Bill Hader on Bringing in [Spoiler] as Hitman

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Barry Season 4 Episode 3 “you’re charming.”]

If you’re going to bring in a hitman to kill Barry (Bill Hader) in prison, but you want to make it somewhat comedic, do what the HBO series just did.

In the latest episode of Barry, Noho Hank (Anthony Carrigan), now planning to take out rather than break out the titular character upon hearing about the deal he’s made with the FBI, turns to Toro (Guillermo del Toro) to hire professionals … sort of. The two men who will do the job? They have a podcast on which they rate and review gadgets (yes, you have to imagine what those products look like). And, as we see when the time comes, one of them is someone Hader knows very well: his former SNL costar Fred Armisen.

“Fred is just one of my favorite people in the world. And when I was writing that, I went, ‘oh man, it’d be so funny to cut to Fred, all sweaty, looking scared, kind of knowing that his thing’s not going to work,’” Hader laughed when talking about that casting with TV Insider. “None of their gadgets have ever really worked. And so he knows there’s like a 50-50 chance that the gun was going to work, the pin gun or whatever.”

He continued, “yeah, it was great having him there, and he was so funny and so sweet, and it’s so easy. We’re very laid back [and] have kind of a very easy shorthand with each other, so there wasn’t much to do.”

Leading up to that moment, Barry has sat down with the FBI (and denied doing so to Hank) and detailed pretty much everything, in exchange for a new life with Sally (Sarah Goldberg), not that she knows about any of this. (Barry thinks she’ll be into it since she said he makes her feel safe.)

Fuches (Stephen Root), despite Barry’s betrayal, can’t just let his friend get killed and tries to warn the guards, but to no avail. And so when Barry meets with the FBI and agents from WitSec at the end of the episode, he spots the very nervous guy in the back (Armisen) and calls him out for being there to kill him. When the hitman tries to shoot Barry, the gun backfires, blowing off his finger. The other hitman in the ceiling kills everyone in the room except for his partner and Barry, who then shoots him. And with that, Barry leaves, Armisen’s character is left crying out in pain (but alive), and the warden wants to know where his inmate is.

We don’t think we could’ve loved that more.

Barry, Sundays, 10/9c, HBO