‘Barry’ Emmy-Nominated Sarah Goldberg on Unmasking Sally’s Relationship Myopia in Season 3

When Awards Daily last spoke with HBO’s Barry Emmy-nominated co-star Sarah Goldberg, the internet considered Goldberg’s Sally the pariah of the series. Perhaps that’s a bit harsh, but as a character, Sally did not have fans. In a series filled with criminals and murderers doing very bad things, Sally emerged as the one to draw the ire of the online community. As Goldberg put it, “It’s hilarious. The guys on the show kill people and Sally is a little bit ambitious and narcissistic and somehow she’s the focus.”

Why was that, and has that changed over the course of Season 3?

One thing has changed for certain: Goldberg’s Season 3 performance has gotten even better. An Emmy nominee for Season 2, Goldberg’s Sally began to realize the dangerous state of her toxic relationship with Bill Hader’s Barry. This revelation came as she undertook a life-long dream: leveraging her abusive relationship history in a critically acclaimed streaming television show. Yet, the irony surrounding Sally has always been her relationship myopia: she’s so intensely focused on career momentum that she failed to understand she’s potentially repeating the same pattern with Barry. It’s a brilliant arc, brilliantly played by Sarah Goldberg.

Awards Daily explores that myopia with Sarah Goldberg as Barry heads into its hugely anticipated season finale (this interview was conducted when only six episodes of the 8-episode season were available for critics). We also talks about that audience reaction to Sally and whether or not audiences can find sympathy for this comically tragic character. Finally, we talk about Goldberg’s stand-out comic moment of the season: enduring the dreaded press junket.

Take a look at this fascinating conversation with Barry‘s Sarah Goldberg.

Awards Daily: So starting off, I love, love, love, love your performance in Season 3. I think it’s the best yet. When you last talked to Awards Daily, you were asked about the positive reaction to Sally’s showcase, which ends Season 2 and how that would potentially change her future. Our writer asked you where would you like to see her going from here? Here’s what you answered: ‘What I’m curious to see is what happens to someone when they actually get the thing that they want when the cost is too high. I want to see where she sits in the balance of the compromise she has had to make with herself in order to achieve the things that she has been so hungry for.’ So with that, how does that all play out in Season 3? 

Sarah Goldberg: Well, I was clairvoyant, wasn’t I? I’m glad that that’s where we went with the storyline. Sally’s been in a kind of underdog position for the first two seasons, and she’s got this myopia, this absolute obsession with one thing, which is acting. I was curious to see what would happen if that transpired into something that we perceive as success in the modern day, which in this case, having your own show. For her, I think the cost is pretty high, because for the first time, her art is being met with the world of commerce. I’m interested in what happens when you commodify trauma. This is a story that’s incredibly personal to her. and yet she’s having to completely detach herself from it in order to get the job done.

So, there’s the great moment in episode one where she’s watching literally the worst moment of her entire past play out in front of her with stunt doubles. It doesn’t even faze her. She’s completely disengaged from it. So, I was curious about somebody who is not the most mentally healthy. What happens when they wind up in a successful position, and they’ve had to give everything of themselves to get there. So, we played with that in a few different ways. Sally has been bullied. She has been verbally. She has been sexually harassed in the workplace. I wanted to know what happens when somebody who’s been in this sort of underdog position gets that bit of success. Who do you become? Do you become the leader that you would want to have? Or do the worst parts of yourself amplify, and you become the bully yourself?

We played with that a lot in scenes like in episode one when she’s in the office with her bosses. She’s basically monosyllabic, which we don’t often see Sally, and she’s trying to impress and is eager to please. As soon as we flip the scene, and she’s with Natalie in the hallway and she’s got the status, she turns into a bit of a monster. It’s a totally guileless monster. She thinks that she’s done me a huge favor by getting her this job. She thinks she’s been very kind to her, but she’s ordering her around like a servant without a second thought. So we were just interested in that kind of play on bullying, and what happens when you are in a power position? What do you do with it?

AD: I want to get back to that comment you made just now about her myopia and her singular vision on achieving that end goal, exercising her art. I wondered if you would agree with that this myopia buries her ability to see this toxic relationship right there in front of her?

