The actor and comedian rose to fame as ‘the impressions guy’ on Saturday Night Live. Now he’s the star of an Emmy-winning sitcom, which he also writes and directs. If only he could be less anxious about it all …
I’m early for my interview with Bill Hader, but he’s even earlier, waiting for me in his office when I arrive a very uncool half-hour before we’re scheduled to meet. I say I can go for a walk until the appointed time, but he makes a “Don’t be ridiculous” shrug and tells me to come on in. In his vintage T-shirt, dark jeans, white trainers and hair that probably should have encountered a barber at least six weeks ago, he looks closer to a 1990s video shop slacker than the multi-award winning director, writer and actor that he is, with his very own office on the Sony studios lot in Los Angeles, which is where we’re meeting today. Hader himself is pretty bemused at how things have panned out for him.
“I’m such a movie nerd that, the first time I came here, I knew that Buster Keaton had lived here, so I wanted to see that. And stage 27, where we shoot our show, that’s where they shot The Wizard of Oz. Pretty crazy,” he says, eyebrows gently rising over his mask. Despite the two of us maintaining a careful social distance, Hader and I keep our masks on throughout the interview because, due to a longstanding eye problem, he is on medication that suppresses his immune system, “which is not great right now. And then people say, ‘Getting stressed makes it worse.’ And I’m like, ‘Gee, well, I wish I could stop that,’” he says without a drop of sarcasm.
