- 19 hours ago
"He has this effortless grace and generosity of spirit about him, and he comes to work every day like it's his first day on the job," Goldberg said of Winkler.
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00:00Hi, I'm Sarah Goldberg and you're watching In Studio with The Hollywood Reporter.
00:07Now before we jump in, I have to ask, have you seen Gene's acting ads that he's placed throughout LA?
00:13Yes, yeah.
00:14What's your thing?
00:15Actually, I saw, well, the first one I saw was in New York because I live in New York and I was on the subway and I was heading into Union Square and there was lovely Henry as Gene.
00:24For those people who haven't watched the show, do you think they're trying to reach out or what do you think is going on there?
00:29I don't know. It's like this subliminal advertising. I really wonder what people who haven't seen the show would make of it, especially if they recognize Henry Winkler and don't know his character.
00:41They think something's gone very wrong in his life.
00:44Henry has a name change.
00:45Yes, yes. He's having a second life as Gene M. Kuzna. Yeah, they're very charming.
00:50They're really great. You're here to talk all things Barry season two. Looking back to season one, what stood out about the script specifically and about Sally?
00:57Well, I remember way back when I got the pilot script a decade ago.
01:03It's been three years. I remember reading it and thinking, you know, I just hadn't read anything like that ever before and you get sent so many dodgy scripts, let's just call them.
01:13And I read it and it was just so inventive and creative and tonally just really surprising and I hadn't read a female character like that either who sort of had this weird combination of girl next door, guileless charm matched with this kind of crazy narcissism and tunnel vision and obsession with her career.
01:36And, yeah, it just, it was so funny and dark and it really jumped off the page to me immediately.
01:44That's awesome. And was Bill a draw to the show too?
01:47Totally. I mean, I grew up in Canada and then, and they do have SNL in Canada, but I was deprived.
01:53I didn't watch much SNL and then I moved to England and I, so I honestly didn't really know his SNL work that well.
01:59I knew him from Skeleton Twins, which is just the most incredible film.
02:03And, and then I went back and watched all of his, his old sketches and on set when we're all tired after a 17 hour day, he performs all the cut for time sketches from between like, when was he on?
02:152007 to 2013. So I've seen all the cut for time.
02:19He performs them for you guys.
02:19Yes. Yes.
02:20I didn't know that.
02:20He does all the voices of all the other actors. Um, so we've seen all the cut for time sketches. So they did have their air date just, um, in a studio.
02:28That's so awesome.
02:29Yeah. Um, but anyway, I, yeah, I mean, he was such a huge draw. He's really, um, sort of a singular talent.
02:35Yeah.
02:35He's, he's, um, got such a wild imagination.
02:39With the show being so different, I mean, there hasn't been a show like this that I've seen ever.
02:44No, me neither.
02:45It's so, it's so different.
02:46Yeah.
02:46And it really is this dark comedy. What do you remember the conversations being with Bill and Alec about kind of where they wanted to take this show and like why they wanted to make it so different?
02:55Well, I think it's like quite, had quite casual beginnings. I think they were sitting in a, in a diner and trying to figure out what they wanted to write. And I think Bill said, what about a hitman show? And Alec was like, I don't, I don't want to do a hitman show. And he's like, no, but I, I'm the hitman. And then Alec started laughing.
03:13And so I think it was kind of just a very natural, um, easy birth. And from there, I mean, I think that we've all surprised ourselves and they've surprised themselves. Sort of the scale of it and the ambition of it.
03:25And it's, it's, it's a, it's a show that has no formula. You can't pin it to any one thing and it shouldn't work. On the one hand, you've got this shoot him up and this sort of almost breaking bad-esque, um, hitman story.
03:39And on the other side, you have the rest of us in tights. Um, no, the sort of waiting for Guffman.
03:45That's a good description.
03:45Yeah. Yeah. They all come back from shooting in the desert, like windswept and sunburned and sand in their hair. And we've been like, Hey, what did you guys get up to? All cozy in our theater.
03:56Um, but yeah, it just, as a, as an idea, it really shouldn't work. You've got two very separate shows in a way in one. And the way they've, um, put that all together is really genius, I think.
04:08And I think like that they, they've really, they're diving this season into a real exploration of shame and the lies we tell ourselves to survive and who we think we are and who we really are and what we present to the world.
