Henry Winkler Takes Us Inside His Iconic ‘Barry’ One-Man Show
The Greeks would be pleased with Barry’s fourth (and final) season, which has reaffirmed a long-held truth about this show: It is the literalization of those famous faces of Grecian drama, the laughing-and-crying masks representing the muses Thalia (comedy) and Melpomene (tragedy). Once a comedy with a lot of darkness, the HBO marvel has evolved into something haunting, sorrowful even. Yet when those laughs do come—and thank goodness, they still do—they’re just as smart, surprising, and revealing as ever.
In Thalia’s corner in this, Barry’s final season, is Mr. Gene Cousineau (Henry Winkler). After his heel turn in Season 3, in which he sold out his former student/current hitman Barry Berkman (Bill Hader) to the Feds as revenge for killing his girlfriend Janice Moss back in the first season, Mr. Cousineau is salivating over his newfound attention.
“He wants so badly to be a good person,” Winkler tells the Daily Beast’s Obsessed, about where we first find Mr. Cousineau this season. “He makes a promise to Jim Moss [played by Robert Wisdom] not to talk to anybody. [Jim and Cousineau] are going to keep the memory of his girlfriend, of Janice, sacrosanct.”