Bill Hader talks about how Barry season 3 was changed to set up season 4. The HBO dark comedy series follows Hader as the titular Barry Berkman, a depressed marine turned hitman from Cleveland who travels to Los Angeles for a job and incidentally falls into the city's theater scene through an acting class taught by Gene Cousineau (Henry Winkler), where he meets an aspiring actress named Sally Reed (Sarah Goldberg). After being inspired to pursue a career in acting, Barry struggles to cut ties with his criminal associates, Monroe Fuches (Stephen Root) and NoHo Hank (Anthony Carrigan).
Since its premiere in 2018, Barry has managed to transcend its original basic premise and morph into something much greater, garnering a total of 30 Primetime Emmy Award nominations in the process. The shocking season 2 finale left viewers immediately wanting more and the wait has been especially long due to the COVID-19 pandemic, though this has come with a silver lining. The various production shutdowns over the past year have given Barry's writer's room plenty of time to work on seasons 3 and 4.
Now, in an interview with Collider promoting The Addams Family 2, Hader discussed how they tweaked Barry's season 3 scripts to provide better setup for the fourth season. The Barry actor previously revealed that they finished writing all of season 4 (even though HBO hasn't officially renewed the series) with the additional time awarded to them due to the pandemic. Since they completed those scripts before they even starting shooting season 3, they were able to go back and overhaul the upcoming season to better reflect what happens much later on down the line. Read Hader's explanation below:
We mapped out Season 4 and then went back and started laying stuff in Season 3 that could be in Season 4 and it was really helpful. It was kind of like a great way of, I mean Season 3, we end up kind of fully overhauling a lot of elements of it because we had written four. So it was good.
During the interview, Hader also provided a production update on Barry season 3, revealing they only have one month left of filming. This indicates Barry will likely return to HBO sometime early next year. Hader also revealed that he directed five episodes for the forthcoming season, while co-creator Alec Berg handled the other three. After the season 2 finale changed the landscape of the series, Hader teased some shocking stuff is in store for season 3 as well.
It's certainly a unique situation that the show's writers were able to go back and retroactively change the previous season's story to provide better setup for the next one, though this is just one of many ways in which the pandemic has affected the television and film industry. Whether or not it drastically improves the quality of the show remains to be seen, although considering Barry's track record of great writing, it likely will.
Source: Collider