Bill Hader Accidentally Poisoned Himself Before Bill Burr's Show, and Barry Is Still Great

Bill Hader showed up to Bill Burr’s podcast having nearly died at the Barry premiere. Not metaphorically. He drank a cashew milk blend backstage, his throat started closing, he stabbed himself in the leg with an EpiPen, went groggy from Benadryl, then jacked back up from the adrenaline, and made it to the HBO event anyway. His father, a massive Burr fan who had flown in for the occasion, watched his son go into anaphylaxis and reportedly suggested he shake it off. The funniest part of this story is that Burr does not entirely believe it. ‘It sounds to me like you blew off the interview,’ he says, ‘and I’m not buying this whole stabbing yourself.’

I got to go like how quick when you drink that how quick do you know is it like getting bit by Cobra yeah yeah like you just know like all right that wasn’t good

This is the kind of podcast that exists because both guys were tired of the other kind. Burr says it plainly near the end: ‘I don’t want anybody to learn anything about you I just want to give you a break from the same twenty questions.’ So instead of Barry origin stories and SNL greatest hits, you get forty minutes of two men who grew up watching the same stand-up specials on cable trying to out-remember each other. George Carlin at the Brady Theater in Tulsa. Eddie Murphy’s Raw, and the genuine sadness both feel that he stopped. The specific gun sounds in Walter Hill movies. It is, improbably, more revealing than any standard press tour interview would have been.

Forte’s Dance, and Why Hader Will Never Forgive Him For It

The SNL material shows up eventually, but sideways, through a story about Will Forte doing a locker room coach character who performs a Herb Alpert dance to motivate the team. Hader asked Forte to run it for him privately beforehand so he could laugh it out of his system. A sensible plan. Forte then added a new move on air specifically to destroy him. Peyton Manning, hosting that week, started to lose it. Keegan-Michael Key went. The towel-over-the-face footage exists and is worth finding.

I go hey Will can you just do it for me a couple times just in my dressing room can you just do it so I can like laugh and get it out that’s great you’re such a pro can I just get it out so he did it but then on air he added a move of course he did just to mess with me

Forte also, at some point, pitched Hader a body-swap movie about identical twins. The joke being that since they look exactly alike, nobody can tell anything has changed. Hader’s explanation of why this is funny is itself funnier than most jokes. ‘Everyone acts like well you’re acting differently that’s not like you but they’re just acting they’re these two boring somebodies.’ He says he laughed for a long time. You believe him.

On Barry, Violence, and Why HBO Said Yes

Hader is genuinely thoughtful about what HBO gave him permission to do with Barry, and the specifics are worth hearing from him directly. He pitched a half-hour comedy using Taxi Driver and Unforgiven as reference points. He told them the violence had to feel real and not funny. And when the drafts got darker as the season went on, the network response was not notes about likability. It was, essentially, well what else is he going to do. That is a very different conversation than the one Hader describes from every other context, where the instinct is to find the joke in the strangling scene, maybe use the jump rope from the kids’ backyard toys.

I said you know the violence has to be very real it’s not funny the violence is not funny at all when he fights people I like it to feel real I just don’t I don’t want it to be cool

There is also a detour into Scientology acting classes, a construction worker friend of Burr’s who eulogized a man who died in a cable accident with ‘kid was kind of a douche,’ and a thorough investigation of whether Bobby Flay’s heart stopped on the Iron Chef set. The podcast runs nearly an hour and never once asks where Stefon came from. Both men seem relieved.