SG: I think it’s two things. I think that’s absolutely correct. Like I’ve always said, Sally and Barry are the perfect couple in that they’re completely functional in their absolute dysfunction. These are two totally desperate people, but they work well because Barry treats her like a star, which is all she needs. Sally’s myopia means she doesn’t know he’s a killer, so that helps the relationship. On the one hand, yes, I think her career drive is a total eclipse of the sun. She can see nothing else.

But I think that the other thing that’s going on here as Barry’s behavior becomes more erratic, more abusive, she is blind to that as well because she’s having a trauma response. This is pattern behavior. We tried different things with the arc there where his behavior became more aggressive toward her. In the beginning, she was more knowing, and she was covering for him a lot more. It was interesting to play. Ultimately, we decided it was more interesting if she’s actually completely blind to it and unaware because she’s fallen into old patterns so quickly. Then it takes a young person who’s the greenest person in the room, but the only one who’s seen the truth — Elsie Fisher’s Katie who’s playing Chloe. It takes her perspective and her honesty and bravery. When she speaks up to Sally, that’s what snapped Sally out of it.

AD: You’re talking about that moment where the realization sort of washes over where Katie (Elsie Fisher) confronts her with this knowledge. She provides this third perspective that Sally didn’t recognize. The moment where you as Sally understands is a very powerful moment. It’s largely a wordless moment. What was going on in your head as you were filming that moment?

SG: One thing that went through my head was just how good Elsie Fisher is. How much I love working with her. That was a hard moment to play, I suppose, because it was a wordless moment. That’s the way we tried to build it was that, on a subconscious level, Sally knows what’s happening. On a conscious level, all her behavior is pushing that down, and she’s covering for it. When that moment came, it is literally a wake up call. What was challenging about it was its immediacy. If you think about it, in terms of what’s been brewing underneath, it’s all come to her in one way. It’s like someone’s throwing water in her face, you know.

So that’s how we went about tackling it because it had to move quickly. She’s immediately making the choice to break up with him. There’s also another layer to that episode, which is on the one hand, she’s become aware of the fact that she’s in an abusive relationship again, and she’s having to be honest with herself about that because she has been confronted in the mirror has been held up equally. She is having the most successful career moment of her life and everything she ever dreamed of has come true, and Barry’s not there to support her. She’s been using Barry for a lot of their relationship for self esteem and to feel like she’s a great actress. There’s a part of her that, I think, is feeling courageous to leave because the thing she’s always wanted is seemingly coming true. So there is this sense that, ‘I don’t need you anymore.’ That’s Sally “dark side,” which is always present.

AD: A few things lead from that, but I’m dying to ask a question that I know you probably can’t answer. So let me phrase it in a different way. Do you think Sally’s capable of actually having a healthy relationship at this point in her life?

SG: Oh, that’s a good question. At this point in her life, I don’t think she’s capable of it, no, but that’s not to say I don’t have hope for her. If she ever put some of her hard earned money towards some therapy, then she could get there. I think there’s a good person in there somewhere who’s trying. What’s great about the characters on this show is that everybody’s really trying their best, but what happens is they’re constantly put in these situations where they’re given two options: one is short term gain, even at dire consequences, and the other would mean a long term play. They always choose the short term game, and they get the dire consequences. So, we’re just seeing a group of people who could be better versions of themselves but constantly are choosing the selfish approach to life. Then we watch the fallout of where that takes them. If Sally could slow down and take stock, then perhaps we could see her walk toward a healthy relationship, but she’s a long way off from that.

AD: Right, and I think that’s one of the things I find most fascinating about the character of Sally: she’s the embodiment of everything that writers and actors are told to do, which is use what you know. Use your personal, lived experience. Use your trauma. Not everybody can or should do that healthily.

SG: I think that’s really astute, and that’s really what I’ve tried to play with with her. Her intentions are good, but it’s always a misfire. It’s why I’ve always said with Sally she’s not cruel. It’s that she’s self involved. Her cruelty is coming from a place of self involvement, not calculated cruelty. She’s not considering people around her enough to understand her own behavior. She’s just not very evolved, which makes her fun to play.

AD: Absolutely. So going back to that interview from which I quoted earlier, I wanted to quote one more thing because the writer asked you at the time about this negative fan reaction that evolved during the Season 2 arc. You mentioned that she’s a ‘dialed up version of a lot of negative qualities that we all have in us.’ I know you’re not on social, but do you think, as we see Sally realize she’s repeating past mistakes, that realization will ever loosen up audiences to welcome Sally or to sympathize more with her?

