of the first things I said was like, "I don't think the acting class should be closed." Which was an interesting feeling of like, "If the acting class is gone, the equation of show is the Hitman goes to an acting class." Most shows it's like, "Well that's the equation. So don't mess with that." But what was happening is, we had two seasons and both seasons ended with a class show. And the class and everything was just feeling a bit like, "Okay, I just don't know what to write about these scenes anymore. We've done a lot of the scenes. We're going to start repeating ourselves."

So it's like, "Let's just take that out." Once we took that out, it became both liberating and terrifying because the other elements now aren't connected, they're now free-floating around in space. So, it became about almost writing a new show in a way, with, "What's driving Barry now?" "What's driving Cousineau?" "What's driving Sally?" "What's driving Fuches?" "What's driving NoHo Hank?" All those things are very different this season, in terms of the way they have been in the previous seasons.

That's something that I found also very interesting about the season, is that the structure of the show has completely changed, which is what you're addressing. For fans, what do you want to tease them about Season 3?

HADER: Well, I mean the acting class is gone. Cousineau knows. So Cousineau, that was a big thing for us, was saying, "All right, what would Cousineau do? He has this information." It's been six months since the end of Season 2. Sally is at a career peak where, well, Barry is at the lowest point he's ever been, which is really saying something. NoHo Hank, his personal life is in a really great place. And he's scrambling at work basically.

But I will say, the season very much for us was about, and it happened organically where this idea of forgiveness started to come up. And this idea of Season 1 was, "I just want to better myself." Barry tries to get in touch with his emotions. Then he does, but at a bigger cost. And then Season 2 is, "I can change my nature. Can you change your nature?"

And now Season 3 is this idea of, "Well, those things, I don't know if those things work. Can I be redeemed?" And he's really up against the wall this season. The Barry character this season is the first time you really see him lashing out at people he loves. He's very vulnerable and cornered at the beginning of the season. And he's trying to now, just get these basic things of feeling redeemed and forgiven by people. He's in a bad place. But it's definitely, I think what Barry doesn't understand is that there's consequences. I don't know if he gets it.

That's very, very true after seeing the episode.

HADER: Yes. I don't know if he understands that there's consequences.

What is it actually with the relationship with HBO now that you've made two seasons? They know what the show is, how much do you have to lay out to them everything you want to do with like a Season 3? How much is it them being a little more hands off-ish? I'm just curious what the notes are like from HBO and how much do they want to know?

HADER: I mean, I feel very lucky. We work with Amy Gravitt over there, and she is just amazing. And it's amazing to be a part of the thing where the notes you're getting are very thoughtful. She just loves solid storytelling and she just wants to see something that is well told. So, there's episodes this season that, especially later in the season, they're very rough. There's not a lot of comedy. And she's like, "That's great. That feels right for the characters." She very much is in tune with the people, which has been amazing. But then they'll also let you do some crazy stuff and go, "Huh! All right Go with it." Sure, that's great.

But in an ideal world, do you have an amount of seasons that you want Barry to go for? Is it a four-season plan, five years?

HADER: Yeah, I don't know. I mean, we just take it scene by scene. I mean, that's true. I mean, it really is just step by step. And then I think the big thing that I'm always thinking is like, "What is truthful? What's the truth." And then, "What's the logical thing." Then you just try to, I think we'll find a point where we look at each other and go, "Yeah, I think is it." But it's definitely, I'm interested to see what people think of the season. I mean, you could say this, we screened all the episodes for the writers. And one of our writers at one of the later episodes had a panic attack.

Okay.

HADER: So I took that as a good, I was like, "Okay." I mean, they're fine. But I was like, "Okay, well that's..." I mean, it was terrible that he had a panic attack, but I was also like, Oh, okay. We'll see what people think."

When you guys are writing the show, how much are you thinking about budget when you're actually writing? How much are you thinking about like, "Well, we can block shoot this." I guess I'm curious about that.

HADER: Yeah. What you end up doing is, what you always hear is, "Eighth of a page scenes kill you." A scene where it cuts to somebody buying a coffee real quick. And then they see a something on their phone, and they go, "What?" And then they run out. Those are the scenes that end up schedule-wise, Aida Rodgers our producer will come up and go, "Could this happen in the apartment set. Could brewing coffee at home and see it, because we have a schedule."

