‘Barry’ Star Sarah Goldberg Is Having Fun with Sally’s Bleak Final Act

Among the other devastating plotlines in last Sunday’s Barry, the prospects of Sally Reed’s (Sarah Goldberg) flailing acting career were thrown into sharp relief.

After a disappointing trip to her parents’ home in Missouri, following her ex-boyfriend Barry Berkman’s (Bill Hader) imprisonment, Sally returns to Los Angeles and begins teaching acting classes. At first, this career pivot feels like an adequate, maybe even satisfying compromise, after she effectively imploded her own career. Last season, Sally watched as her show Joplin got the ax. She’s also been figuratively “canceled,” after her former assistant Natalie (D’Arcy Carden) recorded Sally’s c-word-laden elevator meltdown.

When Sally takes an inexperienced actress named Kristen (Ellyn Kreutz) under her wing, it feels like she might have found the artistic outlet she’s been searching for the past three seasons. But this is Barry, after all. And happy endings are few and far between.

Likewise, after a dispiriting visit to a movie set with Kristen—the hilarious Marvel spoof Mega Girls—Sally feels that she’s run out of fulfilling options. That’s not to mention that she accidentally killed a man out of self-defense, and Barry’s indictment for murder has put a giant stain on her reputation. So she crawls back to the spiraling hit man, who’s already hiding out in her apartment after he’s escaped prison.

In tonight’s episode, titled “tricky legacies,” we flash-forward eight years to Barry and Sally’s depressing lives together as fugitives. The couple are living in a mobile home in a bland, desert town that looks like Henry Hill’s hideout location at the end of Goodfellas. Barry lives in disguise as stay-at-home dad “Clark.” When he’s not spouting truisms to their son John, he’s digging up dirt on heroic figures, like Abraham Lincoln, to make himself feel better. And Sally is now “Emily,” a brunette, vodka-swigging waitress with a fake Southern drawl. (We can assume the alcoholism aspect isn’t a part of her act.)

In a show stuffed with ill-fated characters—mostly bad men who have it coming—Sally has always stood out as the most tragic figure. The writers have never shied away from depicting Sally’s full humanity, including her occasional power trips and general narcissism. But her arc also demonstrates how easily a woman’s life can be upended by the actions of a man, especially in this episode.

Still, it’s hard not to see Sally’s thespian dreams finally being realized—albeit perversely—in her new life as Emily, a character who feels ripped from a depressing yet Oscar-buzzy Sundance flick. When speaking to The Daily Beast’s Obsessed about Sally’s new persona, Goldberg called it “the performance of her life.” Here, the Emmy-nominated actress discusses Barry’s gnarly time jump, getting her Gena Rowlands moment in Season 4, and what it’s like observing Sally’s bleak arc.

Did Bill Hader warn you that there would be a time jump eventually? Or was it something you discovered while reading the script?

Way back when we started the show, Bill was kind of asking about Sally’s arc, and if I had any hopes, dreams, desires for where she might go. I always said, I just want to go full Woman Under the Influence or Opening Night Gena Rowlands. And so he promised me we’d go there. He did good on his promise.

So I was warned, but I was surprised when I read it. I didn’t realize how extremely different it was going to be in tone and also in who Sally’s become. I was excited—I felt like it was a real departure from where we’ve been. And it’s brave to do that in the fifth episode of a final season of a series, to just pivot to that.

I assumed we would just get glimmers of Barry and Sally’s future throughout the season, because the present-day narrative was already so compelling. I wasn’t expecting to watch a full episode of their new lives, set in the future.

It was definitely different. It was just wild shooting it: the prep, the wig, the nails, the makeup, the accent when she’s at work. It was fun stuff to play with. And we just embrace that we’re in this kind of different world rhythmically. Everything slows down. The shots are so expansive. And suddenly, we’re in this wide-open space but also trapped in these tiny, insular spaces, when we’re in interiors.

You mentioned the Southern accent Sally puts on. I couldn’t help but think that, in some dark, twisted way, she was living out her ultimate actress fantasy.

You get Sally. That’s exactly it. Ultimately, there’s no point for her to be using that accent. They’re not undercover, per se, in the way that they’re in a whole different world. Right? I think that Sally has decided, if I’m going to live this new life, I’m going to give the performance of my lifetime every day even if no one’s going to witness it. She’s giving her Oscar best, and doing it all with the wig and the nails. And I think that she’s always been someone who's slightly performed her life and been taken to the next level, where she’s really giving Emily her best shot.

I mean, a hapless woman stuck in a rural town is the most prestigious role you can get in Hollywood these days.

She’s in Steel Magnolias in her mind (laughs). She doesn't realize how dire and tragic things have become.

What was it like watching Sally’s circumstances become more and more bleak this season?

We kept things really buoyant off-screen, in order to keep energy high enough to reserve space for this stuff. I’m not method at all. I really don’t subscribe to that way of working. But I would feel it at the end of a full day of playing Emily. I was exhausted in a very particular way ,because there’s a weight. There was a weight to the boots, the costume. There was a weight to the wig. And so it was tiring, but it was satisfying. Sally’s had a tragic life, and I was wondering how far we can push it—pretty far, it turns out.

But it was a fun acting challenge, really. And it was great to have this kind of tonal departure and just really embrace it and trust that we're making something different. But hopefully, the story is coming through.

It definitely is. What was your reaction to Sally having a child?

Honestly, I try to picture Sally in labor, and I draw a blank. Maybe she was just drunk, and she had a cesarean under the influence. I don’t know. She’s not maternal. I don’t think she ever wanted children. And I think that’s an agenda that Barry would have pushed. Now she’s stuck and trapped in this situation where she’s a mother and wife in this suburban existence. That was the path that she had tried to escape when she left [her hometown in Missouri] to go to L.A. So she kind of wound up back where she started.

I love that the writers have been able to weave in this incisive commentary on women in Hollywood through Sally’s arc. Do Sally’s difficulties as an actress ever wear on you, as a performer yourself?

I’ve always enjoyed the commentary aspects. It feels cathartic, and there’s a satisfaction in exposing some of this stuff. The actress who played Kristen did such a brilliant job. And in some ways, Sally could be seen as an older version of Kristen and act as some kind of mentor. Instead, she turns into a bully, in the way in which she was bullied. I thought it was interesting, the way there’s a generational gap there and how the students are willing to accept that kind of treatment. But there’s also a gender gap in what we might accept from a male teacher versus what we accept from a female teacher.

But all that stuff on the movie set with Mega Girls, it is exploitation of women in these hot girl costumes. And it’s tough at times, I suppose, where you’re like, how do you expose the thing without actually doing the thing as well? And I think they walk the fine line with that where we always understand the intent of all the characters. There’s a cynicism that’s tragic and hilarious and important to expose, so it was fun walking all of those lines.