Much of Wong’s stand-up comedy material in her hit specials Baby Cobra, Hard Knock Wife, Don Wong, and Single Lady, has dealt with her experiences as a wife—then divorcée—and mother. She is mother to daughters Mari, 10, and Nikki, 8 with ex-husband Justin Hakuta They announced their plans to divorce after eight years of marriage in 2022, and Wong described their current relationship status as “best friends” and their divorce as “unconventional.” At the 2024 Golden Globes, after collecting a congratulatory kiss from Hader on her way up to the stage, Wong thanked Hakuta by name from the podium.
Hader has three daughters, whom he shares with ex-wife Maggie Carey. Hader and Carey announced their divorce in March 2018.
In Single Lady, which premiered on Netflix in October 2024 after being filmed at her stand-up tour of the same name, Wong described how a man—revealed to be Hader later in the set—had wooed and pursued her, leading to her ultimately shedding that single lady status.
In the special, she recalled Hader’s initial approach, recounting Hader saying, “Hey, Ali. I just happened to hear the news of your divorce today, and I gotta tell you…I’m excited. I am, Ali, because, look, I have had a crush on you forever, and I actually told my best friend years ago that you were my dream girl. And I know this sounds crazy, but, uh, I want you to be my girlfriend.”
Some time, many escalatingly large bouquets, and a sprinkling of debate over whether Hader’s persistence and attention made him sweet (her female friends’ take) or a psychopath (the male opinion, she said), she succumbed to his charms.
“I did fall in love again,” she shared at the end of her set. “Some of you might know who the guy is. And it just so happens to be the man who sent me all of those flowers in Europe.”
As the clock crossed midnight on Labor Day, the tide at this year’s Telluride Film Festival started to turn against Frankenstein. After Guillermo del Toro’s lavish adaptation of the Mary Shelley novel had launched in Venice days earlier to strong if not effusive reviews, star Oscar Isaac hopped on a plane to introduce the film’s secret, ultimately unfortunate North American debut at a late-night screening in the Colorado Rockies. I’ve been to screenings in Telluride like this before, where you can hear the restlessness in the room, feel the sense that it’s not playing as the filmmakers surely hope. My colleague Scott Feinberg wrote that the U.S. premiere “engendered a more muted response,” questioning its viability as an awards contender. Most coming out of that screening felt the same way.
Three months later, Frankenstein has re-emerged as a heavyweight, consistently racking up nominations totals in the same league as front-runners One Battle After Another, Sinners and Hamnet. (It’s up for best picture, directing, and acting at the Golden Globes and Critics Choice Awards.) A best picture nomination suddenly seems assured, and Jacob Elordi is a strong supporting actor contender. While Kathryn Bigelow’s A House of Dynamite played better in Venice, and Noah Baumbach’s Jay Kelly surged in Telluride, there’s no denying that del Toro’s film has secured the top spot among Netflix’s typically busy slate.
The robust response from audiences continues to fuel the momentum. Immediately after Telluride, Frankenstein was the runner-up for the Toronto International Film Festival’s crucial People’s Choice Award; it now has a 94 percent verified audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, among the best of any player in the field. Del Toro has been reposting fan art and testimonials of folks who’ve seen the movie over and over. “Because I’m Mexican, I have what I call the immigration test. When I go through immigration, if they say, ‘What are you working on?’ I say, ‘Oh, the movie’s not going to land,’” del Toro tells me. “But if they say, ‘Oh, I can’t wait to see Frankenstein’ — which is what started to happen — I go, ‘Oh, it’s happening!’”
Guillermo del Toro and Oscar Isaac on the set of ‘Frankenstein’
Ken Woroner/Netflix
The film ranks within the Netflix platform’s top five most-viewed films of the year (within their first five weeks of release) and has been a quiet theatrical success. That latter point is key, since Netflix’s contenders rarely drum up much box-office noise in their qualifying runs — a point that’s been magnified in the conversation around Warner Bros.’ potential sale to the company (which is pending regulatory approval and the fending off of Paramount’s hostile-takeover bid). Indeed, while Netflix does not release box-office data — hence the “quiet” descriptor — Frankenstein has sold out just under 1,000 theaters globally, per sources familiar.
