Barry’s final season, which touches on an ex-marine named Barry who kills for money and ends up taking acting classes to change his nature, is incoming. It’s the tour de force of the show’s writer, director, and main actor Bill Hader, and it clearly shows that he’s developing a style of dark comedy that’s executed really well. After all, its actors like Henry Winkler (who plays acting teach Gene Cousineau) and NoHo Hank (Anthony Carrigan) who help enrich the comedy to something more than your standard TV fare.

We talk to Bill Hader about the show’s final season, and why it’s going the direction it’s going, and how his earlier stint with Saturday Night Live help him in directing and writing. And also a thing or two about human nature.

What are the challenges in writing for a show like Barry? Were your expectations brought to life?

Bill Hader: Yes! Yeah, I think so.

The biggest thing to figure out when writing the script for Barry is that I have only 30 minutes to work with. It’s difficult to tell a story in that timeframe with a beginning, middle, and end. And then you want the whole season to have a beginning, middle, and end. It does have to be tightly structured, then throw it away, and then restructure it again. You’re trying to hone it down to this place where you can tell a story. And to be honest, it makes sense. You have so many ideas with all these many character directions, but it’s really hard to be honest and true to everything while making sure that the story is moving. It’s very difficult and hard to present it to the actors especially when a character is doing something I want them to, and it happens every season. But this season, since it’s the fourth, everyone was into it. It was good.

You don’t really know (those expectations) until you reach the edit room. You’re editing and you go “why did I write that? We don’t need that!” That happens all the time and it’s constantly reorganized. In fact, this morning [at the time of this interview -KKP] my editor was on the phone and said “this part in episode 7? We don’t need that part!” [The media] has already seen it, and so I’m still (does wavey gestures and laugh) thinking about it!

What do you think Season 4’s surreal moments add to the show as a whole, especially when it all stemmed from Season 2’s ronny/lily episode?

BH: The surreal elements are a way to get into the character’s heads a bit. The surprising elements of the show tend to come to us, structuring something very tightly.

In ronny/lily, you structure something like a story where Barry has to kill someone, and it goes wrong. How it goes wrong? Well, you start coming up with weird stuff, especially when it’s me where I get bored while writing the draft. I show it to the team and they like some parts, but hated some parts, and then we restructure everything. It’s a weird combination of structure and being intuitive about something.

How do you balance the humour and dark themes of Barry for the later seasons?

BH: I don’t know. It kinda… you write something in one way, and you tell the story. You tell it the way you want it; here’s an example. You see two people arguing at the grocery store, and you told your friend about it. You naturally add suspense and POV.

It starts that way where you’re telling a story, and then i tend to get bored and go “what if this funny thing happened?”. And then I present the idea and the writing team go: “Oh this is going too far” and we dial it back. And then we go “this is really funny but what was the original point of this thought?” And then we go back to it, and just go back and forth. We’re just trying to balance it out; it’s honestly an arcane process. I don’t know what I’d be without (the writing team).

What was going through your mind when creating Barry from start to finish, and do you really think people like him deserve a second chance?

BH: I think Barry came from this idea that I wanted to make a film. And it wasn’t even supposed to be a comedy. I didn’t think I could do comedy; I am a fan of comedy. It’s massive luck I ended up on Saturday Night Live, took that opportunity to do impressions and so forth. I had this natural ability to do that, but I really wanted to write and direct.

Barry really came out of that. I should also mention that I have a form of anxiety when I was at Saturday Night Live. It was really hard on my health and body. And so I was in a situation where the natural thing you’re good at is hurting you, and the thing you strive to do…you’re not good at it. That’s where it came from initially. The amazing thing is that when I’m doing the show, I learned how to direct and learn more. It’s been better than anything that I’ve ever experienced.

As for Barry, it boils down to one question: can you change your nature? That’s the kind of question that’s present in the show: the best thing when you’re writing is that you don’t have an answer. You get these characters and you send them off and see what they do.

That’s what’s so fascinating about it: their choices and their motivations.

Did you manage to wrap up the show the way you want it since 5 years ago with the final season?

BH: Doing Season 2, I had a general idea of how the show would end. But some of the other things, no. I don’t want to spoil Season 4’s mid-turn, but we want to write it like “this is one way our characters can try to change their nature”. So in some ways “yes” and in some ways “no”.

You’ve showed off that you can direct and write a show with great results. How was the journey getting there and where do you want to go next?

BH: So much of this was just me dealing with insecurities. There’s a thing that happens where you follow your instincts and it doesn’t work, and you then question your instincts. That can be really dangerous, and what you need in creating things is confidence. So it’s good to go back and ask “what didn’t work?” as objectively as you can.

For me, an example would be the pilot of Barry, which was more based on hitmen and movies. The initial pilot was Barry in the suit and tie, there was a picnic with hitmen, they hung out. It was more fictionalized. Casey Bloys at HBO said that the acting class part worked, but the hitmen and picnic fantasy didn’t because it was cartoonish. That point, I realize I was going off on movies and had to figure out how to ground this. In the pitch meeting, I brought up “what if Barry was a marine?” and everyone said that made more sense. I also had to make it something that everyone can connect to, and then come from that.

Learning little things like that along the way was helpful. In Season 4, I felt that a kind of style of emerging for filmmaking and directing, and I felt more confident.

Where do I want to go next? After the show ends, I just want to sleep. And I haven’t had a vacation in 12 years, as I figured out yesterday. And maybe write some scripts for movies. Or maybe write a TV show. But I love stories.

Barry’s final season will air this 16 April on HBO and HBO Go.