04:23And, uh, I think Bill has a great line or Barry has a great line in episode four where he says, you know, you should be able to be who you say you are.
04:33And that theme runs through the show.
04:36We see that with Sally especially.
04:37Yeah, exactly. And, and, and there's a lot of parallels between them as characters actually, because they're both having to live this lie for their own survival.
04:45Now for you as an actor, how wildly, wildly different would you say Sally's kind of rise to being an actor has been compared to yours?
04:53Um, or similar in any way.
04:55Yeah. Um, no, thankfully not similar. Um, it's, yeah, I would say we're wildly different. Um, except we look a lot alike.
05:04Like clearly, yeah. Um, yeah, but I, no, I, I grew up in Vancouver in Canada. And then when I was 19, I moved to London and I did a conservatory three-year drama training.
05:15I really wanted to do theater. That was my passion. And that's actually a parallel with Sally. She also wants to do theater.
05:21And I, I moved there and lived there for nearly nine years and did a ton of theater over there and then started doing theater in New York.
05:29And I think the main difference, I think, I was lucky that when I was in school I had this incredible acting teacher who, Michael Wiener, who really just taught me this great work ethic.
05:40And I really was well-trained in that I knew it was going to be so hard. I knew it was going to be a long game. He used to say, like, you'll be broke, but you'll be so happy.
05:49And my big ambition was to have my own theater company. And I just knew it was.
05:53Do you still have that as an ambition?
05:54Well, I had one, but we only lasted one season.
05:57Oh, okay.
05:57I was 18 years old. It's called Beyond Blue Theater. Um, we did one show at the Presentation House Theater in North Van to mix reviews.
06:04Gene can bring it back.
06:05Gene can provide us.
06:05But yeah, I think, um, I think I just never, she has this ambition that's slightly misguided.
06:13And I think she's really anxious to have these, these dreams come true, but I don't even think she knows exactly what those dreams are.
06:21They, she's got ambitions to be famous and I, I never really had those same goals.
06:27And I was lucky enough early in my career to work with Alan Rickman and Sophie Thompson and all these great British actors who come from repertory theater.
06:34And, you know, it's, it's a long life, so you could go the long way around, you know.
06:39With the acting element to the show, it's really like a play instead of play kind of.
06:43Yeah, yeah.
06:44How fun is that, yeah, how fun is that for you to play an actor as an actor, but you're also playing her and then she's playing other.
06:52Yeah, it's slightly surreal at times and, um, doesn't require a huge amount of research.
06:59Um, it's, uh, no, it's, it's, um, yeah, it's, it's really fun, honestly, because we get to experience things on set that we've experienced in real life in season one, that audition scene I have where I fall apart in the room.
07:15Um, I mean, listen, no acting required, uh, I've been there and it, it's fun in that way that you can kind of have a little bit of catharsis.
07:24Um, but on the other hand, it's very different from all of our, as a cast, like all of the acting class, we all have different backgrounds and this is a very different story that we're telling so we can have a lot of fun.
07:36Um, and I think we, we keep it in a really, in a real place.
07:39I, I think there's, there's humor to it, but we're not sending them up.
07:43We all care about these characters and we're all trying to give them, give them, do them justice and that their needs and wants are very real, even if they're totally warped.
07:53We find out more about her backstory.
07:55Did you, is this something you knew from the beginning or are we kind of learning just as you were learning?
07:59Uh, well, we talked about it a lot before we shot season two.
08:04In season one, we were lucky enough to have all eight episodes before we shot, which is such a luxury and such an anomaly.
08:11It's so rare.
08:12Yeah, so rare.
08:13And I mean, what a joy to sort of be able to map out your whole trajectory before starting shooting and you could bring all that at the beginning.
08:20We didn't get to the story about her past and the domestic abuse situation that she's come from until the finale of season one.
08:30Um, so I knew that that was her story or her backstory.
08:34I didn't know that that's what we were going to be diving into until we started this season.
08:39And, uh, I was really excited that Alec and Bill wanted to take it there and I'm always up for making it darker.
08:46And they, they were very thoughtful about how we were going to go about telling that story.
08:52And we were all quite vigilant in what we wanted to say.