Two months out from its October release, it continues to play in theaters in Los Angeles, New York, Miami, Philadelphia, and more cities around the country. “What is insane for me is the way the audience has reacted. I’ve never in 30 years had this reaction. It’s a massive tidal wave of affection,” del Toro says. “I’ve been getting public and private communications from filmmakers I absolutely adore and worship, that talk about the movie with admiration or with great pride.”
In conversations with voters and peers, speaking anecdotally, few filmmakers are brought up as often as del Toro. They’ve felt his support for their own careers. His chants of “fuck AI” at major industry screenings elicit regular cheers, and have become a refrain for like-minded filmmakers such as Rian Johnson. And it’s widely known that Frankenstein is the film that del Toro has long been working towards.
“Since I’ve known you — and that has been awhile — you’ve always talked about, at some point, doing a Frankenstein,” del Toro’s longtime buddy Alfonso Cuarón told him at a recent industry screening. “Your awareness of Frankenstein and cinema go hand in hand.” Meanwhile, Margot Robbie said at a separate event, “I feel like, Guillermo, this is your magnum opus — this is the movie you were born to make.”
Celebrity moderators of post-screening panels for guilds and Academy members are now a staple of any all-out Oscar campaign, but this season, there’s no equivalent for who’s come out for del Toro. Among them, in addition to Robbie and Cuarón: Bill Hader, Jon Favreau, Jason Reitman, Ava DuVernay, Bradley Cooper, Celine Song, Emerald Fennell and Hideo Kojima. Above, you can watch Martin Scorsese emceeing a larger discussion for the film. “It’s a remarkable work, and it stays with you,” he said to the audience. “I dreamed of it.”
Del Toro has already won an Oscar for a Netflix film, with his dark stop-motion take on Pinocchio from 2022 taking home the best animated feature trophy. He’s also a recent best picture and best director winner for 2017’s The Shape of Water. But the Academy’s growing affection for the Guadalajara native arguably became most obvious a few years back, when his divisive and less-seen noir remake Nightmare Alley still eked out a best-picture nod.
Just how far del Toro can run with Frankenstein remains to be seen — the film remains on the bubble for both writing and directing nominations — but his genuine enthusiasm for simply promoting and speaking about it continues to work wonders for the campaign. Even if it’s simply del Toro’s way of coping with having completed his life’s work. “In the middle of the shoot, and then in releasing the movie, I realized that I was entering the most massive postpartum depression,” del Toro admits. “It feels overwhelming, and it leaves you without a horizon.” Fortunately, this creature isn’t just alive, but growing by the day.
Zach Cregger was far from home throughout Weapons’ storybook run this past summer. The writer-director was 6,000 miles away in Prague, prepping his next film, Resident Evil, which found itself in a hard-fought bidding war just like Weapons did in 2023. When the dust settled on New Line/Warners’ $38 million purchase of the latter, the betterment of its highly in-demand script was only just beginning.
A reference to a tray of hot dogs and assorted junk food became a tray of seven hot dogs, which served as a touching, esoteric tribute to Cregger’s late dear friend and longtime The Whitest Kids U’ Know collaborator, Trevor Moore. The mere act of writing Weapons began as a way for Cregger to process Moore’s August 2021 death.
Other improvements were made such as a scene in which Josh Brolin’s Archer takes ownership of his grief-stricken blunders at one of his company’s construction sites. Originally, the script had him lash out at his foreman for mistakes made by their crew. Character names were also changed so there weren’t at least four people with capital-A first names.
