Interview: Stephen Root Talks What Makes Fuches Tick on ‘Barry’

HBO’s Barry was one hell of a ride. The series created by Alec Berg and Bill Hader (who also stars as the title character) was just about as unpredictable as can be. Over four seasons it served up a unique mixed of comedy and chaos to the point you may have found yourself laughing and not quite sure if you should be.

One reason for this, beyond the extraordinary writing and vision of its creators, are the characters themselves. As described by Stephen Root, who plays Barry’s mentor and often nemesis, Monroe Fuches, “Everybody in this show is kind of morally reprehensible.” When you put together so many self-serving and complex characters together in one show, there’s going to be fireworks – or, more accurately gunfire, backstabbing, betrayals, and loads and loads of lies.

Awards Radar sat down with Root to discuss his work on the series. Unlike his character, who is not someone you’d want to spend time with, he was delightful and provided great insights into the draw of series, how he became and actor, Barry and Fuches’ relationship and much more. Check out some these moments where Root breaks down Fuches and watch the full interview below.

On Fuches being a fake:

“As much as we need to know about him is that he? He knows he’s a fake. In almost every sense. He doesn’t have a kid was in the army. Yeah, he was shoveling beans at the rear. He never saw action, like Berry did. And he can pretend all he wants, but I think that’s part of Fuches his character that he knows he’s a fake. You know, he’s a fake in every aspect of his life. And that’s what makes him so immediate. really angry at anything and jumping on anything.

On Fuches’ evolution across the series:

“He becomes somebody who has confidence, you know, who got confidence in prison, but he started, he started as a guy who was jealous of not having a kid like Barry had; being able to kind of raise as a bad Uncle, Barry and have that father adjacent position. But being the kind of guy he is, he’s always been unsure of himself. He has no confidence and his confidence comes out as being a bully. Do what I say, say what I do, and if you don’t, then then I’m going to go to 11 and freak out. But fortunately, they’ve written it so that we start out really low. You see that he’s not a good person, but he stays within his realm of ‘do what I say.’ No, you just haven’t done it, you do it, ‘Do What I Say!’ You get to the point that this guy breaks and then you have the ongoing revenge cycle that he goes through with, I love you, I hate you, I’m gonna kill you. I love you though I hate. So that’s just good writing throughout the series to get him to that point where you’re really he’s at his most emotional, because we changed that in the pilot. He had started at eleven and we we had to redo that and start him at one – which was great.”

The complete series of Barry, all four seasons are now streaming in Max.