Saturday Night Live performers who leave the NBC series and find success outside the realm of that pop culture staple aren’t necessarily a rarity. From Bill Murray to Adam Sandler to Kristen Wiig, there are plenty of SNL alumni who moved on to continue entertaining audiences in a variety of ways. But seeing an SNL performer go on to become a tremendously talented filmmaker is far more unusual. Yes, former SNL head writer Adam McKay went on to become an Oscar-winning writer and director, and Tina Fey is the talented performer, producer, and writer of 30 Rock and Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. But Bill Hader, who left SNL in 2013, has taken a somewhat different path that’s led him to not only write, create, and star in a new TV series, but also make his directorial debut on the show to stunning results.

As Hader tells it, he actually moved to Los Angeles with dreams of becoming a director in the first place. The longtime cinephile got into improv almost by accident, which led to him becoming one of the funniest and most memorable performers in SNL history. But after leaving the series that gave him his big break, Hader is finally making his initial dreams a reality with Barry, a tour-de-force new series on HBO that has the propulsive narrative of Breaking Bad and the comedic instincts of Fargo.

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Image via HBO

Hader co-created Barry with Alec Berg (Silicon Valley), and stars as a hitman unhappy with his life, who follows a mark to Los Angeles only to discover after stumbling into an acting class that he really wants to become an actor. Hader directs the first three episodes of the show, and not only is the eight-episode first season a positive delight, but Hader’s instincts as a director are jaw-droppingly great. The specificity of vision, motivated cinematography, and classical approach draw sincere comparisons to great Hollywood classics from the likes of Billy Wilder. With Barry, Hader has not only created a phenomenal new TV series, he’s announced himself as a tremendously gifted filmmaker to watch.

As a big fan of Hader’s and the show -- and as someone who shares his same hometown of Tulsa, Oklahoma -- I was delighted to get on the phone with him recently and dive deep into the filmmaking and crafting of Barry. After a lengthy detour into Tulsa Talk (which has been excised since I’m not sure people want to read the two of us discussing the revitalization of the downtown area), we talked about how Hader went about preparing to direct for the first time, how the cinematography of the show evolved after the pilot, his aesthetic approach to the series, and why he enjoyed handing off the director reigns to Maggie Carey, Hiro Murai, and Berg for the rest of the season. We also discussed the creation of the series, forming a writers room, how Stephen Root’s character changed entirely after they shot the pilot, how they went about crafting a compelling and structurally sound narrative throughline, and hopes for Season 2.

It’s a wide-ranging interview and I easily could have kept talking about this show and filmmaking with Hader for another hour, but if you’re at all interested in the ins and outs of directing or creating something, I think you’ll find this interview enlightening. Check it out below.

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Image via HBO

I love the show. I watched the whole season for review, but now I’m excited to go back and watch it all over again week to week.

BILL HADER: It’s good to hear that. We’ve haven’t gotten the official word from HBO yet so we’re kind of waiting, but if we did get a second season Alec and I are already kind of throwing ideas back and forth of what it could be.

I’m really curious to see what the general reaction is to it. I think it blends the dark comedy with a really compelling narrative, which surprised me. It has the propulsiveness of Breaking Bad where you want to find out what happens next.

HADER: That’s what we wanted. We wanted it to feel like that through the whole show, and that’s hard to kind of maintain. It always has to come from character and that’s always a dicey thing. You sometimes want to go, “God it’d be so great if this happens,” but then you kind of negate who those people are. We actually had that happen where we kind of underwrote a section towards the end of the season, and because the actor brought it up we changed it. You make those mistakes and if you have a good actor they’ll go, “I don’t get why I would do that,” so those things are helpful. But structurally and trying to get that propulsive narrative it’s just a lot of work and a lot of banging your head against the wall. The writers room is very small, and it’s just me and Alec kind of having a conversation across a table with four or five really smart people listening and then they go, “Well I don’t know if that makes sense,” or “What if X happens?” Elizabeth Sarnoff had a suggestion that added a new story to the entire season.

