Everything is new inside Barry season 4. Since the show’s time jumps back a few episodes, everyone looks a little different. But no one looks different than Stephen Root’s Fuches.
When he is finally released from prison in Episode 6, he almost doesn’t look like the mild-mannered man he passed as before. Now he goes by the Raven, complete with prison tattoos, a white top, painted black nails and goofy eyes (never leave the house without them). It’s a character Root enjoyed playing — and one, he says, that was being finalized practically to this day.
“I think [Barry star and co-creator Bill Hader] had a physical description in his head all season,” Root tells Polygon. “And we had to decide on the day how much of the transformation you were going to see — are you going to see his whole body? Are you just going to see a neck?
In the end, they chose the whole body, which allows us to see how much Fuches has changed. His arms and chest are covered in tattoos (flowers, skeletons, and even a red cross on his biceps), all drawn from a range of options available to him and the makeup artist who designed them. Root’s favorite is the visor on the back of the Raven’s neck, something he “didn’t even know if you’d see.” (Don’t worry, you can.)
“It was endemic to this character that he would have a target on his neck,” says Root. It was all about his view of Fuches as fundamentally changed by his time in prison, changing everything from his appearance to the way he carries himself. He played the same character, but with a completely different toolset. “My favorite characterization of the Raven is, he carries that little bag of clothes outside [of prison]. But he doesn’t carry it like a lunch pail like a schlub. I decided, I’m going to get the front of it.
“He just grabbed it because it’s not important to him. And he gives it to someone who is not important. And that grounded me a little bit in this man’s silence.
Like so many other people on Barry, it’s a silence born of brokenness, a pain from Barry (Hader) betraying him that metastasized inside him to create something darker. Of course, it also put him in a better position in prison – Root credits the lunchroom scene where everyone waits for him to eat as the moment the poison in Fuches catalyzed into something else and set him on the path to becoming the Raven.
“He is now a powerful person within that space, which he was not before; he was taunted and ridiculed. So now that he has that power, I think he’s gotten more and more confident in the intervening years. He got more and more tattoos; he got grounded and centered and was okay with being a killer,” says Root.
But while everything is new in this future world where Barry is a father, Sally (Sarah Goldberg) is a mother, and Cousineau (Henry Winkler) is in hiding, the Raven is as Fuches as he’s ever been.
“I would describe Fuches as a lost lamb,” says Root. “And that’s just being a selfish person [like], If you don’t do what I want – it’s almost like a baby.
“But it’s all about respect. When he finally gets respect, he changes.”
Barry’the fourth and final season now airs Sunday evenings on HBO and Max. The last episode is on May 28.