Bill Hader had left Saturday Night Live after eight incredibly successful seasons, moved to Los Angeles to pursue more film and television work, and found himself with a dilemma. “I got this development deal at HBO,” he tells Mike Hogan on this weeks episode of Little Gold Men. He had weekly meetings at a coffee shop with his friend, Silicon Valley show-runner Alec Berg, because “Man, they gave me money to come up with a show, I gotta come up with a show.” Out of frustration one day he suggested to Berg, “What if I was a hitman?” Berg responded, “I hate hitmen, the skinny ties and the two guns and slow motion and all that bullshit.”
“I said, No no, itll be me,“ Hader continued. “And he went, Oh, thats funny.”
And that was the beginning of Barry, the dark HBO comedy series that just wrapped its first season, with Hader in the title role as a hitman who catches the acting bug while in the middle of a job in Los Angeles. As the shows creator and director of the first three episodes, Hader is a dominant creative voice on the series, revealing not just a more dramatic side than his S.N.L. tenure allowed, but a skill with filmmaking style, up to and including a very large Yojimbo reference.
On this weeks Little Gold Men podcast Hader talks about Barrys origins, and the inspiration he took from his own years of struggling as an actor in L.A., as well as a wide range of other topics: how hard it is to pretend to be a bad actor, what he doesnt miss about starring on Saturday Night Live, and what Ellen Burstyn did one year at the Emmys that was “the awards equivalent of walking away from an explosion in slow motion.”
Also on this weeks podcast, Richard Lawson, Katey Rich, Joanna Robinson, and Sonia Saraiya reveal their hopes for the Emmy nominations, which will be announced on July 12. Favorites include the cast of GLOW, some key supporting players on Westworld, underrated network gems like Good Girls and The Good Place, and maybe, just maybe, some love for Killing Eve.
Take a listen to the episode above, and find Little Gold Men on Apple Podcasts, where you can leave a rating and a review.
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