Last night Bill Hader made his very first (!) visit to The Late Show. The Barry star and Saturday Night Live alum sat down with Stephen Colbert to chat about the origins of his HBO series, having the special advantage of a little lead-in for it called Game of Thrones, and whether or not he misses being on SNL — which he doesn’t at all due to the crippling stage fright it used to cause (this was one of the inspirations behind his “Weekend Update†character Stefon, too). “Lorne Michaels tried to help me. After season four he went, ‘You know, you can work here as long as you want.’ And that was his way of, like, ‘Chill the fuck out,’†Hader remembers. Near the end of the chat, Colbert brings up Hader’s unique talent for impersonations, which leads to both men trading their very good, current, and relevant takes on James Mason. For Hader, it’s a very specific impersonation he performed during his SNL audition, in which Mason has an expired gift certificate for a dozen doughnuts. Not too bad for a guy who never took acting classes.
If this clip leaves you with a craving for more Hader impersonations, Team Coco recently uploaded Conan O’Brien’s great interview with Hader from way back in 2005, in which Hader shows off the Mason impersonation as well as quick takes on Al Pacino and Arnold Schwarzenegger. If you missed it the first time around, go ahead and fix that now: