Endless Thread - Bill Hader Talks 'Barry,' Reddit And Why He's So Popular Online

Episode Date: March 22, 2018

Funnyman Bill Hader has a new show, "Barry," about a depressed hitman who heads to Los Angeles for a job, and ends up taking acting classes. He talks about his career as a comedian and how his stage fright helped inspire the world behind "Barry."

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Produced by the I-Lab at WBUR, Boston. Greetings, Amory. Salutation, Ben. You know how sometimes I do the tweets on the Twitters from our account, and I say things like, this episode has everything, and then I go through the list of the crazy things in this episode. Oh, yeah, your Stefan tweets. Yeah, my Stefan tweets.

The Bill Hater character on SNL, Stefan, one of my all-time favorites where he plays like a club kid giving terrible nightlife tips to tourists. I have the perfect spot. New York's hottest club is boof. Located in abandoned orphanage on the lower, lower east side of Chelsea, this round-the-clock puke party is the creation of narcoleptic club owner snoozing lucci. And this place has everything. Pugs, geysers, doo-wop groups,

a wise old turtle that looks. Looks like Quincy Jones. So good. So good. And Bill Hater is actually kind of big on Reddit. Yeah. He's one of these people who, for one reason or another, has just totally won the hearts and minds of the Internet.

We should all be so lucky. Now, maybe it's because he was on Saturday Night Live for almost 10 years. Or because he can pull impressions out of a hat. Open up the door. There's a bombing there. Or maybe it's because he played the leading man in the Amy Schumer. movie Train Wreck. Do you like me?

Yeah. Yeah, see, I really like you. So we should be a couple. Maybe it's because he's just really versatile. Hello again. It's me, Julina Assange. I'm out. Part of Hader's genius is also his physicality.

He's sort of gangly. He's got these big, expressive, almost spooky eyes. And he really inhabits every character he plays. You ever heard that song, Spooky Eyes? No. No, but seriously, gangling, big-eyed weirdo who can be real odd and do impressions equals popular on the internet. Even though he's not on the internet all that much. I actually had to tell Bill Hater he's big on Reddit. No, I did not know this. I rarely kind of go on the internet just in general. It's okay, Bill Hater. We forgive you, man.

Yep, and despite the soul-crushing fact that Bill doesn't go on the internet that much, I talked to him after the premier party of his new HBO show, Barry, which comes out this week. But you also talked about a bunch of stuff we found out about Bill Hater on Reddit, starting with some of the random facts from the Today I Learned community. I did. Like, today I learned Bill Hater is related to Charlemagne? That's true. That is true. I found that out while I was on the show, Finding Your Roots.

Henry Lewis Gates, Jr., told me that. And I was terrible at history, so I said, Who's Charlemagne. And he said he basically, father of modern Europe. And I was like, oh, right on. I also heard from today, I learned that you worked in a movie theater in college

and you were fired for telling rude customers how Titanic ended. Yes, yes. It was a sorority. A sorority had rented out the theater to watch the movie Titanic. And they were being rude. to me and they were making fun of what I was wearing.

What were you wearing? I was wearing a cumberbun and a bowtie because I worked at a movie theater and that's what we had to wear. It wasn't, I didn't choose to wear that. That was what the uniform was. But I had really long hair at the time in a beard. Uh-huh. And they were just making fun of me.

And so I gave away the ending of Titanic where he said, enjoy the movie. Leo dies at the end. The boat sinks. and they go, Leo doesn't die. And I said, yeah, no, it's great. You think he's sleeping, but he's frozen. How did they react? They booed me.

And then the manager came over kind of laughing and said, I have to fire you, but he was laughing the whole time. I also learned from today I learned that you are allergic to peanuts and yet still are somehow the voice of Mr. Peanut and Tranter's commercial. That is true. At planters, we're all about great taste, and we thoroughly test all our nuts for superior

craveability. Hey, Richard, check out this fresh-brusted flavor. I auditioned for it. You know, I think they listened to a bunch of people, and I got it. And then it wasn't until we were, you know, making the deal that it was, he said, you know. It was clear you couldn't cash in on your lifetime supply of peanuts. He's allergic to the thing that he's playing, and they were like, oh, that's fine. I'm going to be totally honest.

I'm a little hungover right now. The show premiered last night, and this is the first interview, and I'm trying to just make sure that I make sense. The deep Bill Hader voice is a little bit deeper than usual. Yeah, it is because I've been, I just got bodies. I don't drink. That is another thing about Bill today I learned.

I don't really drink except when his show premieres. I don't really drink. And then last night, people just kept giving me beers, and I was like, okay, yeah, why not? By the way, this is like four beers. So, Ben, in the spirit of drinking, let's raise a glass to Bill Hater's Hangover and call this episode Drinking the Haterade. Glug, Gluck, Gluck, Gluck, Gluck, Gluck. But we don't really hate him. He's great.