I think that's always the big difference between TV and movies. I remember I went and saw this advanced screening of the Irishman. And I walked out and Ava DuVernay was there. We were talking about, "Man, the amount of coverage and the amount of eighth of a page scenes in that movie, Scorsese just goes like, 'No, I mean, you shoot the scene at a coffee shop.'" Or the guy does this, you're out. The whole scene of Robert De Niro getting into the plane, and then they cut inside the plane. And on television, you would, it's a thing of the amount of coverage you have to think about, because your schedule, you're moving like this.

So sometimes, yes. Sometimes you do have to think about the budget in those ways. But then there's other times where I like to go, "Okay, well these scenes are pretty small. These episodes are small and we're saving it for this one big episode where there's a big set-piece." So this big set-piece, it's going to take us longer to shoot that episode and it's going to be more expensive. So to balance that, one of the earlier episodes is pretty contained. Or two episodes are a little bit more contained than usual so we can have this bigger thing.

What is a typical shooting schedule for Barry? Is it an eight-day shoot? A ten-day shoot?

HADER: Well, initially Season 1, it was five days, six days. And then Season 2 again around six days. But then something like "ronny/lily" maybe was seven days. Six or seven days. But then this season because of COVID and COVID protocols, we had longer days. I think it got to, some of them were nine days. I mean there's one episode that's pretty involved later in the season that was about, I would say nine, ten days.

Is there a character that ends up being the toughest to write for in the room or is it all pretty much the same?

HADER: Honestly, Barry. It's so weird that Barry's the weirdest one to write for. It's the last one we write for? I think I get so excited about all the other characters that the thing of Barry doesn't have a story comes up every season. Where we'll be ready to shoot and Duffy Boudreau or Liz Sarnoff or Alec Berg Duff or someone goes, "Barry doesn't really have anything to do."

And so, I mean, Season 2, episode seven, all that stuff about Barry getting an audition and reading for Jay Roach and all that, we came up with that probably two weeks before we shot it, where that episode initially was buried. We had the script, we did the read-through, did everything, and it wasn't until we were, I mean, I think maybe a week away where we've thought, "God, this episode Barry's just moping around."

It was him just moping around all day. He had no drive. He didn't really want anything, all season. He had nothing to do, because we were so excited that Cousineau and Fuches were going to meet and all this stuff with Sally's show and all this stuff, we just thought was way more interesting. And Hank on the bus. That's that episode, we were, all our head was just in that. Somebody thankfully was like, "Barry doesn't really do anything in this episode." And that happened again on Season 3, where it was like, "He doesn't really do anything. He's just watching people."

So yeah, it's a thing that we have to remind ourselves, or I have to remind myself, he needs to at least want something every episode.

RELATED: 'Barry' Season 3 Trailer Reveals a Troubling New Development for the Assassin

In the beginning of Season 3, there are some pretty emotional scenes that you have to perform. I believe you're also directing. What is it like for you when you are doing these really emotional scenes and also directing?

HADER: I think I know specifically the scene you're talking about. There's a scene where I guess you could say going into a rage spiral. And it's pretty awful to watch. I'm pretty terrible to one of the characters in the show. Barry's very terrible. But, I don't know, you just walk through it. You have a plan, you talk out the coverage, and you just do it. I don't really know what else to say. I mean you just do it. You try stuff and you fail. You try one thing, and it's like, "That wasn't really. Let me try something else."

And you just do it. That specific scene, when people see it, it's in episode two, because a lot of that was, there's a very slow dolling back of the camera on that scene. And that was setting up that there's about to be an explosion. So it's things like that. We're like, "He's about to explode. And this is going to have consequences."

But that was a good example of that scene when people see it. All the consequences after that came in re-shoots, because we watched it and initially there was consequences, but I realized I wrote it poorly. It was kind of the same thing was happening over and over and over again. And one of the characters wasn't being reactive. I showed it to some of the writers, and they all had the same note, which was, "That was awful. I think someone would take action against that."

