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When Bill Hader's Barry first debuted on HBO it was an immediate success. The story, world, and characters developed by Bill Hader and Alec Berg were gritty and real. Though Anthony Carrigan's NoHo Hank was an instant stand out. NoHo Hank brought a sense of humor to an otherwise dark world of crime. Anthony Carrigan's performance was one of a kind, and the show wouldn't have been the same without him. Which is odd seeing as NoHo Hank was originally not supposed to make it out of the pilot episode. What would Barry have looked like without NoHo Hank? Thanks to Bill Hader and Alec Berg we'll never know.
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You know what? You are a f***ing liar. The deal is off. Go f*** yourself
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This is one of the greatest scenes in the fourth and final season of Barry. It's tense
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tragic, and brutally violent. Best of all, it brings one of the main character's stories to
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a poetic end. But without a fundamental change to the show that happened way back in the pilot
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we never would have seen it. Hey man, you must be Barry. I'm no cocaine
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Thrust of life was good, no? It's no secret that we love Barry on this channel
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We have a whole video praising Bill Hader's incredible performance as the titular character
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and it's clear that his heavy involvement in the writing, directing, and production
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is a big reason why the show is so spectacular. And while we could go on about him and his multidisciplinary talent for ages
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he's not the only person on Barry who deserves their flowers. Sarah Goldberg's progressively unhinged Sally Reed
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Stephen Root's unpredictable fukes, and Henry Winkler's slow breakdown into a husk of a person as Gene Cousinow are all standouts
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But perhaps the most compelling of all our mainstays is Anthony Kerrigan as the Chechen gangster Noho Hank
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What are you doing? How are you? What am I doing? I'm set up to kill Paco like you asked me to
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What do you mean, what am I doing? Oh, right. Duh. From his first moments on screen in the pilot episode
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Hank doesn't just carry his own weight. He helps set the tone of the episode and the show moving forward
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His light-hearted, almost childlike approach to the seedy underworld of crime is exactly what a black comedy like Barry needs
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And while his initial incompetency as a member of the Chechen Mafia doesn't seem like much to build a character off of
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Kerrigan still manages to make Hank likable, memorable, and ridiculously funny within the span of just a few minutes
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Have you ever been shot? I have. It's like crazy painful. Thankfully, over the course of the series
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Kerrigan gets to stretch out a lot more and explore the inner life of his character
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For that we have to credit the brilliant writing of Bill Hader co Alec Berg Liz Sarnoff and a whole host of others Hank goes from what is essentially mafia middle management to a legit businessman and ultimately a feared crime boss
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He experiences love and loss and has his positive outlook on life tested and broken
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All the while, Kerrigan shows off his comedic skills and delivers now iconic lines that fans are still quoting years after the series finale
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Oh, come on. You guys are like a flea to back. You break up, you get back together again, and then you go out and make a great album
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like the best of Fleetwood Mac. So it might surprise you to learn that NoHo Hank was never supposed to make it out of Barry's
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pilot episode. Hank's original role in the pilot script was essentially the same as it is in the
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finished episode, with one major difference. He dies at the end. After contracting Barry to murder
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Goron's wife's personal trainer, Hank largely disappears from the episode, appearing only two
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more times. The first comes when he follows Barry and sees him pass up an opportunity to fulfill the
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contract. The second is right at the end when Hank decides to take matters into his own hands
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He tasks one of his guys with killing the trainer and then with killing Barry, but the gun jams
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leaving Barry free to retaliate and shoot up the Chechen's car. Noho Hank's life was supposed to
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end there, along with his two other henchmen. As Bill Hader put it himself in a 2019 interview
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with Uproxx? Yeah, when I shoot up the car, he was dead. And then Alec and I said, we'd be insane
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to kill that guy. He's so funny. This was a bold choice to make, and it gets even more interesting
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when you consider when they decided to make it. Letting Hank live wasn't a decision made during
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casting, after a table read, or sometime before shooting. As Hayter recounted to the LA Times
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years later, we were lining up the shot where he was supposed to get shot. I went up to our director
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of photography and Alec Berg, and I was like, should we kill him? I don't think we can kill him
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which is probably why we see him open the car door and shuffle out of sight rather than simply slump over in the passenger seat
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The naturally subsequent episodes needed to be rewritten and room had to be made for a completely new character to take up screen time