True fact. I'm Ben Brock Johnson, and this is Endless Thread, a show featuring stories found in the vast ecosystem of online communities, called Reddit. I am here this week with producer Amory Severson, and we are coming to you from WBUR, Boston's NPR station. Today we are talking to Bill Hater, who has inspired many Redditors. They draw him, they make Stefan jokes all the time in the comments. And the more Bill Hater you consume, the more you get why he's so well loved on Reddit. The internet loves someone who is willing to celebrate their strangeness. I'll have what she's having. Hater has a new show on HBO called Barry that hits.

the weird and funny bar. It's all about this guy who is a veteran, he's depressed, and he is making money by assassinating bad guys. Or so he thinks. Hater and his collaborator on the show, Alec Berg, who made that other show, Silicon Valley, struggled to come up with an idea for the new show. Eventually, they landed on something.

Bill went to HBO and said, It's me as a hitman, but me. Yeah, exactly. Meaning I'm not a badass. You're not? Not really as a person, not really. I mean, in the show, he has to kill people and these things, but he's also kind of lost.

He's a new soul. He's just kind of, he hasn't ventured out of his cave, you know, and now he wants to experience life. Yeah, when I got back from Afghanistan, I was really depressed. You know, I didn't leave my house for months. And this friend of my dad's, he's like an uncle to me. He helped me out and he gave me a purpose. He told me that what I was good out of were there

could be useful here. And it's a job. You know, the money's good. And these people I take out, like, they're bad people. You know, like they're pieces of shit. But lately, you know, I've... I'm not sleeping and depressed feelings back, you know? Like, I know there's more to me than that.

I read that this show is inspired a little bit by the stage fright and anxiety you experienced during your time on SNL. And I think that's interesting because I don't think anyone would ever know watching that show that you had stage fright. You hit it really well. Yeah, no, it was bad. It's more what's called anticipatory anxiety. It's the lead up to a thing. And then the actual stage fright, I would kind of get over as time went on. But I do get very anxious in front of a large group of people, which is ironic.

That's why I've never really done like stand-up or anything like that. I think hiding it made it worse. So I would just start saying it. And I would just go, I'm really nervous right now. You know, if you watch the first time I host Saturday Night Live, the first thing I say is, Whoa, I am so nervous. That is not a joke, I am so nervous.

I love you. And it got to laugh, but it was me basically just saying it. So it wasn't like, you know, you're swallowing something and just holding it down. You just go, yep, this is how I feel right now. And instead of pushing it away, I'm going to kind of put my arm around it and go, okay, there you are. let's go.

Yeah. What are some of the other tricks that you've used? Well, I meditate. I do Transcendental Meditation. Another thing was I'm not the best at reading the cue cards. And so it was this real fear that I was going to get it wrong, that I was going to slip up somehow. So I would purposely, my first line, I would change a little bit.

just in the moment. So if my first line was, hello, ladies and gentlemen, I would say, ladies and gentlemen, how are we doing? Or something like that. And that in my mind would go,

okay, you screwed up. And I would relax. Are there any parallels with the new show, either in how you approach the show just as an actor or what we get to see in the show as viewers to some of these feelings

that you've had for SNL, for instance? Well, you know, the character isn't really anxious. It was more that that came from the idea of the thing that you're good at is destroying you. You know, it's kind of I talked to Alec Berg, the co-creator of the show, you know, about the feeling of I have this ability to do voices. I'm Clark and I like biscuits and waffles. We didn't know any better. We were kids.

I watched myself pick up the flame thrower And I just went off Yeah, I got shefaka, my wallet Yeah, right You know, I just kind of go Oh yeah, that's a thing I could do, you know? It's my eldest daughter can draw really well And I'm so amazed by it

And she goes, you know, well, whatever, you know, Don't you want to take art classes? She's like, why? I can already do it, you know? No, but my thing was voices, but the irony was that you got the show, if you could do voices, the show is Saturday Night Live, you know, and that's the peak of that. And I got it, and then the irony that I had this anxiety, that it was kind of making me sick, you know.

And so instead of doing a show about a guy, you know, making it super biographical, it was just taking it. that emotion and making it more of a kind of funny crime story, which I'm more interested in. I am also more interested in funny crime stories, Amory. Yeah, and we're going to hear more about what makes the show Barry funny, including members of the Chechen mob. More Bill Hader and a taste of the Chechen mob in a minute. At Radio Lab, we love nothing more than nerding out about science, neuroscience, chemistry.

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Recruit new talent. Reach new audiences. Whatever your goal, we can help. Discover how the magic is made at WBUR.org slash creative studio. One of the great things about Bill Hader's new show is that the main character, Barry, gets tangled up with Chechen gangsters. And what's great about them is that they are, funny. But not just like, oh, look at these silly mafia guys funny. Like the characters have depth.

They're real people who happen to be trying to hire Barry and then kill him and then hire him again. You know, buddy, I have to be honest. I'm quite a bit angry. But I'm going to put that aside for now because rage is counterproductive, yes? And I know if the situation were reversed, I probably would have done the same thing you did. You did do what I did. You tried to kill me. Okay, well, now we're getting what he said she said. I asked Bill how he thought about adding depth to the bad guys. It's interesting you say that because some people have interviewed me to say, why are the bad, why did you make the bad guys funny?