I know you’ve been in the South Park writers room, but what was it like putting together a writers room yourself? Almost half the episodes were written by women, was that a conscious decision? 

HADER: We had Amy Solomon, who’s a producer on the show, and she was just meeting writers and reading packets and she was just kind of sending us people that she liked because Alec and I were still busy with other things. I don’t know, the people we responded to were just the people we responded to. Those conversations happen now which is good, HBO is a place where those conversations happen. But it wasn’t a situation where they said, “You have to have this many women,” it was never that. The people we read were just the people we really liked. It was the same thing with Paula Huidobro, our DP. I just saw a bunch of reels. Aida, our producer, she sent me a bunch of reels and I was just looking at them and suddenly this one popped up that wasn’t comedy. I saw a bunch of things that looked like comedy, and suddenly Paula Huidobro’s reel came in and I went, “Wow this isn’t comedy at all,” and then they said, “Yeah she operated for Emmanuel Lubezki,” and I went “Oh wow!” So I met her and went, “Yeah, we should have her do it.” I was saying, “I want it to be Robby Müller stuff where it’s composed but has natural light,” and she went, “Oh yeah like American Friend and Paris, Texas,” and I was like, “She’s hired!” (laughs)

That was another one of my questions because I know Brandon Trost shot the pilot and I’m a big fan of his. How did you land on him for the pilot?

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Image via HBO

HADER: Well the pilot I had never directed before so I wanted a good DP, and Nick Stoller and Seth [Rogen] and Evan [Goldberg] and those guys were like, “Oh man you should totally work with Brandon, he’s so good,” so I met with him and we hit it off and that was that. He’s a really smart, talented guy, and just a wonderful dude.

I spoke to him last year for The Disaster Artist and I had to ask him about Barry and he said he regretted not shooting the entire series and that you were the most prepared director he had ever worked with. 

HADER: Oh good, yes I was very prepared (laughs).

What was that process like for you, preparing to direct for the first time?

HADER: Well I think because I was acting in it and because I had been a production assistant as well, you wanted to approach it being as specific as possible and I just knew so much of what eats up time is indecision and just people not knowing what’s happening. I know as an actor and as a production assistant and as an assistant editor, all these roles I’ve had on set, there’s very few people who can kind of leave it up to chance, who are really good on their feet. And those are like the greatest filmmakers of all time (laughs). Whereas most people who do that you’re just sitting around and waiting and they’re shooting more coverage than they need because they’re insecure and the actors are fighting and all this stuff, so for me it was just, “Can we be as clear as possible?” We all have to be making the same thing. It was being as clear as possible in pre-production of sitting down and rehearsing scenes and then while we’re rehearsing those scenes we’re taking pictures and we’re talking about coverage, and we’d go to a location and we’d photo-board a bunch of stuff. So when people got there with your sides you’ve also got a photo-board so people can cross it off themselves and go, “Cool. Alright, I know we have these shots left.” A lot of people work that way, especially on commercials and stuff, but I felt more comfortable working that way first time out and acting in it; it was nice to get the whole team on the same wavelength so then I could kind of relax and talk to the actors and act myself.

After the experience on the pilot did you change anything in terms of your directing style and preparation? 

HADER: Yeah, yeah. Not preparation so much as I kind of got away from the really wide angle lenses (laughs). Paula Huidobro was like, “You want this to look a little bit more elegant.” So I learned a bit more about that. And there were days when things wouldn’t match the way you wanted or an actor was doing something funny and it would change things, I wasn’t hyper locked into it. But really because it’s a 30-minute show you can’t do a lot of flashy things. Your coverage has to be the simple, dynamic coverage of great old movies. Billy Wilder, Carol Reed. You can’t do the full Max Ophüls when you’re doing a 30-minute thing. You can’t do crazy camera angles really, but you can do more workman-style coverage that is impactful and tells a story. I was always picking the angles specific for that.

