During a recent Gold Derby video interview, contributing editor Tony Ruiz spoke in-depth with Henry Winkler (“Barry”) about Season 4 of his HBO dark comedy, which is eligible at the 2023 Emmys. Watch the full video above and read the complete interview transcript below.
SPOILER ALERT! The show’s final episodes find former acting coach Gene Cousineau (Winkler) suddenly accused of all of Barry Berkman’s (Bill Hader) crimes, to the point that even Gene’s own son believes in his father’s guilt. The series ends rather tragically for Gene, as he kills Barry in cold blood and then gets sent to prison.
When Winkler first learned about his character’s ultimate fate, “I went and had an avocado toast because I started to shake,” he confessed in our webchat. “I’m a pretty verbal guy. I had nothing to say.” The actor later added, “I think that in his mind, the total collapse of his life was made possible by Barry Berkman. And I think he saw no way out. Nobody believed him … I think he went insane. I think Gene just flipped.”
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Tony Ruiz: I’m Tony Ruiz, contributing editor at Gold Derby here with Henry Winkler who stars as Gene Cousineau on Barry. And the funny thing, Henry, I was wondering where I was going to start with you, and then the only thing that came into my mind was how completely shocking it was to me, not just to see you as Gene Cousineau kill Barry, but to see you Henry Winkler shoot somebody through the head.
Henry Winkler: Well, I’ll tell you. We start in July to shoot the season, and we finish in November, December. And Bill decided he was going to direct all eight episodes. And I come in to the set and he said, “Hey, we just broke the last episode of the season of the show. Want to know how it ends?” I said, “Sure.” He said, “Well, you kill me.” And I went and had an avocado toast because I started to shake. I’m a pretty verbal guy. I had nothing to say.
TR: So you play the scenes, you’re thinking about it, and now that it’s aired, what do you think about it? What do you think about Gene’s choice?
HW: Well, I think that in his mind, the total collapse of his life was made possible by Barry Berkman. And I think he saw no way out. Nobody believed him. His son couldn’t stand up for him. He shot his son. He literally thought, my life is over. This man did it. I am out of my mind. When I was in the room with all of those people in the hotel room when I think that it is, I’m going to meet Daniel Day Lewis, and it happens to be the DA and Janice Moss’s dad, my son, a guy who completely hoodwinked me. I think he went insane. I think Gene just flipped.
TR: And I had read somewhere, and I completely agree with you, that there was never any scenario where Gene would actually kill himself.
HW: No, I think that Gene is one of those men that has mirrors in his brain so that everywhere he looks, he sees himself. And I think that he would think about killing himself and then go, “That’s the silliest thing I could do. I would never do that. People would be disappointed.”
TR: Well, which brings me to one of the main questions that now that the series is over, I’ve always known I’ve wanted to ask you this is who is the bigger enemy to Gene? Is it Barry or is it Gene himself?
HW: Gene himself.
TR: Yeah. The thing that is a through line of this series is people trying to be somebody other than who they are. And Gene coming back from Israel and we see him with the long hair. And I remember just being so shocked by that. My question is, did you have a whole storyline built in of, do you think that actually, that eight-year period where he was in Israel, did that actually almost change him or did it just kind of gloss over the surface?
HW: Well, he wanted it to change him, but here’s what was cut out of the show. I went and I built houses for people who really needed them. I made their lives better. And then what you didn’t see was the houses completely collapsed. I couldn’t do it. Even that I couldn’t do with the help of the kibbutz. I couldn’t do it.
TR: And yet so much of Gene this season, I think there was a hope, I think with a lot of the characters, there was this hope that they were going to ultimately find happiness. And-
HW: Well, that was the overall theme. Can you redeem yourself? Can you be redeemed? And apparently a lot of people could not except for Sally. But you know what is interesting, and I wrote an autobiography and I didn’t realize it when I did it, but the overall theme was, I was who I thought I should be at the beginning of my career. And I have worked toward becoming more who I am and devil may care, but the almost exact theme of Barry without even knowing it.
TR: And you’ve said that this experience has made you a better actor.
HW: Well, oh, I could not have done this character years ago. I was not ready to play the levels that Bill and Alec gave me as a gift from Heaven. And that is not hyperbole, that is just sheer looking down the barrel of the truth.
TR: And so what do you think changed? Is it just experience?
HW: Experience, relaxation. It’s interesting. One of the very first things that I wrote in my notebook at school, at graduate school for acting was, the theater is my temple and I will keep it clean. And if my fellow actor doesn’t, I will clean it for them. And two, acting is relaxation, concentration, and listening. And what I said before about being who I thought I should be stops you from a crescendo of those three elements coming together.
TR: This series, I think, still, in my opinion, has one of the great ensemble casts.
HW: Yes.
TR: Because it could have very easily, Bill could have easily made this him front and center, and he is creatively such in such way. But it is such a great ensemble between you.
HW: Yes.
TR: And Carrigan and Steven Root and Sarah Goldberg.
HW: Steve Root, oh my God. Sarah Goldberg. Oh my God. And
TR: Robert Wisdom who-
HW: Robert Wisdom, that scene in the garage. We have become good friends now. Wow. The power of that man, D’Arcy Carden, one of the great improvisors of all time. I just saw her on Broadway.
TR: In the Thanksgiving play.
HW: In the Thanksgiving play. I mean, oh my God.
TR: But what is it about that atmosphere? How do you think Bill fostered that atmosphere to create this?
HW: I know exactly. Bill and Alec had a policy from the very beginning. No Assholes. Not in front of the camera, not behind the camera. And they kept to it.