I don't think they should have been funny. It's an interesting thing that a lot of people want that archetype. Well, this is the good person, this is the bad person. And I just see them as all just people. That's not really true to life, right? Yeah, it's not true to life. I mean, that's the whole thing with Barry is he goes, well, I only kill bad guys.

And I think the show is trying to point out that that's nonsense. Everybody just has their own issues that they're dealing with. And all these people are, all the characters, if they have something common, is they're all trying to better themselves. They're all trying to figure themselves out. You know how you and I talk all the time about my purpose? You think acting could be your purpose? I don't know.

I just feel really motivated, right? now or something. It made me feel really good. Okay, but what about what we do together? Very. Well, you know, they told me a very small percentage of actors actually make a living acting, you know, most of them have day jobs. So I just figured, you know, I do night hits or something.

Hater is about to turn 40, and he says this show is in part about wanting to talk about his own life experience. When you're young and you're into comedy, you kind of just like really silly stuff or really mean stuff or you know, whatever it is. And then

you get older and real life happens to you or happens to your friends, you just start to realize how complicated life is and you want to see that, you know, and you do have empathy for people and you start to, you take a couple of hard knocks in life and then a thing that you would normally make fun of, you now have sympathy for her. Barry is also the first project where haters had the opportunity to direct, which he says was an intense learning curve. That's the weird thing is you have to actually direct it,

cut it together, and go, oh, I see what I did wrong. Right. You're making it and trying to improve it at the same time. Well, you make it,

and then you have to go back and say, you can't go, oh, I see what we should have done. Can we go back and reshoot the whole? That's why all those Pixar movies

and those animated movies are so good because they can do the whole movie and storyboards with dialogue. It's called story reels where you watched a movie all with just storyboards

with music and the whole thing and they show it to people and they tear it apart and so they redo it again and they tear it apart and they do it again and so after five years you've got inside out and you played the fear character

in that movie right? Yeah and I helped ride on it a bit so I got to watch that process and I thought wow that's so cool What was that? Was it a bear? It's a bear.

You know bears in San Francisco. I saw a really hairy guy. He looked like a bear. Oh, I'm so jumpy. My nerves are shot. Ew, I don't want to hear about your nerves. I'll tell you what it is. This move has been a bus.

That's what I've been telling you guys. There are at least 37 things for Riley to be scared of right now. Knowing what we now know of his anxiety, it makes perfect sense that this guy would voice the emotion fear in that movie. Although I got to say, Ben, my personal favorite voiceover gig that Bill has done recently was Star Wars. of course. Bill was a voice consultant for the universe's most adorable droid BB8, which is hilarious because...

When we spoke to him, Hater was preparing to do something a little more front and center than beeps and boops. He was about to host SNL again. And I wanted to know if Stefan would make an appearance. Well, we'll see. I don't know. It depends if, you know, John Mullaney writes those. And he messes with you with the Q. Cue cards, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. He put stuff on the Q cards I haven't seemed to throw me off.

That seems like a dicey situation, but you seem to hold it together relatively well. Not really. Not really. I'm laughing the whole time. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. If you're ordinary and you love seizure-inducing Malaysian music, I've just a place for you. New York's hottest club is,

Stand clear of the closing doors, please. Emery, why do you think Reddit loves Bill Hader as much as we do? I think it's because he's like absurd and familiar. Like he can be sincere, but he can also be just totally ridiculous. Like this impression of Donald Duck having a nightmare, which a lot of people mentioned on Reddit. That is awesome, but I can do that. Oh, oh, you can.

And well, you've got to prove it. Okay, our next episode is just that. Just been doing that. Okay, don't tempt me, Emery. Don't tempt me. Endless Thread is a production of WBUR, Boston's NPR station, in partnership with Reddit. Our show is a dream realized by Jessica Alpert, who, when we ask if she likes the episode we put together, she sometimes says, W-TF.

Iris Adler is our executive producer and she makes sure our stories meet the bar of mildly interesting. Mix and sound design by John Parati and Paul Vicus, who, whenever we go into the field to record, remind us that Nature is lit. Our web producer is Megan Kelly, who looks at our attempts at writing web copy and goes, Aw. Our intern is Chris Yulian, who, when we put him on a task, he politely says, Hold my dear.

Michael Pope is our advisor at Reddit, and every time we try to have a conversation with him that's serious, he always responds. You, I'm a toddler. Our theme music is by Squelcher. Thanks to Redditor Peachy 901 for our artwork this week, titled Hater. Peachy's Instagram, if you want to check it out, is O-Death Creative. We are also on Reddit. Endless underscore Thread is our username. And Redditors, if you want to make art for an upcoming episode or give us a story tip, you can hit us up there.

You should know our show is produced by Josh Swartz and Endless Threads, Amory Severson. I'm senior producer and host Ben Brock Johnson. I'll let myself out. I can't quite do it.