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Image via HBO

Oddly enough, your episodes specifically reminded me of Billy Wilder in that the shots felt very precise. Everything felt very purposeful. 

HADER: Yeah I’m glad you picked up on it because it’s a lot of work just to do that at times. The pilot was all shot essentially with one camera, meaning we didn’t do two cameras. But when we got the pickup for the series I remember Aida Rogers, our producer, was saying, “If we’re gonna make our days we gotta do two cameras,” and Paula, in our meetings, went, “I can figure out a way to put a second camera someplace that looks like a shot you would want,” like a shot that you had planned on as opposed to you’re grabbing something with a long lens. It’s the difference between covering a scene and shooting a scene, and I didn’t wanna cover it. I just wanted to shoot it in a way that if it was on mute you could understand people’s relationships to each other through the angles.

Did you ever consider directing the whole season yourself or is that something you’re considering for Season 2?

HADER: Um, I would probably die (laughs). Just doing the three was a lot. I was telling another actor who directs that I shot the first three and he went, “Oh my God, how are you standing?” That’s shooting a movie, that’s an hour and a half movie. But the other thing about having Maggie Carey and Hiro Murai and Alec Berg direct the other episodes is I got to act in them but I also was the showrunner, so I was learning so much from them of the coverage they were picking and the way they would shoot certain things, how I hadn’t thought of it that way and I’d go, “Oh that’s cool!” I would usually go with them where they wanted to go, most of the time. There was only a couple things where I was very clear; Episode 4 when Sally’s crying in the car for instance, I would say, “You know I always saw pushing in on her and she’s inside the car and she’s not mic’d, we’re just hearing her cry from outside the car.” You would have those in the early meetings but that’s kind of normal. But the whole party thing and everything Maggie shot that her own way and I loved it, I loved the way she shot that whip-pan over to the two—the “Who are your friends?” that’s all Maggie.

I really liked the idea of keeping it tight-knit in terms of the number of directors of this because it does feel very director-driven instead of fitting into a mold. Was that a conscious decision to keep the pool of directors a little smaller?

HADER: Yeah, I mean it’s eight episodes and a lot of people would start to get a little crazy. Again, the reason you pre-plan so much is a lot of people you end up having to get them inside your head somehow. The nice thing is now we have a season of television. If we get to do more, we can now point to that season and hopefully they know this is what flies, this is the tone of the show.

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Image via HBO

I know you said visually it changed a bit, but once the pilot got picked up to series did you guys make any adjustments to your overall approach? Were there any notes from HBO that influenced how you moved forward with the full series? 

HADER: Well I’ll tell you the biggest thing we did was the Fuchs character in the pilot was completely different. All the scenes with Fuchs in the pilot were reshot. So the scene with Fuchs in the hotel when I’m telling him about the acting class, that was much different. The character initially was all dressed in black and his hair was slicked back and he was kind of this enforcer guy, and he was super mad and just screaming at me. He kind of came from a genre. HBO rightfully went, “Shouldn’t those guys be friends?” So it’s more about a friendship that’s souring, and we went, “Yeah you’re totally right.” So we said what if he was like a Monday Morning Quarterback-type guy but about the military. Like he just loves the military but he was never in the military, and he’s doing something really low-rent bad exploiting his friend’s son, who was kind of everything he wanted to be. So those scenes were completely reshot and the monologue I give at the end of the pilot, that was all reworded and reshot. So when it cuts to Henry [Winkler] that’s 2016 and when it cuts to me it’s 2017 like exactly a year later (laughs).

Fuchs as-is oddly reminds me of some people from around Tulsa a little bit. Very genial. 

HADER: Yeah it’s kind of like guys who were friends of my dad's. I was always kind of obsessed with my dad and his friends, these guys who would go golfing and were into sports. You know, OU’s playing and they’re down at the bar watching the OU game. That was never my thing but I just find those guys entertaining because I love my dad and his friends were just entertaining to me. So yeah, him being at a golf course and the way he dresses and kind of carries himself was very much inspired by Tulsa people.