But perhaps the most consequential revisions happened during Alex Lilly’s (Cary Christopher) chapter of the nonlinear narrative. The young boy was the only third grader in Justine Gandy’s (Julia Garner) class to not run away from home in the wee hours of the morning before a school day, and it’s eventually revealed that he contributed to the disappearance of his 17 fellow classmates. But this wasn’t always the case.
When Alex’s mysterious Great Aunt Gladys (Amy Madigan) comes to stay with him and his parents under the pretext of her deteriorating health, he returns home from school one day to find his parents in a catatonic state. Gladys is actually an ailing witch who cast a spell in order to drain them of their life force and reinvigorate herself in the process. However, Gladys’ recovery is short-lived. So she asks Alex to retrieve personal effects from his 17 classmates, and Alex, not realizing the full extent of Gladys’ forthcoming design, agrees to help based on her promise that she’ll leave him and his parents alone afterwards.
In early versions of the script, Alex actually played no part in Gladys’ second spell that brought the 17 schoolkids to his doorstep so that Gladys could try once more to fully recuperate. Instead of stealing cubby-hole box name tags from his classroom, Alex received Valentine’s Day cards from each one of his classmates. Gladys then pocketed those items in the middle of night to cast the fateful spell.
Cregger later received a note from one of his friends that suggested the idea of directly involving Alex in Gladys’ spell. Thus, having Alex snatch the name tags not only made him more active in hopefully rescuing his parents, but it also reinforced his rationale for not telling the truth to law enforcement.
“Bill Hader is a buddy of mine. We would talk about the script, and I think it was his idea. He was like, ‘You should figure out a way to implicate [Alex] so he feels implicated.’ So it was through a conversation with him that I had the idea of Alex stealing something [for Gladys],” Cregger tells The Hollywood Reporter. “It was a way to give him some culpability so that we could further believe that maybe he wouldn’t tell [the authorities], because he felt like he was responsible and just as guilty [as Gladys], even though we know he wasn’t. But, to a degree, he is guilty.”
Below, during a recent spoiler conversation with THR, Cregger also discusses the practical reason for why he did away with Alex’s Valentine’s Day cards, as well as the current status of his Aunt Gladys prequel.
***
Weapons receivedrave reviews and was the number-one movie in August, grossing $264 million against $38 million overall. Its script was a part of a hotly contested bidding war that may have altered a couple careers. [Editor’s Note: Jordan Peele reportedly parted ways with his managers after losing the Weapons sweepstakes.] Your follow-up, Resident Evil,also had its ownbidding war. How does it feel to be the belle of the ball right now?
(Laughs.) I’m in Prague, and I’ve been in Prague since before Weapons came out, so I don’t feel like the belle of the ball. I feel like a stranger in a strange land, and I’m so happy to be here. I get to work every day toward making a movie [Resident Evil], so it’s awesome. But I haven’t had any experiences where I walk into a restaurant and somebody says, “Hey, there’s the guy who made [Weapons].” So maybe this is the best place for me to be so that my head isn’t exploding or whatever I’m trying to say. It’s just good to be in the Czech Republic.
Writer/Director Zach Cregger on the set of Weapons.
Quantrell Colbert/Warner Bros.
Right after Weapons came out, my YouTube algorithm sent me down a rabbit hole of Newsboyz episodes, and it didn’t take long for me to see why the loss of Trevor Moore prompted you to write Weapons as a way to cope. I wasn’t privy to your Whitest KidsU’ Know collaboration. It somehow never entered my orbit. Anyway, was Trevor aware of these solo ambitions you had for yourself? Did he know you were trying to reinvent your filmmaking career? [Writer’s Note: Cregger and Moore co-directed a couple films in 2009 and 2011. Newsboyz was also a pandemic-era live stream that they co-hosted on YouTube/Twitch. They discussed the week in news and swapped entertaining stories from their lives. Their final episode took place a handful of hours before Moore’s tragic accident.]
