Hader serves as co-showrunner, executive producer, star, and sometimes director of the series, so when Collider’s own Steve Weintraub spoke with him at the press day for It: Chapter Two, he asked Hader about the show’s immense success and getting ready to go back to work on Barry Season 3. Hader revealed that the writers room for the show’s next season opens in October:
“For us, it feels like you’re telling a story chapter by chapter and then you have like a year off between chapters, and people are responding to where it is at this moment. In [co-showrunner] Alec [Berg] and I’s mind it’s like we see this kind of bigger story that we’re trying to write, and it’s constantly shifting too. In two weeks I go into an office with Liz Sarnoff, one of our writers, and we just are gonna start working on Season 3 just the two of us while Alec is wrapping up Silicon Valley, then the writers room starts in earnest in October. That’s where my head’s at.”
The show’s ratings exploded in Season 2 thanks to Game of Thrones, as the final season of the most popular show in HBO history served as the lead-in to Barry for the majority its season, which resulted in a significant ratings increase. Hader admits the lead-in was “pretty awesome.”
But as preparations for Season 3 get underway, do Hader and Berg see an end in sight for the series? Hader said the show isn’t planned that far in advance yet and mapping out each season has been an organic process, but he did reveal that there’s a significant plot point that may or may not arise in Season 3, which will mark a significant turning point:
“Each year [we] see where the writing takes us. There’s a big thing in the show that is part of our initial idea when we first sat down and talked about it that we’ve never gotten to. Every season I’ve written it up on the board and we put enough story in front of it that it just gets knocked off the board and we’re like, ‘Oh I guess we’re gonna have to put that in the next season,’ and then Season 2 I put it up there and it just keeps getting knocked off the board. In two weeks I’m gonna [put it back up on the board] and we’re gonna see if we get to that, and I think that’ll be an important thing to know where you take off from there or if you just kinda wrap it up.”