08:55And, and we ultimately, you know, we're living in sort of incendiary times and, and very stressful times around this, that topic.
09:04And so we wanted to, we wanted to really do Sally justice and tell her story.
09:10And she's not a representative of every woman, God willing, hopefully.
09:15Um, but we, but at the same time, we had an eye on the macro, uh, and what was going on in the world as we were shooting.
09:21So it definitely informed what we were doing.
09:23And in season two, you have this powerful monologue where she vows to never be with a violent man ever again.
09:28Yeah.
09:28And then it cuts to Barry kind of making a face.
09:31Yeah.
09:32I mean, poor Sally, if only she knew.
09:34Yeah.
09:35I mean, she has this guileless self-involved quality that's quite useful as a tool for storytelling because obviously we can get away with a lot.
09:43She's not, not so quick on the uptake because she's quite distracted by her own, her own stuff.
09:49Um, you know, I mean, there's a scene in episode three where, you know, there's bullets flying and she's very focused on herself.
09:58So it's fun to play.
10:00It's fun, it's fun to get to play with that.
10:02And, um, I mean, I feel for her that she doesn't know the situation that she's in and that she's actually with a very dangerous person.
10:11There's a huge tragedy to that.
10:12And there's a tragedy to both of them that they, they're both kind of lost souls and they've come to the wrong town to heal that.
10:23Not supposed to be.
10:23No.
10:24And they, they can't fully see each other.
10:27I mean, how can you take care of someone else when you haven't learned to take care of yourself?
10:32And so they keep missing the point and their whole relationship is based on projections.
10:39Like Sally doesn't see Barry.
10:42I don't think she sees herself reflected by Barry.
10:46But this season we see her veneer kind of crack and this personality that she's worked so hard to build, to escape her past.
10:54Um, it's, it's all starting to be chipped away at.
10:56And she can actually walk toward a more honest life.
10:59But for Barry, it's much more complicated because that might mean prison.
11:04Well, going off that, do you see it being a kind of a tragic end where?
11:08Do I see the show being a tragic end?
11:09No, for Barry and Sally.
11:11I've always said it's not a love story.
11:13Yeah, it's not.
11:14And I don't know whether it will be a tragic end, but I, I feel for them that they, they're looking for something and they're looking in the wrong places.
11:27Going back to Henry, what have you learned, I guess, working with him?
11:30Honestly, that man is the mayor of the world.
11:33Yeah.
11:33He is so kind.
11:35And I think I've really learned grace from him.
11:38Well, still working on it.
11:39But he, he really, he has this effortless grace and generosity of spirit about him.
11:44And he comes to work every day, like it's his first day on the job.
11:49And he has this effortless humility.
11:52And I think he's seen this industry from all angles.
11:56And the absence of bitterness in him is a marvel.
12:00And I, I mean, I love the man.
12:03I'll say it.
12:03I love him.
12:04He's just so wonderful.
12:05And I think he sets such a buoyant and beautiful tone.
12:09And everybody has to meet him there.
12:11There's no being.
12:13He sets the bar high.
12:13Yeah, he sets the bar high.
12:15There's no misbehaving around that, man.
12:16You've got to come to work with, with an open heart.
12:19Now the finale is on Sunday.
12:21What's your best tease for what you can expect?
12:23Oh my gosh.
12:24You're going to get me fired.
12:27It just gets darker.
12:28Well, I'm nervous to hear it too.
12:29We both were nervous to hear it before.
12:31We're going to run too much to the world.
12:32Yeah, no.
12:33No spoilers.
12:34It just gets darker.
12:35Like a good Leonard Cohen song.
12:36Well, it's good because the show is renewed for season three.
12:39And hopefully many more seasons to come.
12:40I'm delighted.
12:41Where do you want to see it go?
12:43Well, I'd like to stay living.
12:45That would be great.
12:47Or if they're going to kill me off, I'd like to come back and haunt them all.
12:51Yeah, the boys have some ideas up their sleeves.
12:55And I just trust them.
12:57Yeah.
12:57And that we've got this, they've got such wild imaginations and such precision of storytelling.
13:04I think it's going to be exciting wherever we go.
13:06I can't wait to see it.
13:07Yeah.
13:07Make sure to check out the finale on HBO on Sunday.
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