HBO’s highly acclaimed comedy-drama series Barry is finally returning to our screens after close to a three-year hiatus. Barry, created by Alec Berg and Bill Hader, follows the life of hitman Barry Berkman as he tries to find a new path in life, away from crime. While in Los Angeles for a hit, Barry discovers the joys of acting through a community theater class filled with aspiring actors. Acting gives Barry a new purpose and life direction, but while the future looks bright, the past never truly goes away. Barry finds himself torn between two worlds, leaving a trail of destruction in both to try and pursue his own happiness.
Thanks to the pandemic, the show saw significant delays in production on its anticipated third season, with filming beginning in August 2021, rather than its original March 2020 start date. With the last episode of Barry airing back in May 2019, it’s difficult to remember where we last left the characters and who’s playing them, so this handy cast and character guide can help refresh your memory!
Bill Hader as Barry Berkman/Barry Block
Barry, our titular character and protagonist, for the lack of a better word, leads a complicated life. As we learned in Season 2, during his time in the Marine Corps, Barry killed an innocent man, believing they were shooting at his unit and responsible for killing one of his friends. This traumatic experience serves as the catalyst for the entire series and led to him becoming a hitman.
Throughout Seasons 1 and 2, we see Barry forever guilt-ridden and depressed with the actions of his past. Dark thoughts and flashbacks consume him, however, he is optimistic about the future. Under the stage name “Barry Block”, acting has given him a path away from crime, though he still has many obstacles to overcome.
Barry is not a bad person at heart, but he has lots of blood on his hands. He’s made choices that he can never take back. He cannot escape his past. Everything comes back to bite him, stunting his progress in living a normal life. Fellow acting troupe member Sally Reed, his girlfriend, is Barry’s emotional anchor, but being oblivious to his other life, even she can’t console him. Despite becoming part of a loving community of actors, Barry can feel just as alone as he ever was.
Season 2 ends with Barry’s former mentor Fuches pushing Barry over the edge, both emotionally and physically. Threatening to destroy the life of “Barry Block”, Fuches unleashes Barry’s fury, resulting in the massacre of multiple criminal gangs. Fuches also tells Gene, Barry’s acting teacher, a dark secret that will change Barry’s life forever.
Bill Hader plays many roles in the production of Barry, both in front of and behind the camera. Apart from portraying the main character, he also serves as the show’s co-creator, writer, director, and executive producer. Since his breakout role as a cast member on Saturday Night Live, he has starred in many comedies such as Superbad and Trainwreck. He has also been a voice actor in animated films like Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs, Inside Out, and the Angry Birds movie series.
Stephen Root as Monroe Fuches
Monroe Fuches, or just Fuches as many call him, is an untrustworthy person. Plain and simple. Fuches is dangerously self-centered and selfish. His own interests always come first, no matter who gets hurt in the process, which is usually Barry.
Being the man that originally offered Barry work as a hitman, their lives have become unfortunately intertwined. Fuches feels that Barry owes him everything for giving him a second chance after leaving the Marines. To Fuches, Barry is just his ticket to getting more money and power in Los Angeles’s criminal underworld. Though sometimes it seems like Fuches truly does care for Barry, his chaotic actions and plans always prove otherwise.
Throughout the show, we can see that Fuches is against the idea of “Barry Block”, with no care for his ambitions to have a better life. In Season 2, after Barry officially cuts ties with him, Fuches plans his revenge and shows no remorse in the events that follow. Season 2 ends with Fuches escaping Barry’s wrath and revealing to Gene that it was Barry who killed his girlfriend, LAPD Detective Janice Moss, in the Season 1 finale.
Stephen Root has starred in highly acclaimed television comedies and dramas since the late 1980s, appearing in shows such as NewsRadio, The Man In The High Castle, and Boardwalk Empire. He also appeared in the cult classic 1999 film Office Space as Milton Waddams and voiced the role of Bill Dauterive in the long-running animated series King Of The Hill (1997-2010).
Sarah Goldberg as Sally Reed
Sally serves two pivotal roles in the series. Firstly, being an aspiring actress, she is our guide to the Los Angeles theater scene, particularly Gene’s class. She helps introduce Barry, and us as the audience, to the members of the class and their loving sense of community. From the moment she meets Barry, she is sincere, funny, and, in a way, almost proud to let a newbie enter their world and lives.