Well, I shot Barbarian before he died, and he died while I was in the edit of Barbarian. So he knew I was making a movie, and I think he knew I always wanted to be a [solo] filmmaker. Yeah, he definitely knew that, but he didn’t know much about Barbarian. He was going to see it when it was ready, but he never got to. So I don’t really know how much he understood about what I wanted to do solo, but I don’t think that’s significant. It’s not something I talked about all the time.
The internet decoded that the platter of seven hot dogs was a nod to Trevor and the Whitest Kids sketch, “Hot Dog Timmy.” The draft of the script I read referenced hot dogs, but it didn’t say how many hot dogs were assembled. So did you come up with that specific tribute of seven hot dogs closer to filming?
Yeah, when we were putting it together, it was like, “What should be on the tray?” We then arranged the tray, and it was definitely thought out weeks in advance with the props people. So it was somewhere between the script and rolling camera.
When Josh Brolin’s character’s son, Matthew, is revealed to be Alex’s bully, I thought you were paving the way for the entire class to laugh at Alex for something Matthew instigated. Gladys would’ve then offered Alex a means of revenge without him fully understanding how extreme her intentions were.
That’s interesting.
Did you ever go down that bullying path?
No, I didn’t, but it makes a lot of sense. It just never occurred to me. That totally tracks.
In the earlier script, Gladys casts the 2:17 AM spell using Valentine’s Day cards that Alex’s classmates gave him, only he didn’t supply them to her. She just took them from him in the middle of the night.
Right.
Was the method of having him remove the name tags from the cubby-hole boxes a way to make him more active in potentially saving his family?
It was, yeah. It was also a way to give him some culpability so that we could further believe that maybe he wouldn’t tell [the authorities], because he felt like he was responsible and just as guilty [as Gladys], even though we know he wasn’t. But, to a degree, he is guilty. He probably had an inkling of an idea that whatever Gladys was going to do was probably pretty bad, and I don’t think he let himself imagine what was really coming. But, yes, it was to dirty his hands.
Cary Christopher as Alex in Zach Cregger’s Weapons
Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures
Compared to Valentine’s Day cards, were the cubby-hole box name tags just a cleaner, more streamlined way for Alex to get personal objects to Gladys?
It felt like the montage that would be necessary for him to get one little thing from every kid would be unbelievable and boring. The Valentine’s Day cards felt like a quick cheat. I was talking to a teacher friend of mine, and I was like, “Well, how could a kid come home with something from every other kid?” And she was like, “Valentine’s Day.” And I was like, “Brilliant!” However, we were shooting in the dead of summer, and the movie would never look like February. So that’s why I was like, “I’ve got to think of something else.”
Bill Hader is a buddy of mine. We would talk about the script, and I think it was his idea. He was like, “You should figure out a way to implicate [Alex] so he feels implicated.” So it was through a conversation with him that I had the idea of Alex stealing something. And when we were scouting on location, I saw these cubby boxes that were in a real classroom. So I was like, “That would do it.”
Two of my THR colleagues broke the potential Gladys prequel story. What’s your temperature on that idea at the moment?
I had the idea for this Gladys story before Weapons came out, so I was secretly hoping Weapons would work. I was like, “If it works, I have this other really fun story to tell about Gladys.” So I was like, “Please let it be a hit,” because I didn’t want to go to the studio [about it] unless Weapons did business. So it was one of those things where I already had it, and I wasn’t just like, “How can I cash in?” I was like, “Please God, let me be able to go do this again.” So we’re talking now, and while I can’t say too much obviously, it’s real and I’m pumped. I think it’s great.
I was surprised to hear that, because, when we spoke for Barbarian, you weren’t too interested in a prequel, especially one about your antagonist Frank (Richard Brake). But I suppose Gladys’ showmanship is a bit more fun to be around.
Frank’s whole world is disgusting, and having already told a story in that world, I don’t necessarily enjoy the aspects of Barbarian that are about women in captivity. That was just more of an interesting kind of backstory and plot device. With Gladys, I feel like there’s a whole rainbow of things that Gladys gets to interact with and participate in, so they’re very different things.
