The nerve-shredding scene that gave Bill Hader a panic attack: “I can’t handle this”
Bill Hader has played his fair share of gruelling characters: for one, he was fantastic as a hot-yoga-loving Santa Claus who hates Christmas in Noelle opposite Anna Kendrick, which is a nightmare just to think about, and surely, looking himself in the eye while playing such a disturbing character means he’d have nerves of steel, right?
Not quite; it’s hugely appropriate for someone like Hader to have voiced the character of Fear in Inside Out 2, a movie that sees our human emotions come to life, and despite his charming smile and deadpan delivery, Hader is not too far from that weasely little slip of a boy haunting the brain of one of Pixar’s rising stars.
Hader wasn’t always this way: as a youngster, he participated in that teenage ritual we’re all familiar with, burrowing under feathery duvets, cornels of popcorn scattered uncomfortably in the sheets, while a terrifying monster appeared on the screen. He reminisced to the New York Times exactly this: “I remember being a teenager and just loving monster movies.”
But, things can’t stay this care-free forever. Eventually, being terrified isn’t just an emotion to exercise at a sleepover, but something that seeps into life when you least expect it to. In his own words, Hader said, “As you get older, what you’re scared of changes into very real-life things. You lose people in your life, and it’s brutal in a different way.”
It was this realisation that led to a full-blown panic attack for the star, as both his fear of the screen and anxiety in his life culminated into one unkillable beast – and no, I don’t just mean a zombie. Hader recalled, “I remember being at SNL when I saw 28 Weeks Later“. Hader’s right to identify the 2007 horror directed by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo as one of the most gut-wrenchingly scary movies in the last few decades.
Hader had a hard time with the movie, but not just because of the blood, guts and gore. The actor admitted, “I watched the opening sequence, and I had a whole panic attack. I was like, I can’t handle this right now, because I had, like, real-life stress.” We put our belief in the magic of the movies to, at least for two hours, take away the daily agonies and stresses of being an adult with responsibility. But sometimes it doesn’t quite work.
Do we blame Fresnadillo for this, then? On the one hand, he excelled in creating an opening sequence that sticks in your memory, equal parts juicy and deranged, with just enough tension to twist a knife deep in the gut.
But the fact of the matter is, Hader had other things on his mind, and not even the breathless adrenaline-pumped question of life or death in the face of a bat-shit crazy zombie could stop the thoughts from coming, and coming, and coming.
Thankfully, Danny Boyle’s follow-up, 28 Years Later, enjoyed a greater critical reception and weasels in enough of a sob story to pull at your heartstrings, so if the zombies don’t get to you, a dying Jodie Comer certainly will. Let’s hope Hader had better look watching that movie.
