Sarah Goldberg only just landed in Wales, but today, she's thinking of where I'm currently located: Greenpoint, Brooklyn. More specifically, the corner of streets Jewel and Nassau, not far from me, where the actress, 37, used to live. Cafe Grumpy, the cutest, littlest coffee shop of all the cute, little coffee shops in the area. Even the G train. (For you out-of-towners, that's the short, stumpy one that no one likes.) "Give Greenpoint a hug for me," she says.
I'll later learn that Goldberg has temporarily relocated from her current home in London to start filming Industry Season Three, but we are here to talk about two other important bits of entertainment: SisterS, a television series she co-created with her longtime friend and fellow actress, Susan Stanley and Barry, the Bill Hader, Henry Winkler, and Goldberg-led series that is now midway through its final season. Goldberg, of course, has been nominated for an Emmy for her turn as Sally Reed on the HBO black comedy, a role she plays with equal parts glee, rage, heartbreak, confusion, determination, and, as Goldberg herself puts it, myopia. "You've got these morally bankrupt people," the Canadian actress says of Barry's ensemble of misfits. "I always made sure Sally was never exempt from that."
In Season Four of Barry, we learn why Sally is, well, Sally. Look no further than her mother making a fast-food order while Sally explodes in the passenger seat. In Episode Four, a twisty, batshit 30 minutes of television that sends nearly every character into freefall, Sally chooses to run away with Barry. We're left with an ambiguous final shot, which shows older versions of Sally and Barry with a child. Of course, I had to ask Goldberg for her take on the episode's final scene—and why her speech on the set of Mega Girls was the most stressful thing she had to do yet in the series.
ESQUIRE: How does it feel to have the rollout of Barry and SisterS line up at the same time?
Sarah Goldberg: It's very surreal. You might have to ask me again in ten years and I can tell you how it felt. Barry, it's been seven years since I was hired. So it's a full life cycle—and it's been the most extraordinary job in so many ways. It feels like we ended the story on the right note. Then SisterS well, my best friend Susan Stanley and I, we wrote the first draft of the pilot about six years ago. We found a copy recently. It was dire. At least we've evolved in six years. We needed time, and so we finally made it.
Was there any time in there for a Barry wrap party? A real goodbye?
Last weekend we had the premiere in L.A. It was at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery. So that felt appropriate. Like we were burying Barry. Not saying that Barry dies! I mean, the show. I'm not going to be murdered by HBO. There was a moment to reflect back on the wild ride that it's been.
Merrick Morton/HBO"Of anything I’ve had to do in the whole four seasons, I was the most stressed about making that speech," Goldberg says of Sally’s Mega Girls monologue.
Let’s talk about the Sally we meet this season before Episode Four, which feels like a quasi-season finale moment.
Sally is very much haunted by what's happened at the end of Season Three. She's the first character in the show who is not involved in the crime world at all [who kills someone]. So the merging of the worlds has now happened. I was interested in the emotional response of somebody for whom killing isn't a daily part of their life when they enter into that arena. Bill and I were both interested in that and the panic attacks, being haunted by the guy she killed. She's looking for a safe place to land so she goes home, which turns out to be a fool's errand. We get a window into her upbringing and what her parents were like, particularly her relationship with her mother, which I thought was useful backstory in terms of explaining who this woman is. Hopefully you can have some empathy as to why a person develops those survival skills, shouting to be heard. And then she continues that trajectory of trying to find safety. She wants to be near Barry, because he's the only one who witnessed her most animal side and loves her anyway.
Her final attempt at the industry goes south so quickly. That’s when she's on set in Epiosde Four and she has this moment in front of the director, and it's like she’s releasing her passion for acting one last time. It's like the final humiliation. I think she's really resigned to getting as far away from L.A. as possible after that.
We've seen so many monologues like the Mega Girls speech over the course of Barry. But is that the first great, in-character performance we witness from Sally?
I always thought Sally's first honest acting moment was in the Shakespeare speech. Only because she's prepped this phony-baloney thing. Then Barry comes on with all that emotion, having just killed Chris, and it snaps her out of herself. She acts well for the first time. But I think as the seasons go on, we see her get in the way of herself all the time. The intention is always good, but she tends to overdo it. She just goes too far and myopia takes over. Actually, of anything I've had to do in the whole four seasons, I was the most stressed about making that speech.
Really?
I was really telling Bill on the day: "I don't know if I can do this." I just had to pretend I was giving a Shakespeare speech, instead of a Mega Girls soliloquy. It’s a lovely moment because it starts out as an act of kindness. In the beginning, she's genuinely trying to help—and then when she feels the quiet behind her, that an audience is listening, there was that beautiful piece of blocking by Bill, which is that if I just stepped to my right, as tall as Ellyn Jameson is, I would totally eclipse her out of the shot. It’s a moment of comic genius. That was not remotely my idea, but it was so funny.
At the end of the episode, we see a kid fighting with another kid. He comes home, opens the fridge and sees wine, beer, and a donut, and there are older versions of Barry and Sally. Could you talk about what that might be?
Where we leave, when Sally says, "Let's go." It’s safe to say we're in a whole new world. There's a major pivot. Yeah. It's tricky.
When do you cross over from making bad decisions to being a bad person?In your Season Three interviews, you said that you don't believe anyone in Barry is a particularly bad person. It’s something I’m grappling with. There’s more nature-nuture stuff going on this season.
I retract my Season Three comments! [Laughs] There are bad people on the show. The driving questions of the show are: Am I a bad person? Am I a good person? Just being the female, I didn't want her to be the moral barometer. The question is: How many bad actions equal a bad person? When do you cross over from making bad decisions to being a bad person?
Do you think you’ll continue working behind the camera?
Making SisterS was a dream come true. Writing, producing, and starring in a show with my best friend from theater school, and to be shooting in Ireland and exploring themes that were things that we wanted to talk about—it was a pinch-yourself experience. I would love to direct eventually. It's geeky as hell to say, but I just love storytelling.
Tell me about Ireland.
Ireland has a lovely, melancholy kind of poetry about it. The crews there—everybody's so lovely. We had this amazing driver, Keith Murphy, who's now one of our best friends. Every morning, he would come pick us up. It's 4:30 in the morning, we’re fried. We've been up all night writing. He'd just take one look at us, and say, "Let there be no panic." And then he'd say, "If there is, let it be organized." Absolute legend. He got us through. Let there be no panic.
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