You opted not to explain the meaning of Weapons during your press tour, and I don’t blame you. These are fraught times. Thus, I’m going to subject you to my own reading of the movie.
(Cregger smiles.) Okay.
To me, the movie’s most enduring image is the schoolkids chasing after the old witch, and I interpreted that as the younger generations finally turning the tables on the older generations for passing on all their trauma and imposing harmful policies/legislation time and time again.
I love it.
I’ll take the compliment.
It’s great.
You deleted a scene where Alden Ehrenreich’s character, Paul, visits the doctor after his prickly run-in with the homeless addict, James (Austin Abrams). Did you ever decide what the result of Paul’s blood test would’ve been?
Oh, great question. No, I didn’t. But that’s such a good thing to think about. I thought that the not knowing was just as damning of his character as if he did have a result. The fact that he was willing to just play Russian roulette with [Julia Garner’s Justine] and her biology [via fornication] is heavy-duty. So I didn’t think we really needed an answer. He did it anyways, and that’s pretty fucked-up.
Austin Abrams’ James in Zach Cregger’s Weapons
Warner Bros. Pictures
Austin Abrams was the one main actor who stayed on the film after its strike-related cast reshuffling. He didn’t go off and shoot something else. How much did that loyal gesture factor into him leading Resident Evil?
I didn’t reward him for his loyalty; I rewarded him for being a spectacular actor. I cast him in Resident Evil because he’s so well-suited for this part. We just had a completely amazing experience together [on Weapons], and we really connected, creatively. So when it was time to get this one going, I didn’t have to think too hard. If he wasn’t in Weapons, if he’d bailed and gone and done another movie, yeah, I probably wouldn’t have been doing [Resident Evil] with him. So I guess it’s a karmic reward, but it wasn’t like I was thinking that way.
Are you about to roll camera on Resident?
We’re going to start shooting the second week of October.
(L-R) Josh Brolin and Writer/Director Zach Cregger on the set of Weapons
Quantrell Colbert/Warner Bros.
Is the biggest screenwriting lesson from Weapons to not name four characters with the same first letter? You originally had Archer (Josh Brolin), Alex (Cary Christopher), Anthony (who became Abrams’ James) and Andrew (who became Benedict Wong’s Marcus).
(Laughs.) Yeah, I think there could have been even another. Dude, that is only evidence of how stupid I am when I’m writing. I try to turn my brain off. I try not to think. I try to just go, go, go, go. So I make idiotic mistakes like that, and that’s what happens.
Earlier, when I listed your recent achievements, I forgot to mention Companion, which counted you as a producer. Drew Hancock told me the whole story of how it was originally going to be your Barbarian follow-up until you offered him the directorial job instead. He then surprised you with his brief indecision. Were you trying to pay it forward in the same way people did for you on Barbarian?
It was a combination of things. I was seriously considering directing it, but I felt like I should do an original next. That just became clear to me. As great as that script was and as excited as I was about it, I felt like I should do an original. And I could just tell from my conversations with Drew that he had a point of view and that he understood the story at the atomic level. He’d also directed [TV] before, so I was just like, “Why not, man? I think he can do it.” He just smelled like a [movie] director.
So before I offered him that, I called all the producers and was like, “I think Drew should direct it. Do I have your blessing to broach this with him?” And everyone was down. I thought he was going to do cartwheels on the phone with me when I said it, and I was genuinely surprised by his reaction, which was like, “I don’t know. I’ve got to think about this.” And I was like, “Well, why don’t you call me back tomorrow and tell me.” (Laughs.) I was like, “Weird.”
I think it took him two days to call me back, but that’s a testimony to how thoughtful Drew is. He respected the, dare I say, enormity of the job. It is a job that requires a hundred percent of you and a hundred percent of your time for over a year, at least. And not everybody is down to be like, “Yeah, I’ll put my entire life on pause to do this thing that is going to drain me.” So I get the hesitation.
