Collider: At the beginning of the episode Barry basically decides to spur one father figure and run right into the arms of another, but that seems easier said than done. It feels like Barry is starting to realize that the fact that he killed Moss may prevent him from truly opening up to Gene.
HADER: Yeah. It's really funny, as written initially you saw Barry and Cousineau in this big acting exercise where Barry kind of delves into his past. And to do the scene with Sam where he has to play a violent person, it was kind of flashes to Barry's life. I don't wanna tell you what they are because we might use them later, but we had these flashes to his life and his past where you kind of understand aspects of where Barry came from, and that helped him play Sam. We shot it, we edited it, and I remember Alec Berg after he finished his first cut came in and looked like he was gonna throw up. He looked sick and he just said, 'I fucked up, it doesn't work,' and I was like 'Oh I'm sure it's fine' and I watched it and I was like, 'No you didn't fuck up, we fucked up in the writing.' The scene with Barry and Fuches by the bathroom, that scene initially was under a bridge, and we shot it where it's me and Stephen and the breakup, but it was about like five different things. It wasn't just Moss, it was their past, it was all this other stuff. So even when we were shooting it we were kind of like 'This isn't really tracking.'
So it was like these two sequences that just didn't work, so we called HBO and we said, 'We need to reshoot some stuff,' and this was in February. So we need to reshoot some stuff and the show's airing in like a month. We did the reshoots in mid-March, like two weeks before we aired the first episode.
Collider: That's crazy.
HADER: (Laughs) Yeah. Alec and I sat and talked about it and what we realized was we were trying to make it about Barry's past and everything else when maybe what it wants to be is what we already have, which is 'Tell him you killed Moss.' This is a thing Alec and I run into all the time, which is you have the simple answer looking you right in the face but you need to explore all the ideas it could be, then you end up coming right back to where you started. Our initial idea was him saying, 'Did you tell him about Moss?' and Barry using killing Moss to play Sam, and so that was the initial idea and then we completely got off of it and did this whole other thing and then realized we were right the first time. So the scene with me and Stephen at the bathroom, that was a reshoot and we just made it about Moss. And then we reshot the scene with me and Henry where I come into the class workspace and say, 'Can you help me?' and then we're sitting across from each other and he says the whole thing about, 'Sam was a violent person, you were not, this is the worst thing you've ever done.'
And then onstage with Sarah, that is what we shot until I turn away. That is an edit trick where in that scene, the reset—so I turned away, and then we took that and we shot, a long time later basically, my closeup of looking down, and then we shot on a stage Barry shooting Janice. So yeah we shot all of that like March 15th or something, like one day of shooting.
Collider: I had no idea. How do you make that blend so seamlessly? Is that stressful?
HADER: No you just shoot super specific coverage, and it's actually kinda nice, you have the scene cut together so it's just putting in the stuff that's not there. You say, 'Oh I need a closeup of Barry here and it's down to three shots of Janice.' You just shoot what you need.
Collider: I did want to ask about the look on Barry's face when he kills Moss, which is almost relief of sorts. It was interesting to me because this season he seems very tortured over what happened to Moss, and connecting that with the evil nature of his deeds in Korengal, but then we finally get to see that moment when he did kill Moss and it wasn't one of anguish or regret, it was kind of like 'Okay. It's over now.'
HADER: Yeah it's like you wanna surprise people's perceptions of what was going on in Barry's head, and it's kind of like a private moment of 'You can't get me.' Because in the scene with Sally, it's him exerting his power over her through violence. You have to be able to make that work. So it's a nice moment of you think he killed Moss and he felt terrible, and it's like, 'No it's complex.' He did feel terrible, but in that moment I think there was a feeling of, 'Don't fuck with me.' In his mind, Moss had a gun on him and he gave her a clear way out. And that scene at the end of the finale last year, he's basically telling her like, 'I just don't wanna kill you.' There's no version in Barry's mind that he's ever going to prison. It's a double meaning when you watch it, like oh he's not saying 'Please no' because he doesn't wanna go to prison, he doesn't wanna kill her. So there's a little anger there of like, 'What the fuck did I tell you?' And then in the acting class, getting in touch with that side of him allows him to play Sam.
