Ike Barinholtz was delighted when he saw his cartoon alter-ego on “Bless the Harts.”
“When I first saw the artwork I’d never been happier because he’s jacked,” Barinholtz, 42, says of his character, Wayne Edwards. “He looks like early-’90s Arnold [Schwarzenegger]. Just freakin’ yoked! I was honored that was how [creator] Emily Spivey saw me.”
The animated comedy (8:30 p.m. Sundays on Fox) from ex-“Saturday Night Live” writer Spivey follows a blue-collar Southern family: matriarch Betty (Maya Rudolph), her adult daughter Jenny (fellow “SNL” alum Kristen Wiig) and Jenny’s daughter Violet (Jillian Bell, “Workaholics”). Barinholtz’s Wayne is Jenny’s long-time boyfriend who’s also close with Violet.
“That relationship [Wayne and Violet] is really earnest, because you’ve got this big, dopey guy and this young, sarcastic woman,” he says. “But they really love each other. It’s pretty sweet.”
Barinholtz, who grew up in Chicago, had to work to craft the perfect Southern accent. He found it through a combination of his longtime pal Jason Sudeikis — who he’s known since they did improv together in the ’90s — and an experience he had on the set of HBO’s “Eastbound & Down.”
“When I was down in North Carolina shooting ‘Eastbound & Down’ there was a teamster who just had the perfect accent,” he says. “I remember it was so melodious. So it’s mostly him, and there’s a tiny bit of Jason [Sudeikis] in there, even though he has a Kansas City accent. The way he ends some of his words … I notice I sound like him a bit [on the show].”
Barinholtz credits his friendships with Sudeikis and other “SNL”ers with getting him interested in “Bless the Harts.”
“It’s all about Emily [Spivey]. She was someone who I was a huge fan of when she was a writer on ‘SNL.’ I had a lot of friends on it at the time, and they’d say, ‘She wrote that sketch you like,’ ” he says. “She’s really an ‘SNL’ writing all-star. Regardless of the part, I would have done [‘Bless the Harts’] just because I’m such a fan [of Spivey]. So all of a sudden you’re reading this great material written by one of them, with Maya and Kristen. The fan in you comes out a bit.”
Viewers who’ve previously seen Barinholtz in shows such as “The Mindy Project” or films including “Neighbors” won’t be surprised to find that Wayne is a sweet-natured goofball.
“A lot of my characters could basically stand in a version of ‘Of Mice and Men’ as Lenny,” he says. “They’re like sweet, dim men. I think if you’re playing a character who is a good person and you’re able to portray that, it really does get you a lot of currency with the audience. If you can show them that you’re a nice guy who’s a little vulnerable, they have a tendency to root for you.
“If you’re able to posit your character as a good-hearted person, you get away with a lot of stuff,” he says. “You can say crazy things and get yourself in incredibly stupid situations.
“But at the end of the day, if you’re playing a character that has a kind core to him, that makes the [audience] happy and helps them connect with you.”