Barry's Robert Wisdom Talks Obsession, Being Directed By Bill Hader, And More [Exclusive Interview]

Bill Hader directed every episode of this season. From the outside looking in, it certainly seems as if this is one of the best directed shows on television right now. I'd love to know, from your perspective, what it's like working with him as a director.

I'll put in my two cents with anyone who says that Bill is a genius and a gifted director. He is not directing just TV. If there were a category of auteur for TV, I would put him in there. He's creating, visually, telling this story in a whole other kind of way. He's so far beyond the classic TV over-over-over-over tell, empty, sterile [approach]. He's baroque in kind of creating rich images, putting his characters in these places, having these characters deal with rich assemblage of emotions, but never giving into the ordinary kind of, "I've got to come in for the close-up, I got to come in" and those kind of obligatory things that just make TV boring. So Bill will never work for the networks, but he will create this kind of art, which is, I don't get tired of saying, I put him in there with Fellini and with the great, great directors of cinema. He's making TV/cinema, is what I call it.

I've been extremely impressed with his abilities behind the camera since the beginning, but it feels like he's leveled up in a big way this season. Have you noticed him doing anything different in the time that you've been working with him?

Well, the thing is that he's not demonstrative, and [he doesn't have to] impress you with his film intelligence. He's just nosing along, but he has incredible instincts and he plans and works out his shots. He loves his team, he works well with the team, so he'll have an idea and then he'll take it to them and they'll figure it out and even they'll be flabbergasted by things that he's doing. So I think he's broken new ground with "Barry." That's six years now — five, six years of working. We're going to see who comes through the door behind him and who's able to create those kind of pictures.

I worked on another breakthrough series, but we broke through in the way we told story. Bill is breaking through not only how he tells story, which is like a huge palette, but he's breaking through how we visually tell a story. The camera is material. The camera isn't just a thing that's capturing what's in front of you, but the camera can go in, it can go out. He has to give space for his absurdist jokes in there sometimes and the little visual things. I think that scene in season 3 where the motorcycle is on the highway, nobody gives you that space to do that kind of shot. That was genius ... That scene with the little girl who jumps on the car at the end, with that brilliant performance at the end? Getting that and shooting it in a very stark, high contrast way. All of that kind of stuff is not stuff that TV editors are going to know what to do with. So I think he's off on another level. He's way off on another level.

Can you recall a time this season when you sort of raised your hand and said, "I don't think my character would behave exactly this way or would say this exact line," and were able to collaborate in finding a solution? Did that ever happen?

Our set is so collaborative and is so generous. There was a moment when there was some information being brought up in a scene and it didn't feel right. And I mentioned it and Bill said, "You're right," and just went with it right away. I mean, there was no back and forth about it. He added that this is why he loves our cast, because when they have instincts, when they have a gut call, they're usually right. And that's just trust. You don't use that all the time. But that's the kind of nature of play that was going on all the time. We would often be in the middle of a scene and there was a way to say something differently, so Bill would just, right on the spot, put it in our mouths and we'd make that work. Just all kinds of ways to get new information or new language.

There was no tension underneath and no proprietary kind of stuff. Of course in the big picture ... it's Bill's vision. This isn't just a plot-driven story that you stick to your lines and there's a script supervisor who's like, "Say this like this." It's like Rodin sitting in front of a stone and then pulling out one of the great sculptures. Bill starts with this thing and then he gets it with us on set, and then he starts to just really shape it, shape it, chip it, doing all those things. You see it later on in a stage where he puts some music behind it or he pops this out or that out, or the editors do their thing, just this crazy and inventive way to edit something. So it's way beyond — an actor's ego can say, "Well, I should be doing this," and like it's not that kind of thing.

Do you recall any scenes in season 4 that were maybe a little tougher to get through but were reworked and ultimately ended up working out?

In Jim's story, Jim's story is very spartan and compact, dense with feeling, but it was shot in a much tighter frame than some of the other characters. So you play in it differently. The viewer gets to read into what Jim is up to as well as what he's saying he's up to. So it's kind of like the spine of a book: That just runs through all the pages, it keeps it all together, but on the pages are everybody else's story. I think that's what Jim's whole thing is.

I know your character isn't on screen during some of the wildest scenes of this season, but I would love to hear just memories and stories that you might have from your time on set. When you think back on your time in season 4, what's the first thing that comes to mind?

What comes to mind is that, "This is the last time I might be seeing these folks doing their brilliant stuff," and the little conversations we have waiting to walk out on set, or to the crew. The crew is just fantastic and really well run, but not tight, not uptight. And everybody loves the show, so it's not a thing of people just jobbing in. It's that kind of stuff that you remember that gives you a little pep when you go back out for take two, take three, take four, a new setup. You go out there with knowing that somebody has just knocked one over the fence and they're just waiting to be driven home, and then you come out and, boom, you just do your single and that's what you got to do. So it's a team thing and we get it done.