And it was like, "Interesting." Then the conversation that happens afterwards is what happened, because then you go talk to someone else and go for, not to ruin anything. But it's like, if Barry flipped out on somebody and someone was like, "We have to report him to the cops." I asked them, I was like, "Well the cops wouldn't anything. What did he actually do, he just gets mad at somebody."

And then it just became, the actual argument became, not the argument. But the points everybody was making in the writer's room, just became the scene. So it was, instead of saying, "Well, here is how you fix it." The more interesting thing to me is you say, "Here's the problem." You just dramatize the problem.

So I know it's hard to talk about this without giving shit away, but that was the idea in those scenes, which was really interesting. And it's why you need a writer's room. You need people to say, "That doesn't really work."

There are some really phenomenal camera moves. I think it's the first episode, but might be the second episode. That's going through, I don't want to give away anything, but a studio setting.

HADER: That's the first episode.

And it's very impressive filmmaking. How long did something like that take to do?

HADER: That was the very first shot of the very first day of shooting. That was Gavin Kleintop, our fantastic first AD and very much my partner in all this stuff. So, it's very rare to get a first AD who's a total film fanatic and is like, "I get it. I see totally what you're trying to do." He was like, "You know what'll bond the crew together, is if we do this big oner on the first day, first shot. So, we had what they call a day zero. So it's the day before you start shooting. And we all got together and walked through the scene with the actors and just went through the whole thing. And then the first day of shooting was, we did it, and we got it in I think take sixteen. We were done, and totally it was like, "Nailed it."

And then we shot the rest of the stuff we were down there. I think we broke for lunch. I mean, it was one of those days where it's like, "We're going to be here all day or whatever." But I saw, I remember after the first take of that big oner, we were like, "I think this is going to work. I think we're going to get this." It was just tweaking stuff.

The thing about that shot is that, there's a lot of different lighting. There's a lot of different actors. There's multiple locations in the shot. And the location of the camera starts much further back and eventually gets very close. How exactly did you set up? I know your DP was Carl Herse. How did you work with Carl in terms of how you wanted the shot, because it's something you directed, to actually go?

HADER: Yeah. I mean, it's something where you say, "Well, this has to be a oner for a reason." I think because of digital, you see a lot of oners now. And you go, "Why is this a oner?"

And the great one-shots, the Copa Shot in Goodfellas, it tells a story. That oner is the best one, because it totally tells you a story of, "Here's how these guys work. They go in through the back. Here's this life that Lorraine Bracco's character is being introduced to. So for me, it was to show my own experience, the enormity of running a show in the house. So the character comes in this big studio and it is like, "You're very small in the frame and this thing is much bigger than you."

And then as you're asked more questions and things like that and they're trying to move through their day, it just becomes incredibly, it goes from objective to very subjective. That's why I was telling Carl. And it was built, the sets were built for the shot. It wasn't like, "Oh, we have all these sets and the camera go here."

It was, I figured out the shot and then got with Eric Schoonover, our production designer, and Carl, and we just mapped out like, "Okay, here's where everything goes for the shot." He built it specifically, "That's where the camera would go." And then we had Kenny Davis, was our dolly grip on that. I felt it was good luck because he also worked on the big oner at the beginning of Boogie Nights. So I felt we were in good company where it was like, "Kenny Davis is here."

When you guys are writing the episode, how much are you thinking about the way you want to film everything in the writing process? When does your director hat come on in the writer's room in terms of, "We could do that as a oner. And this needs to be shot this way."

HADER: Yeah. A lot of times it comes later because I'm still focused on what the story is and what the characters are going through. And then a lot of the times, the camera work will inform that.There's a shot later or before actually that shot, was a bunch of actors in a hallway that ends in the closeup of one specific character. That was a way of introducing that character. These two characters' dynamic for the season.

But again, it was, I got very into this idea of being wide and then slowly moving into a closeup. Or you start in a thing where you go, "This is just a wide two-shot of people." And you're objectively, we're from the point of view of just watching them down a hallway speaking. And then we're slowly walking towards them to hear what they're saying. And then it ends in a subjective moment with one of the characters. Again, it's all intuitive. I feel this season, I got a little too into it. As the show went on, it was, that's one of those things when you think about, "Okay, if we do Season 4, let's chill on the objective to subjectives. Dollying in shots."

