You Can Thank The Skeleton Twins for Barry
Kristen Wiig and Bill Hader’s timeless lip-sync to “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now” isn’t the only thing The Skeleton Twins gave us. At Vulture Festival’s 10-year anniversary reunion for the film, Hader said Craig Johnson’s comedy drama is also the reason that his HBO show Barry exists. According to Hader, he was always being asked to do “sketch-y” work in meetings after his stint on Saturday Night Live. “HBO was a place that was like, we saw Skeleton Twins, and we really liked your work in that. We’d like to see something like that,” he said. “Alec Berg came to the premiere of Skeleton Twins because HBO was like, you gotta go see this movie.” The network told Berg that Hader wasn’t just “an impressionist guy,” and Berg was convinced after the screening. The pair went on to co-create Barry. “There’s no way that would have happened if it wasn’t for this movie,” Hader said.
Skeleton Twins represented a dramatic shift for Wiig and Hader, who were at the time known primarily for their comedic work. At the reunion, the SNL alums recounted crying together after the scene where Wiig’s character references Hader’s character’s suicide attempt and suggests that maybe next time he should “cut deeper.” After sweating while dancing in the aforementioned lip-sync, Hader had to pivot to shoot a scene where his character comes home drunk after attempting suicide.
While Wiig was “a little nervous” about how Skeleton Twins would be received, Hader felt fine about it — up until the morning of the Sundance screening, anyway. “I had a total, complete panic attack. Couldn’t leave the hotel room, was like, oh my God, oh my God,” he recalled. “My wife at the time, Maggie Carey, went. I went across the street to some restaurant in Park City, and then looked at my phone and just sat there.” She texted him that the audience was loving the film. “And then she went, Oh my God, the lip-sync scene just got a massive applause break. You should really come back,” Hader said. “And so I came back and just kind of peeked in the front. It was amazing.”