Secondly, as she and Barry become a couple, Sally acts as the emotional anchor to his “Barry Block” persona. After shoot-outs and gang run-ins, Barry still comes home to her. Seeing Sally, he knows there’s still another life for him, despite the challenges in living it. In turn, Barry does the same for Sally as we learn more about her past, and her struggles in finding work as an actress.
In Season 2, Sally wants to share the story of her abusive relationship with a man named Sam for the acting class’s upcoming play. She finds it difficult to confront the past truthfully, opting to tell a fake version of the story where she stood up to Sam, rather than leaving him while he was asleep. On the play’s opening night in Season 2’s finale, she decides to tell the fake story. As the play’s audience commend her on her acting abilities and courage to tell her story, Sally is left morally at odds with herself, and her new public perception that she’s created based on lies.
Starring in Barry was arguably Sarah Goldberg’s breakout role, but she has also appeared in films such as The Hummingbird Project, The Report, and The Night House. Prior to Barry, she also appeared in numerous stage plays such as Look Back In Anger, opposite actor Adam Driver.
Henry Winkler as Gene Cousineau
To Gene, his acting class means everything, which is good or bad depending on who you are in his life. Gene is a dedicated and supportive teacher/mentor, hoping to help his students find great success, though he often struggles to show this. He is obsessed with his own acting career and legacy, having written a book that promotes his self-indulgent views of himself, which can be demoralizing to students and others he meets.
Being focused on his class and career, Gene also let his family life fall apart, straining the relationship with his now-estranged son, Leo, and ex-wife. Following Detective Janice Moss’s murder, shattering his emotional state, Season 2 sees Gene attempt to reach out to Leo and reconcile with the past. With Janice gone, Gene re-evaluates his life and finally understands the importance of family.
While Leo needs time to forgive his father, in the meantime Gene has become a father figure for Barry, filling in for the abusive Fuches who similarly took Barry under his wing in tough times. Season 2 ends with these two father figures meeting, although Fuches hides his true identity and frames Gene for Detective Moss’s murder. Though Gene is quickly proven innocent, the damage is done when Fuches also tells him Barry killed Moss, a frightening truth he’ll have to face head-on in Season 3.
Since his time on Happy Days starting back in 1974, Henry Winkler has become a staple of American film and TV culture. He has appeared in iconic films such as Scream (1996) and The Waterboy, as well as countless hit TV shows including Arrested Development and Parks And Recreation. He also lent his voice to Pixar’s animated series Monsters At Work.
Anthony Carrigan as NoHo Hank
When you mix goofy and gangster together, you get NoHo Hank. Far from your average gang member, or leader in Season 2, Hank isn’t a big fan of violence. He can be incredibly upbeat and optimistic, especially when it comes to the Chechens’ partnership with the Bolivians, but when things go wrong, they go wrong fast. In these situations, he’s frightened, panicky, and struggles to make good decisions for himself or his gang.
Hank’s character feels like a fish-out-of-water character, almost as if he was forced into a life of crime, and just rolled with it as the years went by. He’s still learning on the job, despite needing to be a leader for the Chechens in Los Angeles, and this is where we find Hank in Season 2.
Afraid of a partnership between the Bolivian and Burmese gangs, Hank goes to Barry for help. Hank’s gang members are poorly trained with weapons, so to keep tensions between them low, Barry offers to train the gang, only if he doesn’t have to kill anymore for them. Unfortunately, while the training goes well, the gang sees Barry as a stronger leader than Hank, diminishing his authority among his own group, and status in Chechnya. Season 2 ends with Barry’s rageful massacre wiping out the gang, leaving Hank alone when his successor from Chechnya arrives.
Similar to Sarah Goldberg, starring in Barry was arguably Anthony Carrigan’s breakout role, but he also had a recurring role as assassin Victor Zsasz on Gotham. Carrigan also appeared in 2020’s Bill & Ted Face The Music.
Barry Season 3 premieres on HBO on April 24, 2022.
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