Bill Hader’s pitch-black Barry performance is fueled by shitty high school memories

Bill Hader’s shown a side of himself that fans of his comedy work rarely see on HBO’s Barry. Simply put, he’s scary. As the titular hitman-turned-aspiring actor, Hader conveys some truly dark, deep-seated shit. His character wants something more out of life, but struggles to reckon with the fact that maybe the only thing he’s good at is killing people. In a recent profile in The New Yorker, Hader talks about how he gets himself to that place of dead-eyed self-loathing, and it turns out its by thinking about high school.

“Being heartbroken by my first girlfriend. And Scholastic Night, when me and this other kid were the only two kids out of seventy not invited, because you had to have a C average,” Hader says, recalling the emotional triggers he used for a particular scene in the pilot episode. In that scene, Barry admits to his would-be acting coach Gene Cousineau (Henry Winkler) that he’s a a serial murderer and depressed about it. Obviously, the shame associated with committing such heinous crimes is not something Bill Hader actually feels, but the feeling of thinking you’re an unlovable “dummy” in high school is probably close enough.