Talk a little bit about how you worked with Carl in terms of the lighting and the framing to reflect Barry's mood.

HADER: Yeah. I mean, a lot of that is Carl and I, the first conversation we had together was, I said, "I really like DPs like Robby Müller." Where it's very composed, but with natural light. So you watch something like Paris, Texas or The American Friend, the Wim Wenders movies, or the stuff you did with Jim Jarmusch and stuff like that. That was always something that I was really inspired me by. I just liked that look. Repo Man is another one. The way Los Angeles looks at night and Repo Man is one of my favorite things.

And so it was like, "How do you keep it composed? How do you keep it simple?" I just want to know where all the lights coming from. What's the source? A lot of comedy is very overlit because they wanted you to feel bright and fun, and we're having a good time. So everything is just, it looks like a spotlight's on it. But I much prefer things that, you see shadow, you see contour. Its people are being lit by a source that's way off-screen, things like that.

I'm constantly amazed. Did you see Judd's movie, The Bubble?

HADER: I haven't seen it yet. No.

Well, there's something in that movie where he shines a light on press junkets and how people will ask actors the craziest things that they have no business answering. Like, "How would you solve that?" That would be someone like yesterday at the junket for you asking, "So how would you solve the crisis in Ukraine?" Something completely out of the left field. So I am curious, what is it like when as an actor, doing press and people asking you the craziest shit that you have no reason to answer it?

HADER: I don't think as an actor, I should be answering anything about anything other than the show that I worked on, because that's the only thing I know anything about. So when people ask me, I got a lot of questions on the junket about cancel culture and comedy. And, "What do you think about Will Smith and Chris Rock?" Random stuff. And I'm just like, "I don't know. Why are you asking me? No one wants to hear from me.” I do a show. That's the only thing. I can't have answers for questions I don't know the answer to.

I don't know. I really don't know. So it is weird when you can feel what is like, "You're not interested in the show. You're needing clicks or something. It's like you're wanting some..." It is hard to answer questions now because even a thing where you think you're just being innocuous, even just going, "No, it's too bad." It's like, "Bill Hader thinks Ukraine and Russia is just too bad." And it's like, "No, no. That's not what I meant." So I do clam up, I think a bit more. And it just, each time I read myself in print, I just want to say less.

If I was on your side, I don't know what I would do if someone asked me something about cancel culture, because no matter what I said, someone would take it the wrong way.

HADER: And you just, I'm not on social media or any of those things. But the real answer is, I don't know. I have no idea. I mean, I know how I feel about certain things. But things are pretty complicated. And I'm not on social media because I am wrong all the time. I will be at a dinner and I will go, "Well, isn't it this?" And someone's like, "Well, no. It's actually this." And I'm like, "Oh, that's right."

And then someone else will go, "Well, it's not. It's this." And I go, "That's also true." And I would be apologizing every day because I'd be like, "Hey, that thing, I said, someone told me something else. No, that makes sense."

Yeah. I think the only thing that you could get away with is just posting photos on Instagram with no comments. That's your only safe way.

HADER: Yeah. Here's a chair.

I am in the editing room today. That's it.

HADER: I am on the editing room. I'm just, I'm not, I would not be very good at it.

So episode three is called Ben Mendelsohn. Someone on Twitter asked me if there's a Ben Mendelsohn movie they should watch prior to watching the episode?

HADER: (laughing) Any of them. I think he's such a great actor. I love Ben Mendelsohn. I have to give credit where credits due. The Ben Mendelsohn stuff in episode three is Emma Barrie, the writer of that episode. She was really, she's really funny. And she loves Ben Mendelsohn.

He's quite talented in front of the camera.

HADER: Yeah. Amazing.

So someone else on Twitter mentioned this Barry slaughters about 25 people in the most recent season finale. Are we still supposed to find him lovable?

