SPOILER ALERT: This video discusses the ending of HBO’s “Barry,” now streaming on Max.
Beloved “Barry” breakout Noho Hank, played by the delightful Anthony Carrigan, originally had a slightly different ending on the series that intertwined his final moments with co-star Sarah Goldberg. However, series co-creator and star Bill Hader, realized this was a “massive mistake.”
Hader, Carrigan, Stephen Root (who played Monroe Fuches), executive producer Aida Rodgers, assistant director Gavin Kleintop, cinematographer Carl Herse and stunt coordinator Wade Allen joined Variety’s “Making a Scene,” presented by HBO, to breakdown the epic standoff between Hank and Fuches in the series finale.
“I initially made a massive mistake in his death,” Hader told Variety. “I thought Sally and NoHo Hank meeting was this really big moment in the show,” Hader explained, but not without pausing several times to laugh at his own process. “It’s embarrassing even talking about it.” Earlier in the series finale, Hank and Sally (Goldberg) shared a much longer moment of connection over Barry. “You see that they kind of have this common bond, which is that they both love Barry and they’ve both been wronged by Barry. I thought, ‘Oh, they would connect,’” Hader said.
That connection would later resurface as Hank dies at the feet of his immortalized lover, a golden statue of Cristobal (Michael Irby.) “So he’s up against the statue and he is reaching up to Cristobal and then it was a close up of his hand. And then you saw Sally’s hand come into frame and she puts his hand into Cristobal’s hand and he looks up at her and Sally kind of looks at him and they have this kind of moment where she’s like, ‘We get each other.’ And then she walks away and he’s at peace and that’s how he dies.”
Immediately, Goldberg questioned this scene, why would she sympathize with a mobster who held her son hostage? “I had no answer,” Hader said. “I realized later the answers were fan service. I got insecure and I was like, ‘Oh, the fans will love this.’ Two, I was insecure and enough people had told me, ‘The show has gotten so bleak’ that I was like, ‘Oh, it should have a nice hopeful moment.’”
Hader eventually reshot the whole thing, laughingly revealing that his editors actually refused to edit his original vision together.
Carrigan was excited to re-shoot his character’s death. “One of the biggest things for actors is once you do something, especially on the drive home, you’re like, ‘Oh, I should have done it that way. Oh, wow. Yep. I should have… You know what? I should have used my left hand because…’ I really felt this relief that I was going to be able to do it again and focus on different things.”
Most importantly, this new death scene would show the repercussions of Hank’s actions this season, and omit him from getting a tidy (despite bloody) happy ending. “Hank kind of sees where he went wrong and sees just how everything has come to a head,” Carrigan said. “I think what was really beautiful about the second time we shot it is that it just felt like the stakes were much higher and it felt more in keeping with the show.” Hader agreed sitting Carrigan’s choices in the moment to recreate Barry’s own death and the void of nothingness that consumed them as a perfect decision for Hank’s end.
Also worth noting was that the second take went full circle for Hank. Carrigan had to shoot his final moments not clutching the metallic hand of his murdered lover, Cristobal, but Hader’s hand, who stood just slightly off camera to help with his eyeline. “That was just really, really meaningful and really kind of beautiful just to feel someone’s hand,” Carrigan said. “It was really special too because it was just the last day, and I appreciate Bill so much, and yeah, it was just a real beautiful moment of connection.”
Watch the full conversation about the entire scene above, including the difficulty of pulling off this elaborate stunt, what the significance of Barry’s son meant to Fuches and how the “Wizard of Oz” appeared in the final moments of Hank and Cristobal’s sad love story.
