“Peo­ple have said they feel less alone after see­ing this film” – Bill Had­er on The Skele­ton Twins at 10

“I know I wouldn’t have been able to make Bar­ry if hadn’t been for The Skele­ton Twins,” admits Bill Had­er, trac­ing the lines that con­nect his unas­sum­ing 2014 indie-dra­ma to the crit­i­cal­ly acclaimed HBO hit-man series he made just four years later.

Before star­ring in direc­tor Craig Johnson’s sec­ond movie, Had­er was best known as one of Sat­ur­day Night Live’s most valu­able per­form­ers; a comedic pow­er­house with mem­o­rable char­ac­ters and impres­sions to spare. It was a rep­u­ta­tion that had quick­ly earned him equal­ly mem­o­rable spots in big-screen come­dies Super­bad, Trop­ic Thun­der and Hot Rod but deep down he yearned for some­thing meati­er. ​“I was excit­ed to try some­thing dif­fer­ent,” he tells Lit­tle White Lies, ​“and I was very lucky that Craig saw some­thing in me to be able to play this part.”

The part he’s refer­ring to was about as far from a typ­i­cal Had­er role as you could get. While his SNL fans were used to see­ing him try­ing not to break in a big blonde wig on sketch­es like The Cal­i­for­ni­ans or tip­ping Seth Mey­ers off about New York’s newest hip­ster hang­outs as über-cool cul­ture cor­re­spon­dent Ste­fon, The Skele­ton Twins invite Had­er to open his heart and his wrists to play some­one more ground­ed, authen­tic and complex.

In Johnson’s world, he played Milo, a gay thir­ty-some­thing who sud­den­ly finds him­self back in his child­hood home­town after a failed sui­cide attempt, liv­ing with his twin sis­ter Mag­gie, played by Hader’s Sat­ur­day Night Live co-star Kris­ten Wiig. As we watch Milo try to men­tal­ly put the pieces of him­self back togeth­er we learn that Mag­gie has her own demons that are slow­ly doing their best to erode her mar­riage with her per­pet­u­al­ly hap­py hub­by Lance, played by Luke Wil­son. So far, so seri­ous – so how did Had­er over­come his rep­u­ta­tion as a laugh fac­to­ry to land such a lay­ered role?

“The kind of stuff [I was get­ting offered at that time] was most­ly author­i­ty fig­ures based on Super­bad and this movie I did called Adven­ture­land,” says Had­er. ​“I real­ly love those movies but [the roles I was see­ing] were always the young protagonist’s doo­fus boss.” Deter­mined to mix things up, Had­er decid­ed to take part in an unpaid table read for a dif­fer­ent genre of script to prove that he wasn’t just a fun­ny face. ​“It was Kate Winslet, Bradley Coop­er, Paul Dano, Gre­ta Ger­wig and me,” he remem­bers. ​“I was like ​‘What am I doing at this table…’”

Imposter syn­drome aside, Hader’s stint at the table read was a suc­cess and impressed the right peo­ple. A few weeks lat­er, he received a phone call from the cast­ing direc­tor who had set it up, this time with a new propo­si­tion. ​“She said, ​‘There’s this script called The Skele­ton Twins and I think you’d be real­ly good for it.’ I read it, loved it and went to meet Craig.” A peri­od of devel­op­ment hell fol­lowed while the film strug­gled to secure financ­ing but when it land­ed on the desk of a fresh-from-Brides­maids Wiig, every­thing changed. ​“Sud­den­ly, we had the mon­ey overnight and we were ready to go,” recalls Hader.

From the start, Had­er knew that his por­tray­al of Milo had to be dif­fer­ent to the oth­er gay char­ac­ter he was syn­ony­mous with play­ing on Sat­ur­day Night Live. ​“I remem­ber say­ing [to John­son] ​‘I don’t want this to be Ste­fon. I like Ste­fon but this isn’t Ste­fon,’” he says, of want­i­ng to deliv­er a more three-dimen­sion­al por­tray­al of an open­ly gay character.

“The writ­ing was beau­ti­ful and I respond­ed to that. I so bad­ly want­ed to do some­thing dif­fer­ent. It’s fun­ny,” he con­tin­ues, ​“I feel like if I did that movie now, I’d prob­a­bly put in a lit­tle bit more sub­tle­ty.” To illus­trate his point, Had­er recalls the way he han­dled an ear­ly scene where Mag­gie first meets a teary Milo after a decade spent apart – and his unsuc­cess­ful sui­cide attempt. ​“I found out lat­er that [John­son] was like, ​“I didn’t real­ly want you to cry dur­ing that scene’,” he laughs. ​“All actors just want to find some­place where they can cry – and I ful­filled that cliché.”

The vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty demand­ed by the role was no small thing and made even more daunt­ing thanks to his rep­u­ta­tion as a break­out come­di­an. Despite a decade hav­ing passed since The Skele­ton Twins came out, Had­er still has trou­ble recall­ing cer­tain moments, like the first scene he shot where Milo vis­its a local book­store and unex­pect­ed­ly comes face-to-face with the for­mer teacher whom he had an illic­it under­age affair with whilst still in school.

“That was my very first shot [as Milo]. We’d nev­er rehearsed and Craig had no idea how I was going to play it. Even I had no idea how I was going to play it,” says Had­er, remem­ber­ing the scene he shared with Ty Burrell’s teacher Rich. ​“I remem­ber Craig com­ing over to me after­wards and say­ing ​‘Oh, so he’s out…’ and I said ​‘Yeah, I kind of see him as out.’ It was so nerve-wrack­ing. Even today, if I see a still from that [scene] I get mas­sive anx­i­ety because there’s always a fear that you’re going to do some­thing and the film­mak­ers will look at each oth­er and say ​‘This is not what we want­ed at all.’”

Thank­ful­ly, hav­ing a close-knit set and his Sat­ur­day Night Live col­league of the last eight years by his side gave Had­er the con­fi­dence to lean into a new side of his per­son­al­i­ty. ​“Kris­ten was and is a beau­ti­ful per­son, very empa­thet­ic and a real friend. Our first scene togeth­er is where we’re in the bar, I’m in drag and we slow dance togeth­er,” says Had­er, recall­ing a rare moment of lev­i­ty in Johnson’s film. ​“That was her first day see­ing me act as Milo and she was such a great cheer­leader. We’ve worked with each oth­er for so long, it did feel very much like a broth­er and sis­ter [rela­tion­ship]. There wasn’t much dis­cus­sion, we just kind of felt it out. We knew what the oth­er would do and we just did it. There was a feel­ing of fearlessness.”

Through­out the film, Mag­gie and Milo share var­i­ous ups and downs as they grap­ple with their bro­ken psy­ches. This tur­bu­lence helps them reach euphor­ic highs, like the ful­ly-improved scene in the dentist’s office where the pair goof around. How­ev­er, it also deliv­ers some painful lows, like the moment Mag­gie final­ly airs her unvar­nished true feel­ings about Milo’s affair with Rich.

“The den­tist scene was fun because we were both just laugh­ing,” remem­bers Had­er. ​“Kristen’s such a good impro­vis­er and so good at play­ing off of you and feel­ing your ener­gy. We were all in awe of her. What I remem­ber most about the argu­ment scene was that we filmed it on the morn­ing of the awful Sandy Hook mas­sacre,” he reveals, explain­ing how The Skele­ton Twins’ most painful scene was shot amid a real-life tragedy where a shoot­er opened fire in an Amer­i­can ele­men­tary school. ​“We were all in a very weird, dev­as­tat­ed head­space. When I see that scene, what I remem­ber is hear­ing this tru­ly awful, unimag­in­able news and that some­how being a part of it,” adds Had­er. ​“Also, Kris­ten and I hav­ing to hurt each oth­er didn’t feel good.”

Shot in just 22 days, The Skele­ton Twins debuted at Sun­dance in Jan­u­ary 2014 before going on a lim­it­ed the­atri­cal release lat­er that year. Had­er still remem­bers the film’s grand fes­ti­val pre­mière as a ​“nervewrack­ing expe­ri­ence” – so much so that he had to aban­don the screen­ing entire­ly and wait it out at a near­by cof­fee shop. How­ev­er, when he caught wind that the film was being warm­ly received – espe­cial­ly dur­ing the scene where Milo play­ful­ly lip-syncs to Starship’s ​‘Nothing’s Going To Stop Us Now’ – he ten­ta­tive­ly head­ed back inside the cinema.

“Peo­ple liked it,” smiles Had­er. ​“I remem­ber that night, some­one from Sun­dance said ​‘Tonight, you guys are the toast of the fes­ti­val. Enjoy it because tomor­row night this movie Whiplash is pre­mier­ing and no one’s going to be talk­ing about you’ – and he was right,” he laughs, ref­er­enc­ing the arrival of Damien Chazelle’s drum­ming drama.

10 years lat­er, The Skele­ton Twins has end­ed up help­ing peo­ple on both sides of the cam­era. For Had­er, it paved the way towards his crit­i­cal­ly-laud­ed hit-man dra­ma Bar­ry: “[HBO] said we’re inter­est­ed in work­ing with you but not based on the work you did on Sat­ur­day Night Live, we real­ly like what you did on The Skele­ton Twins,” he reveals For audi­ences, it has emerged as an unlike­ly ther­a­peu­tic tool. ​“I’ve had peo­ple come up to me who have dealt with depres­sion or had a rela­tion­ship with an old­er man in high school and felt shame about it say they feel less alone after see­ing this film,” he smiles. ​“That’s been real­ly rewarding.”