HADER: That's up to you, I guess. I mean, I never found him lovable. It's interesting how people found him lovable. I think he's a highly, highly complicated guy, who's not that bright and pretty violent. He is trying for something. He's trying to understand himself, but maybe people sometimes see themselves in these things. But when we're writing it, it's always, "What's the interesting, honest, truthful thing about the guy."

And again, going back to something like Goodfellas. Goodfellas, I'm along for the ride. "Wow. What a cool group of guys." And then Spider gets killed or the scene where he grabs a gun from Lorraine Bracco's and shoves it in her face. And that seems awful. And you go, "Oh right. These are violent, awful people. So, I see Barry that way.

It's funny you keep bringing up Goodfellas. I think that's my favorite film of all time. I could watch that film on loop. It's on another level.

HADER: Yeah, it's so funny. Real quick, because I was talking about this with somebody, if you had to name your favorite movies. I was like, "I don't know if I could." But, I could say, "Well, here are the ones that hit me and changed me." And if I had to go Scorsese, it would probably be Taxi Driver. But it was just because when I saw it, you see a certain movie first and you go, "Well, is that their best movie?" I don't know.

But for the Coen Brothers, it's Barton Fink. I saw that in the theater when I was 13. And I just was like, "Whoa! That was amazing." But is that their best movie? They've made some great movies. I don't know. So it's always tough. It's always very personal. But Goodfellas was one that came out when I was 12. And I remember my parents running it and turning on when the first scene happened with Joe Pesci and started stabbing Billy Batts with the knife. My dad went, "Okay. Okay. And turned it off."

So, for me, then I was like, "Now I got to see this movie. How do I get a hold of this movie? Because then it became forbidden." It was like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. No, we can't watch this."

It's interesting because, as I've gotten older, I have pushed away from the concept of something being the best, because how do you compare art? It's all subjective. And also as you know if you see Casablanca when you're 20, you have one opinion of it. But after you've had a real love or real loves in your life, and you watch Casablanca again, it's a completely different movie.

HADER: Yeah. It's a completely different movie. I mean, that's why to me, it's always like, "What are the ones that hit me?" That you went, "Oh, that's how comedy..." I get asked all the time, "What's your favorite comedy? And I was like, "I don't know." But I mean, Spinal Tap and Monty Python and the Holy Grail, I saw really young. I was like, "That's how you perform comedy. You don't push, you play it subtle." So I guess those had huge effects on me. Are they the best comedies? I don't know. I like a lot of comedies. So it's a tough one.

I've probably seen Spinal Tap 50 times.

HADER: Yeah. It's to the point now where it's not even fun. I just, I know every syllable of that movie.

I think I've destroyed the joke “it goes to 11,” decades ago.

HADER: My favorite thing in Spinal Tap lately I think about is when they're lost backstage and Nigel says, "You got to take a little jog." And Harry Shearer says, "We don't have time for that."

It's bizarre how good that movie is. And it's just on another level, which is why we've all watched it a thousand times.

HADER: It was new. It had a new feeling to it.

Also, I think people forget it was '82 when they made it.

HADER: The only thing before Woody Allen did Take The Money And Run and then Albert Brooks had Real Life, those funny mockumentaries. But Spinal Tap's... Zelig also was pretty interesting and well done. But Spinal Tap was the one that was the funniest.

So you've already mentioned that Barry has a six-month jump from between Season 2 and Season 3. How did you decide on the six-month jump? Was it ever going to be longer? How did that happen?

HADER: It just by virtue of one of the characters getting their own show. So it was by that you had to just go, "Well, if that would happen, let's say the fastest, that would happen where they're writing and shooting." We gave it six months and then, so it was by that. And then that led us to go, "Well, where's everybody else at right now?"

You have talked about how you are very specific with your opening shot on Barry in the previous seasons. Like with Season 2, the way he comes out of the darkness. So with Season 3, I don't want to be specific because I don't want to ruin it for anyone, but there's a specific shot of how Barry is introduced. I'm just curious, is that significant in any way?

