‘Barry’: How Did Anthony Carrigan Work On NoHo Hank’s Russian Accent?

Anthony Carrigan revealed that he worked with a professional to learn the Russian accent for his role as NoHo Hank on HBO’s “Barry.”

In a recent interview with Den of Geek, Carrigan said that he tried to speak with the accent during his audition for the dark comedy series. But because he didn’t have any accent training prior to trying out for the part, the 35-year-old actor isn’t sure whether he was doing it correctly at the time.

“Well I was winging it at the audition,” Carrigan said when asked how he worked with his accent on the show. “I tried my hardest but I’m not sure if that should necessarily resurface. It was still pretty similar. But then we had an expert come in to help us with the specific sounds.”

Carrigan also did some research on his own. “I watched a lot of films with really well done Russian accents speaking English,” Carrigan told Collider last month. “I really built this character from the ground up.”

Carrigan noted that getting professional help with the accent is really important for him because being familiar with it allows him to do some improvisation. “We ended up doing a lot of improv, and you have to know what you’re doing if you’re going to go off script. [So] we wanted to make sure we weren’t all over the place with the accents,” Carrigan told USA Today.

The actor added that he got to do a “decent amount” of improvisation while filming the show. “It was really fun,” he said the experience. “It was one of those things where the script is so good off the bat that you don't want to mess with it. But those guys (series creators Bill Hader and Alec Berg) love to kind of play around and see what the best possible outcome will be. So yeah, they were encouraging that from the very beginning. It was just a very loose and free environment.”

In an interview with Vulture last March, Hader said that there were certain scenes on the show where they “could let the actors kind of go nuts.” However, Hader, who plays the title role, pointed out that the story of the series has “narrative propulsion” to it, meaning in such tight, 30-minute episodes, the actors couldn’t really do improvisations all the time.

“Barry” airs Sundays at 10:30 p.m. EDT on HBO.