With the Barry finale cementing the show as another killer series from HBO, Bill Hader is opening up about the creative process behind the jarring events in the climactic episode. In a lengthy new interview, Hader reveals that he originally shot a scene between Hank (Anthony Carrigan) and Sally (Sarah Goldberg) that he’s now thankful he left on the cutting room floor.
“Thank God, we went back and reshot because it was really bad (laughs),” Hader told The Wrap. “I was completely exhausted by the time I was writing Episode 8, and this is what I mean by when you do fan service you f**k yourself.”
As Hader explains it, he envisioned a cringey moment between Hank and Sally that Carrigan and Goldberg questioned right out of the gate:
So at the end when Hank is killed, in the initial version, Hank brings his hand up because he’s dying, and then Sally took his hand and put it in Cristobal’s hand as a way of being like, “I’m gonna get you back with your guy” and all this stuff. Sarah and Anthony, to their credit, were like, “Why are we shooting this?” (laughs). And I was like, “No, no, no this is good!” This is the problem when you read s—t about your show is people are like “Oh it’s so bleak” and I thought this was a nice moment, so it’s a reaction to people going, “Why is it so bleak?”
After convincing Carrigan and Goldberg to film the scene, Hader later realized they were right when editor Franky Guttman also questioned the weird moment while piecing together the finale. At that point, Hader knew the scene needed to be reshot, and it taught him some valuable lessons.
“A. You can’t do fan service,” Hader said. “B. It’s dangerous to get caught up in what people are saying about your stuff, because then you get insecure and start changing it. And then C. You’ve gotta have people around you that say this is wrong and listen to them.”
(Via The Wrap)