SG: I think it’s not totally my business. You know what I mean? That’s why I’m not on social because, if I come at it from that approach, I don’t know where to start my work. I feel like I was not surprised with the reactions to Sally. In fact, we were prepared for them, we welcome them. I was fascinated by a society that we live in that watches a show like Barry where there’s multiple male characters killing people on screen and nobody bats an eyelid. However, a woman is ambitious and self involved, and there’s an uproar. Sally is actually based on a lot of men that I’ve worked with, and I feel like this is a show about morally bankrupt people making bad decisions. The thesis of the show is, ‘Am I a good person?’ I was very clear from the beginning that I did not want Sally to be exempt from that just because I’m the only female series regular. I didn’t want to be the moral barometer on this show just because I’m the woman, and I definitely had Bill [Hader] and Alec’s [Berg] support with that. Let’s make her monster.

That said, we’re in a lucky position that we get to keep making this, and as the series develops, you get a deeper storyline about any character and more backstory and more layers and colors and more experiences. It does become easier to empathize with the characters. I hope that, with all the characters on Barry, there’s a deeper understanding of why everyone’s behaving the way they behave. It’s not necessarily about empathizing with Sally or liking Sally, but understanding Sally would be nice.

I’ve always said you don’t have to like her, but you have to know her. I feel like I know her. We want people to care when they watch the show. This is a show about dislike. These are dislikable people, and I think that’s okay. Art is supposed to reflect the darkest parts of our species. That’s what we’re doing. We’re reflecting it back and then going, ‘Oh, that’s not great.’ There’s been so much pressure on women to constantly be the ‘likeable’ character: the sweet girlfriend, the maternal character, the mother figure, the giving one, the moral voice, the voice of exposition. I’m really tired of all of that. It was why I was attracted to the pilot script because I thought they’d done a really clever job of Trojan horsing this character where you start thinking that she’s your average sweetest pie, small town girl. You think she’s going to be the girlfriend, and that’s going to be that. Then they completely undercut it with somebody who’s made of much nastier stuff. That, to me, was interesting.

AD: Yes! Even though I’m not in LA, and I’m not interacting with a lot of up-and-coming actors like Sally, I think you’ve made her portrayal universal enough, some aspects of her character universal enough, to where people can relate to her. I definitely relate to her in terms of people I’ve met in my own non-LA walk of life.

SG: She’s in every walk of life! Sally’s in real estate. Sally’s in journalism. She’s everywhere if you look for her. It’s fruitful stuff to play, even if it’s ugly.

AD: So, we’ve covered a lot of dark stuff, but my last question is a bit of a lighter question. As Sally, you don’t often get to play a lot of straight-up comedy. 

SG: No, I’m just hired to cry. Again. Cue me crying.

AD: But you do have one hilarious scene where Sally goes through the junket process for her show, and she’s asked questions that are totally and completely irrelevant to the work such as ‘Who do you think the new Spider-Man should be?’ Does that come from personal experience? Have you been through those junkets before?

SG: Well, I have. I definitely have. That episode was written by Emma Berrie, and she’s wonderful and so talented. It was just very funny and very true to life when I got the episode. I’ve done a few, and I think I remember the first one I did I was so nervous. You know that ‘deer in headlights’ thing of so many people coming at you with questions and bright lights and photo flashes. I think Emma captured that really well. We wanted to play not only the high comedy of it but also play sort of the nerves and anxiety. That this is what Sally thought she wanted, but actually it’s kind of a form of torture. How did you feel watching it as a journalist?

AD: Ha. Well, I try really hard as a writer to ask interesting questions, to give different perspectives. 

SG: And you do.

AD: Well, thank you. I don’t like to do junkets for that reason. You get such a limited amount of time that you can’t really write about the material in a way that you really want to. I prefer awards season writing because it usually happens after the show has come out, you can avoid spoilers, and you can really dive into topics. But it does give me pause because, you know, I’m not always on my a-game. Hopefully I’ve never asked anybody a question like that.

SG: I was gonna say I’m sure you’ve never asked anybody who the next Spider-Man should be. I have absolute confidence. The press junket was really good fun to play. When we’ve been to send up parts of our industry, i’s such a joy to do those scenes.

AD: And you need a break from all the murder…

SG: …and the crying…

AD: That too! 

Barry airs Sunday nights on HBO and streams on HBO Max.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPfUHBa3130