Do you see yourself creating your own banner and being a shepherd for more movies that other people direct? Do you see yourself going further down that producorial path?
That’s not a huge priority for me, only because making movies is just so demanding. I am a person where my battery dries up real fast. I like to play video games. I like to unwind. I like to have me time. That’s so precious to me right now, and the idea of producing a lot of stuff — and sapping all of that free time — is not appealing. So, no, it’s just selfish. I would rather be monastic about this and just make movies.
Decades from now, when you’re reminiscing about the making of Weapons, what day will you likely recall first?
The three days the children were ripping Gladys apart. It was just devastatingly stressful and chaotic. When I’m making a movie, I feel very in control at all times. So I felt like I was in complete control of what was on camera, except for the kids ripping apart Gladys. I felt like I was drowning, and I was like, “Just shoot!” I had two cameras going, I had kids screaming and I couldn’t tell who was shooting what. I couldn’t communicate. It was awful. We had to shoot it three times, but I think we got it. I’m really happy with it. It was just incredibly stressful, so that’s what’s seared in my brain.
*** Weapons is now available on digital ahead of its 4K UHD release on Oct. 14.
With the imminent release of Inside Out 2, revisiting the original film is only natural. As it is to note that, long before the blatant anti-San Francisco campaign that rolled out at full force after the pandemic, Inside Out was throwing major shade at the place once called “the Paris of the West” (this as a means of alluring people to it at a time when it was still developing as an urban epicenter). Considering that Pixar’s headquarters are in Emeryville (effectively an “extension” of San Francisco), it comes as no surprise that the movie would take place there. What is perhaps something of a surprise is the number of moments in the film that seek to denigrate rather than elevate the city. But you know what they say: it’s always your own kind that ends up selling you down the river (if one will pardon the rooted-in-slavery expression).
As “alpha emotion” Joy (Amy Poehler) spends the first few minutes of Inside Out detailing the inner workings of Riley Andersen’s (Kaitlyn Dias) mind, it doesn’t take long before her vision of the eleven-year-old’s happy, idyllic existence in Minnesota is shattered. In fact, the Andersen family’s unexpected move to San Francisco is already happening within the eight-minute mark of the movie, with the title “Inside Out” only appearing just as the Andersens approach the Golden Gate Bridge. It’s upon seeing it from the backseat of the car that, from Riley’s mind, Joy shouts, “Hey look! The Golden Gate Bridge! Isn’t that great? It’s not made out of solid gold like we thought, which is kind of a disappointment, but still…”
The next recognizable landmark as the car continues toward their new house is the Ferry Building, with Fear (Bill Hader) remarking to Joy as they pass it, “I sure am glad you told me earthquakes are a myth, Joy. Otherwise I’d be terrified right now.” Joy replies, “Uh, yeah.” So already, there is this overt mood of disdain for the city, further fueled by a preteen’s inherent mistrust of the things they’re not familiar with. Any brief “romance” period with the town via the Golden Gate Bridge and the Ferry Building seems to quickly wear off by the third scene in the city, during which Riley and her parents are caught in bumper-to-bumper traffic on the famed part of Lombard Street known as “the crookedest street in the world.”
To further emphasize that San Francisco must be a miserable place, it is only Anger (Lewis Black) who chimes in at the sound of incessantly blaring horns and belligerent screaming to say, “These are my kind of people.” Of course, Anger’s vaguely positive tune, along with Disgust’s (Mindy Kaling) and Fear’s (Sadness [Phyllis Smith] was already firmly not into this to begin with), changes instantly when the car pulls up in front of a “dilapidated” townhouse. That’s right, the family is about to move into a townhouse that would fetch millions of dollars in any San Francisco neighborhood, regardless of being in a “dingy alley” or not. And yet, Riley is acting as though it’s the worst place in the world. “Too young,” or whatever, to understand “appreciating property values.” Especially since it seems like Mr. Andersen (Kyle MacLachlan) and Mrs. Andersen (Diane Lane) actually bought the place instead of renting. No matter to Riley, who has apparently been too sheltered for most of her sanitized life to have ever seen a dead mouse. This being one of her first sights upon entering the spacious abode.