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The logistics of this aren simple and the effort required to make it work isn insignificant The lean and snappy storytelling of Barry is one of its strengths but it also leaves very little room for error or excess
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Adding a whole new character with their own arc to an already stacked cast
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full of intricate and interwoven narratives could have spelled disaster for a lesser production
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And yet, having been thoroughly impressed by Anthony Kerrigan, Hayter and the rest of the team assumed the risk was worth the potential reward
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Obviously, we know they were right in that assumption. Noho Hank wasn't just a good addition to the show
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he's arguably the best character Barry has to offer. And while he doesn't directly interact much
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with any of the main casts outside of Barry and Fuchs, his story ends up being the most human
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horrifying, and hilarious. Well, do you know any other assassins? No. Well, what do you want me to do
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Go to John Wick Assassin Hotel with help out to sign? I mean, what? His desperation to prove himself to the Chechen mob
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in the first two seasons becomes a running gag that provides fans with plenty of laughs
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but it's also a huge source of drama and violence for Barry
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who gets tangled up in the politics of crime. As that plotline grows and escalates
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Hank's rivalry and eventual partnership with Cristobal, played by Michael Irby, helps to expand the horizons of the show
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and remind us that there's a world outside of Barry's story. For the better part of an entire season
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Hank's relationship with Cristobal provides much-needed levity from the dark and depressing arcs our other characters are on
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Without it, the show would be difficult to sit through, but on paper, it shouldn't fit as well as it does
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It's essentially a rom-com inside a gritty crime drama, and through the teamwork of the writers, directors, and actors, it all works
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In fact, Kerrigan is so charming in his performance that he's the only character you find yourself rooting for
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by the end of season 3 and into season 4. That's quite a feat, considering he's been a murderous mobster
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actively profiting off the suffering of others for most of the show. And it's even more impressive when you remember
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that he wasn't even supposed to last this long as a character. Of course, because no one can ever be happy in Barry, Cristobal dies, directly because
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of Hank's actions. We seen moments of Kerrigan dramatic acting abilities in previous episodes but this scene in the fourth episode of season four takes things to a new level of acting prowess I would never fall in love with a psychopath Yeah well it took a psychopath to save you from your crazy f wife okay
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The way he balances fear, anger, and heartbreak as Cristobal prepares to step out their front door is masterful
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He dances on the line between pleading and demanding that Cristobal stay
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and when that doesn't work, we see an unexpected shift in Hank. At that moment, he chooses his career over private happiness
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And though he breaks down for a shockingly vulnerable few seconds, he pulls himself together in the end
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fully transforming him into the character we come to know by the end of the show
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Seeing Hank's soft demeanor gradually morph into a tormented, dangerous showboating persona
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is a perfect demonstration of Barry's ability to turn comedy into tragedy
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He became the man he so desperately wanted the Chechen Mafia to believe he was back in the first season
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and he lost everything in the process. So when his life is finally snuffed out in the series finale
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it's just as memorable as his first moments in the pilot. Hank's standoff with Fuchs, his insistence that he's nothing like him
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and his decision to call off the deal only to be gunned down at the feet of Cristobal's statue
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is a perfect way to end his story. The way he clings to the statue's hand while taking his last breath utterly alone
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is visually stunning and evocative. Bizarrely, that's not how it went down in the original script for the finale
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Hater told Variety in 2023 that the plan was for Sally to be there
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and for her to place Hank's hand into crystal balls as he died. That was the ending they shot
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and it was Sarah Goldberg herself who went to Haider to say it was unnecessary
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The scene we see in the finished episode was a reshoot, and it proves just how integral and strong Hank's character has become
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He didn't need another main character's assistance to satisfy his arc. In the end, it's just Hank
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The whole thing hinges on Kerrigan's performance, and his death is inarguably one of the most thematically poignant moments of the fourth season
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maybe even the whole show. And if it wasn't for Kerrigan's wit and skill as a performer in the pilot, as well as the crew's willingness to give him a chance
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we would have been robbed of that and countless other moments of NoHo Hank's brilliance in Barry
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NoHo Hank's brilliance in Barry