HADER: I think the thing with the very first shot of this season is you see where his mindset is compared to where it was in the previous seasons. And hopefully, that will come across when you see it. You'll just, "Well, here's where he's at." As opposed to where he was at, at the beginning of Season 2. Beginning of Season 2, he's trying to do front page and just pretend that he didn't kill Cousineau's girlfriend. He's just trying to be, he's in hyper denial. And the beginning of Season 3, you'll see, I guess.

Obviously, with HBO, you don't have a specific run time that you have to hit. It could be 25 minutes. It could be 35 minutes an episode. Do you end up with a lot of deleted scenes?

HADER: Not really deleted scenes. But we will cut lines or little moments, or we'll cut a scene. There's one scene later in the season that's a pretty funny scene that actually has a guest star in it that we cut in half just because we thought it was really funny. And we tried a bunch of stuff, and it just wasn't working the way that I thought it would in the edit.

And then there's actually a big thing that was actually going to be pretty expensive that I was going to do later in the season but decided, while we were cutting it was like, "This is becoming about process stuff or weird filmmaking rather that..." How do I say this? It was more about the hardware and the effects stuff rather than the emotion of the scene. And so then, once he said like, "Okay, what's the emotion of the scene." Me and the editor, Franky Guttman we were like, "What's the..." And Ali Greer, the other editor. We're like, "What's the emotion of the scene?" Once we figured out what that was, all this stuff that we had been planning and people were doing, it all went away. So that'll happen, where you have to call people and go, "Stop building that. I wrote it, I didn't write it right. I'm so sorry."

I'm sure your line producer loves those phone calls.

HADER: Actually, I think she does because she's like, "Hey, we're spending money. I'm glad we didn't spend all the money on doing all that." Then you look at it and then go, "You know what, no. Cut it. Don't do it yet. We don't need it."

That's happened. That happened on Season 2 as well. There was a whole, when Barry was telling his story about Iraq, and we would cut to Afghanistan, and he's telling his story up on stage. Initially, the camera would push in on him and behind him, the curtain would open. And then the curtain would open onto Afghanistan. It was going to be this motion control shot of moving past me. He threw a curtain into Afghanistan. We worked on it. We'd tried it and got the edit and Jeff Buchanan the editor was just like, "Watch this." And he just cut straight from me to Afghanistan.

I was like, "Yeah. Yeah. That's got more energy and that works better." So you try shit, and it's like, "This will look cool." And it's different. It's interesting. Then you go, "It's really drawing attention to itself. And it's actually taking away from the emotion of what the scene is."

It's so funny because I love oners. But I especially love them when they're significant to the story. But I wonder if the average person watching at home, who's not a cinephile...I think they feel the tension of a oner. But I don't know if they really realize they're in a oner.

Yeah, maybe. I like it, if they didn't. To me, it's just, you just want to be caught up in what the person's going through. I think of great oners, there's that one in Children of Men that goes through the bus and everything. I mean, that's unreal. And it just feels like you're with Clive Owen going through this thing.

And the whole time you're just wanting to run the other way. And it's like, "No, no, we got to follow him." And it's just breathtaking. But it's like I forget, I know it just because I'm a film nerd. But I get caught up in the emotion of it. The Goodfellas is one. I'm caught up in the emotion of it. Or suspense ones like beginning of Touch of Evil or those things.

Children of Men is another film that if you're watching or reading this interview and you have not seen for the love of God, push play.

HADER: I think it's one of the most underrated movies of all time. I think it's just absolutely brilliant. I mean, for a guy who's made some of the amazing award-winning movies, I think my favorite two films of his is that and Y tu mamá también. I can watch those all day. I get really inspired watching those films. They're so inspiring. All the choices, they're just amazing.

I saw Children of Men for the junket at the ArcLight Hollywood, rest in peace until it comes back. And my jaw, I literally left the theater, with my brain melted.

HADER: It's just a phenomenal film. And then it's again, it has this real momentum to it and suspense and everything, but still is incredibly emotional. I just think it's unbelievable. I just, I really do.

I think I could talk about Children of Men for the next hour, but I'll leave it alone. I'm just going to say thank you for your time today. I know you are a very busy person.

HADER: Thanks.

Barry Season 3 starts streaming April 24th on HBO.