But spaciousness doesn’t matter if her room isn’t “conventionally structured,” instead situated in more of an “attic” position—this being a clear machination on the writers’ part designed to give Riley some “poor little scullery maid” cachet. Despite Joy’s best intentions to keep Riley in a positive mood in the face of her “undesirable” living conditions, they’re met with another decidedly “San Francisco-style” setback when Joy tries to distract Riley with the idea of going to lunch. Flashing the image of the pizza place (Yeast of Eden) she saw on the car ride over, Joy plants the seed in Riley’s mind that she’s just hungry. That’s the real reason why she’s irritable. Or worse still, sad.
Thus, to be presented with, apparently, a decidedly San Francisco approach to pizza—a.k.a. the appearance of broccoli on it—is the last straw for Riley, who is now officially out of any will to put on rose-colored glasses about this move. Because yes, in addition to having poor taste in housing (or rather, poor taste in understanding what good housing is), she also has a gauche Minnesotan palate that can’t accept anything “unconventional” on a pizza. Alas, considering that broccoli has held a lifelong negative association for her (thanks to Disgust), seeing it on her pizza is “too much” for her. Her mom doesn’t help Riley’s outlook on the “tragedy” either, shrugging, “What kind of pizza place only serves one kind of pizza? Must be a San Francisco thing, huh?”
Even Joy—who usually refuses to see the negative side of anything—has to agree, demanding, “Who puts broccoli on pizza?” Anger then snarls, “Congratulations San Francisco, you’ve ruined pizza! First the Hawaiians, and now you.” Obviously, it’s a pointed comment not just on the supposedly inferior pizza San Francisco has to offer, but also on the generally “chichi” (ergo, overpriced) fare residents are subjected to in the wake of gentrification on steroids.
And, speaking of that, Mr. Andersen’s fraught phone call about needing to find investors before they have to start laying people off smacks of being the kind of odious “tech guy” (one will refrain from saying “tech bro”) that SF has become irrevocably synonymous with. Hence, yet another unfavorable impression of the city in terms of “the man it’s making her father become”—absent, distant and impatient. Worse still, an ungrateful gentrifier.
Riley’s anxiety levels are further sent into overdrive by the effect the move is having on her parents’ relationship, which is becoming…tense. Something she never saw between them before. But, again, her lily-livered, privileged existence seems to make her more prone to such sensitivity over very little. Including the sound of noisy cars that also cast “ominous” shadows on her wall from outside the window. Fear’s response to it is a terrified, nonsensical wondering as to whether it might be a bear. “There are no bears in San Francisco,” Disgust balks at Fear (though that’s not really true, thanks to the increased presence of black bears leaving their natural habitat). Anger chimes in, “I saw a really hairy guy. He looked like a bear.” Somehow, that feels like a “subtle” nod to the Castro…for those who get it.
Naturally, though, the Emeryville-based Pixar team isn’t counting on the average audience being “in the know” about San Francisco…apart from embracing the tired stereotypes about it as a place of “horrors” (a.k.a. real life), a place to avoid. And, soon enough, a place to run away from. For, without Joy and Sadness—the “alphas” of the emotional “headquarters”—Anger, Fear and Disgust try their best to fill the void where leadership is. The result, expectedly, is all-out emotional dysregulation, with Riley giving in to the whim of assuming that going back to Minnesota without telling her parents is the best way to find happiness again. Luckily, Joy and Sadness make it back to headquarters in time to correct the situation, with Joy allowing Sadness, at last, to take the reins (as she should have from the start of this move).
