The final season of Barry, Bill Hader’s opus about a hitman-turned-actor who can’t quite leave his life of expert murdering behind, is about to arrive on our screens – and what a journey the titular assassin has been on so far. When we first met Barry, he killed his marks without a second thought, did whatever his handler Fuches (Stephen Root) told him, and had a passing curiosity in acting classes. When we last saw him, in Season 3, he was doing his very best to get out of the murdering game, rebelling against Fuches, and delivering impassioned monologues, but struggling to keep his two lives separate.
It’s not just Barry that’s come a long way – so too has creator and star Hader. A wildly successful comic and actor, he’s increasingly stepped behind the camera through the years working on the show, pulling off some of Barry’s most ambitious and cinematic instalments so far. Now, for the fourth and final season, he’s directing every single episode – something he’s had his telescopic sights set on for a while. “This was a big thing that happened with me making this show: I finally got a chance to direct, which was something I’ve always wanted to do,” he tells Empire, in a major new interview featured in our Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 3 issue. “Acting was the thing I liked, but writing and directing was where my heart was.”
With multiple episodes in previous seasons under his belt, and now the entire fourth run of episodes, Hader feels like he’s getting to the stage where he’s not second-guessing himself quite so much when it comes to directing. “I feel much more confident in my abilities, but I’m still learning,” he tells Empire. “It’s the same thing with acting, where over time it becomes more intuitive. You’re taking risks and that’s where good stuff comes from and also bad stuff comes from and you learn from it. It was the same as when I was doing SNL. My experience has always been that you start out unsure of yourself. It’s like cooking. You’re constantly reading the instructions on how to cook something. Then over time you get more confident, and you don’t need the instructions anymore. You think, ‘I’m going to put some of this in here and see what happens.’” The result so far is one of the most darkly delicious dramedies in recent telly history. We can’t wait to see what Hader’s whipped up next.
Read Empire’s major new Bill Hader interview in full in the upcoming June 2023 issue, on sale Thursday 13 April. Become an Empire member now to access the digital issue in full, or order a print copy online here. Barry arrives on Sky Comedy and NOW from 17 April.