The ‘Barry’ Ensemble Slays

Photo Source: Courtesy HBO

As we prepare for the 30th Screen Actors Guild Awards, Backstage is breaking down this year’s film and television ensemble work for your consideration. For more voting guides and roundups, we’ve got you covered here.

Main Cast: Anthony Carrigan, Sarah Goldberg, Bill Hader, Stephen Root, Henry Winkler
Casting by: Sharon Bialy, Sherry Thomas, and Stacia Kimler
Created by: Alec Berg and Bill Hader 
Distributed by: HBO

Alec Berg and Bill Hader’s dark comedy is a crime thriller reflected in a funhouse mirror. It’s brutal and hard-boiled one moment and giggling at its surreal premise the next. On the final installment of the series’ four-season run, the actors bring their considerable talents to a story that feels downright biblical—literally so, in the case of Hader’s title character.

The show has always centered on the inner contradictions of Barry Berkman, a hitman who sets out to reinvent himself as an actor. Throughout the series, he’s always been one last kill away from a normal life. Season 4 jumps ahead in time to when Barry, his girlfriend, Sally Reed (Sarah Goldberg), and their young son, John (Zachary Golinger), are on the lam, living under fake names in a bleak town in the middle of nowhere. 

Hader approaches his assumed identity as the ultimate Method role, playing “Clark” as a pious, clean-living Ned Flanders type. Within the walls of his nondescript house, he barely conceals the act, scrunching up his face as he moralizes. It confirms something we’ve always known about Barry: He’s a genius at making the easy way out impossibly difficult. So it’s all the more satisfying when, after his past finally catches up with him, he rips off the mask and straps two very large guns to his back. Hader fully externalizes his character’s internal conflict as he goes on the warpath.

Over its four seasons, “Barry” gave the former “SNL” star the opportunity to unleash the full force of his talents as performer. His skills are never on finer display than in the climactic standoff with his longtime acting teacher, Gene Cousineau (Henry Winkler). 

Hader’s elastic face cycles through at least five different emotions in the space of 10 seconds as he acknowledges his many mistakes; but it’s too little, too late. Prestige television series have classically been built around difficult men, and Barry is no exception. But the Emmy winner renders him as an antihero we can truly root for despite the terrible things he’s done.

Credit: Merrick Morton/HBO

But our protagonist isn’t the only one seeking a resolution on the final season. Sally is handed a real monkey’s paw when she joins Barry on the run and disguises herself as a diner waitress. Though it’s the role of a lifetime for the fame-hungry actor, the constant performing wears her down as time goes on. It all culminates in a dramatic breakdown as Sally holds John in her arms. Goldberg delivers the kind of transformational performance that would make Sally green with envy. 

Gene is another bystander who’s pulled under by Barry’s bloody riptide, and he spends the season grasping for justice in vain. Winkler has brilliantly crafted a character who’s so incapable of checking his ego that, tragically, he winds up getting the exact opposite of what he wants. On the penultimate episode, Gene abandons his yearslong vendetta against Barry so he can convince Mark Wahlberg to star in a film adaptation of their story. It’s one last self-inflicted humiliation for a character who could never see past his own narcissism.

In his last go-round, character actor extraordinaire Stephen Root transforms his criminal enforcer, Monroe Fuchs, into an avenging angel on a mission fueled by a lifetime of brutality and betrayal. Viewers have always found much-needed levity in Anthony Carrigan’s Chechen mobster NoHo Hank; but thanks to the years of blood on his hands, he comes to a tragic end that the actor conveys through the horror on his expressive face. 

The quest for redemption is an unlikely premise for a series that’s nominally a comedy, but “Barry” makes it work. And the actors who portrayed the show’s murderers, thespians, and murderous thespians deserve a standing ovation for pulling it off.