One of the things I really love about the show is how strong it is narratively, and having seen all eight episodes the structure is really like a swiss watch. How did you guys go about plotting out the structure of the season? 

HADER: Just very deliberately. Alec comes from that Curb Your Enthusiasm and Seinfeld world where it’s kind of a mousetrap structure where this thing that you set up in Episode 2 goes off in Episode 8. Then I came from South Park, that was where I learned all this stuff, so it was kind of more oddly about emotion, which is funny to say but it’s true. Everything’s causal, meaning this happens therefore this happens and therefore this happens. That was kind of beaten into me at South Park. Which is still funny because you work on all these things and the reviews are coming out and you read some reviews that are like, “It’s a very haphazard story,” and it’s like wait what? (Laughs). It doesn’t matter what you do. I’m like, you have no idea how hard we worked to make it not a haphazard story, and people are like, “It’s really just ‘shit happens’” and you’re like, “Aw man.”

But it’s not, because one of the joys I had in watching was at the end of the pilot I figured that’d be pretty much the end of the Chechen mobsters. But they come back in Episode 2, and that storyline continues to progress to the point that by the end of the season I’m seriously invested in the well-being of Noho Hank.

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Image via HBO

HADER: Yeah, yeah. I think the problem for certain people is maybe that Alec and I don’t watch a whole lot of episodic TV but we work on it. Like I love Atlanta and I like Breaking Bad obviously and stuff like that, but I really love movies. I kind of watch movies and read books, so it never occurred to me to do that, to have it be like “This week in The Adventures of Barry” and it’s like a different thing he goes through every week. I don’t know if I’m really interested in that, but tracking his emotional development is what I’m more interested in. And sometimes that’s subtle and sometimes it’s not. It’s also a thing that some people are kind of reviewing that the first three or four episodes are slow then it picks up midway through, and because I see it as one big movie, if you’re plotted like one big movie it’d be like saying, “Well the first act’s slow.” If it was parsed out over three or four segments you would think it was slow maybe, I don’t know. But to me it doesn’t seem that way. It’s like you’re setting up stuff and the latter half doesn’t work if you don’t have the setup of the first half.

I think it works great as a whole and it was never slow to me. It’s emotionally grounded and you’re doing the character work to make the audience invested, otherwise nothing that happens matters. 

HADER: Yeah that’s the thing that’s hard, and I think especially with comedy—sketch comedy, how you work is you come in with a joke. You lead in with a joke when you’re writing, whether it’s a voice or whatever. Me doing Vinny Vedecci [on SNL], I just had that voice and then I go, “I don’t know what the sketch is, but it’s me doing that,” so that’s where we start and then you’re trying to figure out what the joke is and you just try to occupy six minutes of time. Then with a show you’ve gotta come in with the emotion first, with a story like that it’s, “What’s the feeling you want?” I spent some time in the writers room on Inside Out, that’s kind of how I got involved in that movie. I remember [director] Pete Docter pitched it to me and he said, “My daughter showed me a slideshow,” and he’s like, “Here’s my daughter when she was a little kid, look how happy she is and excited about life and everything. And here she is now,” and she’s a preteen and her hair’s in front of her face and she’s awkward and everything like that, and he goes, “What happened? How did she go from that to that? I want to explore that.” So you hear that and you go, oh that’s really interesting. That affected the way I went into Barry, which was like what if the thing you were good at was destroying you, but the thing you wanted to do you were bad at.

You said you guys are working on Season 2, have you made much headway in plotting or planning that out?

HADER: Well we haven’t gotten a pickup for it so we don’t wanna get too excited (laughs). We’re being very Oklahoma about it; we’re very modestly chatting like, “Oh that would be neat if that happened, but let’s not write down anything because it might not get picked up." But we know at least we did a season of television we’re super proud of.

Barry airs Sundays on HBO at 10:30pm ET/PT.

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