This post contains spoilers about the series finale of Barry.
From the moment he stepped into Gene Cousineau’s acting class for the first time, Bill Hader’s Barry Berkman looked up to Henry Winkler’s self-involved teacher as a kind of father figure—a man with a method, helping him get in touch with his emotions, or maybe just find a safer place to put them. But that dynamic was never quite reciprocated. Over Barry’s four seasons, our deeply damaged hitman turned performer steadily, somewhat inadvertently ruined his mentor’s life: killing Gene’s girlfriend, effectively ending his class, and eventually sending him into exile. Following an audacious time jump and another plot to frame Gene for the death of his lover, it’s no wonder that when put in the same room with Barry again, Gene decided to shoot his former student dead, then and there.
In the scene, Barry only has time for two short words as he realizes what’s about to happen: “Oh, wow.” That’s more than Winkler could muster when Hader, who also cocreated the show and directed the final season, rather matter-of-factly pitched the idea to his costar. “I was speechless,” Winkler tells Vanity Fair. “I just made sounds.” Gene goes on to serve a lifetime prison sentence—not that we see this fate play out for ourselves. It’s revealed in the parodic film that fills Barry’s final scenes, recreating the events of Barry through a bizarro Hollywood lens. As to how Winkler is feeling about it all? We get into it.
Vanity Fair: Barry is officially finished. How are you feeling?
Henry Winkler: I’m now just sad. We finished in early December; we had some re-shoots. We’ve had the premiere party. Then I don’t see anybody anymore. Sarah is in England. Stephen is off shooting something. Everybody is everywhere. And I am sad.
Let’s get into this finale. What was your initial reaction, particularly to Gene’s ending?
Oh my God. So, halfway through the season, Bill said, “I think we finally broke the eighth episode, the end. You want to know how it ends?” And I went, “Sure.” And he said, “You shoot me.” [Pause] I’m a pretty verbal guy. I was speechless. I just made sounds. I didn’t even know how to react to that. I shoot you. Wow. Okay, that’s—okay. I went and had a burrito. And then we got there and we did it.
What did you make of Gene killing him? How did you play it?
That was scary. The moment really started when I was lured into the hotel room at the end of [episode] seven, and then they’re blaming me for everything. How did that happen? Then I had nowhere to turn, and I think at that moment I went insane. I literally—the switch flipped and led me to the point of no return.
Compare that to season one. Is there some reflection for you in the performance and just in the experience of making the show, of what Gene has been through? Of how this relationship between him and Barry led to this incredibly violent end?
You think about that first year, the teaching and buffoonery and charlatan, and how that led to this ending of the entire show—I never in my wildest actor’s imagination would have come up to this, would have figured that this was going to happen, no matter what this man put me through.
What was it like to actually film it? How did you block it out with Bill? How many takes did you do?
We did two takes. The first take I remember, I shot him in the shoulder. He sat down in the chair, he flopped down in the chair, and he said, “You don’t have to do this, Mr. Cousineau.” And I shot him twice. But then in the final, he just went, “Oh, wow.” It was like he was in disbelief. You could hear a pin drop [on set]. Our armorer and our prop people were extraordinary in how careful they were when we handled a gun on that set. That was my experience. And it still was so scary to think of holding a gun on this human being—my character who hates this character who loves me, who looks at me as his father figure. It is so complicated that I had no idea what I was doing.
You’ve had quite a long, distinguished career. Have you ever had to do something like that before on camera?
Do you know? Not that I can think of. I’ve handled a gun before, when I did a show called Numb3rs. I had to go to a shooting range. I had an FBI tech telling me how to hold the gun. But I never was in a situation that was so fraught that I literally took a human being’s life.
Did the transformation that came with the time jump help you get into that space?
The physicality for Gene was a costume. We stopped filming Gene [for awhile]. I grew a beard. I took a picture of the beard every week. I sent it to [production manager] Aida Rodgers and Bill. They said, “Keep growing. Nope, keep growing.” And then finally, it was long enough, they called me and we started filming again. And I had been on a kibbutz where I was helping people build their homes. I was learning to be a better human being. The only thing is, what they didn’t show you was that the homes fell down.
David Canfield
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