TR: There’s some certain scenes I just need to talk about with you this season starting with the big monologue for the Vanity Fair. I mean, how many iterations were that? How long did it go on versus what we actually saw?
HW: Well, there was a part that was cut, but for the most part that was it. As soon as I got the part, you know what I did, I had the most wonderful time and I got amazing reaction as did Bill from that. It was gratifying to do it, to get on top of it and just own it. And then the wonderful response that came, my son is a director Max, and he went, “Dad, you did a great job.” And I thought, well, there it is. I’ve won everything I need to own.
TR: Well, and one of the things that I love is that even though the message of what he’s saying is essentially true, it is so grandiose and so over the top. And so-
HW: Gene.
TR: So, Gene.
HW: That is the wonderfulness of Bill, Alec and the writers, Liz Sarnoff and Duffy Boudreau and the rest of the writing room. If it ain’t on the page, it ain’t on the stage. I don’t understand how this industry, they don’t understand that the writer is the beginning and the end of the entire process.
TR: Amen to that. I wanted to ask about the last time we see Gene sitting after shooting Barry, what is going through your mind in that as you’re just slumped on the couch?
HW: I see, I know they call it gray matter, but I see the brain when it is relaxed and full and functioning as pink. And I sat there and my brain turned absolutely dark gray. I didn’t even see a planet. I just saw vast emptiness.
TR: And yet the ironic thing is that Gene now has kind of the fame. The notoriety. We’ll put it that way, but for something that’s out-
HW: Yeah, you know what? I’m not sure that that’s the way he wanted it.
TR: Exactly.
HW: I mean, I think it’s so interesting that Barry is buried with full honors and I am in jail for the rest of my life. I taught the boy to act. What is that? How do you treat that? I treated him like a son. How do you treat me like that?
TR: I love that you’re just channeling him right now.
HW: Well, it’s still fresh, I must say. I absolutely adored being part of this group of people, of doing this show. I didn’t know what was going to happen. I didn’t know how I was going to get to where they wrote me, but we had an… I don’t know, sometimes there’re just no words.
TR: What was the last thing you shot?
HW: Oh, unbelievable. This was really emotional. We’re at my cabin up in Big Bear. It is freezing. It is so cold. I’m in the cabin. I’m alone. I’m sitting there with the gun before I shoot through the door. Bill called cut. I came out of the cabin and the entire crew was there and it was the last shot of the last scene of the last Barry. And I talked to the crew and I thanked them for taking such good care of me. And Bill hugged me and he whispered in my ear, “I love you. Thank you for being such a great colleague, a great partner.” Oh my God. He might have said that to other people. It didn’t matter. It was just unbelievably powerful.
TR: I’m reminded, I’m thinking of the film at the end, the film within the show.
HW: Yes. Right.
TR: The Mass Collector and how Gene is played by a very brilliant at Michael Cumpsty, who is a brilliant stage actor. I’m just curious, as you Henry Winkler, when you see that, what do you think about Michael Cumpsty playing you and you’ve got this kind of swab, British accent?
HW: Yeah. That I became the villain. But the actor, I’ve never met him, but he was terrific. He made me look more posh than I am. I like that. I saw he could use more highlight on his cheeks, but aside from that, maybe it was the lighting, I don’t know. But I saw-
TR: Do you think Gene would watch that film? Do you think Gene would watch the film?
HW: Oh, absolutely. Oh my God. I think that I would absolutely watch that film and be outraged that I was the villain of the piece. How dare he?
TR: I wonder if Gene would be secretly like, “Oh, but they made my hair darker.”
HW: Oh, that’s interesting. I never thought of that. I thought Gene is much more handsome with a more gray white hair than just an average run of the mill Brown.
TR: Just in the last couple of minutes here, very few people, and I’ve asked certain people this, very few people, actors in this business have one hit show. And it’s even rarer, I think for it to happen twice. And in a career as long as yours to happen at this point in your life, what does that mean to you?
HW: What does it mean? So I am a typical actor. I am nervous all the time. I am a typical actor. I want to work and I have no idea where it’s going to come from. I sat at my desk at Paramount after Happy Days thinking, I have no idea what to do. Will I ever do anything as meaningful as this character in that genre? And then I had all this wonderful luck along the way and boom, I got the call. You’re on a short list. Would you go and meet Bill Hader, an HBO show called Barry? I don’t know, when you get it, you don’t know what’s going to happen. I’m a cog. We were all around a table reading at the beginning of Barry. All of the actors are there. And it never dawned on me that I would not see half of them ever again, that they would go off. And we were all in our pods telling our story, sometimes intersecting, sometimes never seeing them, and then this happened.
TR: You just can’t get any luckier than that.
HW: No, you can’t.
TR: Henry-
HW: But you also have to remember that I am such a great student of the theater that Gene was bound to rise to the top like Cream.
TR: I’m thinking of you talking about you being the cog in the wheel. And I feel like Gene would say he’s the wheel.
HW: You know what? I was many cogs. Yes. I took up a lot of the wheel. It really is true. The entire show revolves around Gene and everyone’s fate is somehow connected to him, even though that’s not true.
TR: Well, Henry, thank you so much. It’s just been just a great experience these last four seasons. Everybody go to goldderby.com, make your predictions for the Emmy’s and stay tuned for interviews with more contenders throughout the season. Henry Winkler.
HW: Well, what is the prediction? Am I winning or what?
TR: I guess you’ll have to stay tuned and find out. Henry Winkler, thank you so much.
HW: A pleasure as always.
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