When Riley returns from her botched attempt at running away, she finally admits to her parents, “I miss Minnesota.” The funny thing, of course, is that if she had stayed in said state, she likely would have tried to move to California anyway after graduating from high school. Minnesotans are always seeking warmer weather, which, of course, exists literally anywhere else except Minnesota. And Midwesterners in general are always seeking “freakier” pastures (see: Chappell Roan). But since Minnesota represents “home” to her, and her home isn’t a place she yet associates with oppression and conservative values, San Francisco is pretty much the last place she would want to be. As such, Anger is so fed up with the “antithetical” ways of life in “The Golden City” that he finally snaps and calls it “San Fran Stink Town” as he takes the wheel on “reasoning” by planting the idea in Riley’s head that they should just take a bus back to Minnesota. Which, of course, Riley can’t go through with.
At the end of Inside Out, it isn’t that Riley has “warmed” to SF, per se, so much as surrendered to the reality that he who controls the purse strings (i.e., one’s parents) controls your living situation. Even so, perhaps in Inside Out 2, Riley will have come to understand the value, as a “too cool for everything” teen, of living in a more sophisticated metropolis (though the naysayers will keep mentioning homeless people as a reason it’s not) than whatever bumfuck town in Minnesota she crawled out of. Maybe Bloomington (home to the Mall of America), like Inside Out’s director and co-writer, Pete Docter.
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: Barryis 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.
Relationships between comedians are both funny-weird, and funny-haha, it seems safe to assume. The latest example? Ali Wong and Bill Hader are dating again, as the Barry star’s rep confirmed to Page Six the two are back together after reportedly splitting due to busy schedules last fall.
Hader hinted at the couple’s reunion in a recent interview with Collider, during which he employed the age-old “my girlfriend” tactic without naming names, though it has since been confirmed he was referring to Wong. “My girlfriend and I were just figuring out that I haven’t had a vacation in 10 years,” he said. “I went with her to San Francisco, but that doesn’t really count. So, I’m going to have a vacation. I need to go into sponge mode, where I’m watching stuff and reading.”
Ah, yes, the old “watching stuff and reading” chillcation, and the “doesn’t count” trips. Hader said he’s tried meditating to cleanse his vibe, but “every time I sit down to meditate, I end up passing out and falling asleep.” Who among us? While science has not yet provided us with a definitive checklist of what qualifies a vacation as “real,” one might assume that travel around family obligations like weddings, graduations, b’nai mitzvahs, and their ilk, no matter how lovely the location or tasty the sourdough. Sitting on a beach and staring dead-eyed at the ocean doesn’t hit quite the same when you know you’re going to have to watch your grandmother drop ice cubes in her Riesling later. Work trips don’t count, either, which spells bad news for creatives like Wong and Hader, who don’t just perform, but are constantly developing their own projects and ideas. “Watching stuff and reading” is fun, but also…kind of work. After all, remember where Lin-Manuel Miranda was when he wrote King George’s “You’ll Be Back” from Hamilton? That would be his honeymoon, what should arguably be the chillest, non-workiest, realest vacation imaginable. Which is to say, good luck enjoying the beach.
Wong has recently been making headlines for her performance as a rage-fueled houseplant mogul in Netflix’s Beef, but broke into public consciousness for her stand-up, much of which discussed her relationship with then-husband Justin Hakuta. The pair announced their divorce in April 2022, and Wong recently said they are “best friends” and that they’re experiencing an “unusual divorce,” even planning to travel together with their two young daughters for her next stand-up tour, which she has dubbed “The Single Lady Tour.”
Hader, meanwhile, stars in Barry, the fourth season of which recently premiered. He was formerly linked to stars such as Rachel Bilson, who revealed to the world that she missed “his big dick,” and Anna Kendrick, who went on a healing yacht journey in the wake of her breakup with Hader. Hader was also previously married to writer-director Maggie Carey, with whom he shares three daughters.
Vanity Fair has reached out to reps for both Hader and Wong, who didn’t immediately return requests for comment.
