The Partnership: ‘Hacks’ Stars Jean Smart And Hannah Einbinder On Upcoming Season 5, Wanting To Do Stunts & The Importance Of Shooting In LA

In ‘Hacks’ rollicking rollercoaster of a fourth season, comedy cohorts Jean Smart and Hannah Einbinder traversed all-out war, touching reconciliation and a shocking outcome. As Smart’s veteran comedian Deborah Vance reached for the brass ring of a talk show hosting gig, her fear of failure created a world of hurt for Ava Daniels (Einbinder) and much disruption for their agents Jimmy (co-showrunner Paul W. Downs) and Kayla (Megan Stalter). But, as always, Deborah and Ava led viewers through it all with a chemistry that leaps off the screen and has served the HBO Max show’s hit status all the way to its recent Season 5 renewal. Here, Smart and Einbinder describe a bond so tight, they often seem to finish each other’s sentences, and how it felt to shoot a season filled with vitriol toward each other—a risk that would ultimately pay off, but required trust and the bedrock of true friendship.

SPOILER WARNING: The following interview contains spoilers for ‘Hacks’ Season 4.

DEADLINE: How did you feel when the showrunners (Downs, Jen Statsky and Lucia Aniello) showed you the scripts and you saw just how viscious things would get between you both?

JEAN SMART: I mean, I kind of like to be surprised and because I trust them so much, I don’t worry about it. But I was a little surprised that it got so contentious and so dark, but I didn’t have any doubt that it would work, because what they do always works. It takes it to a whole new level. It’s sort of like a marriage where you know there’s just that bond there [with Einbinder], and sometimes it gets real rough, but somehow it works out. You can only do that with people that you actually have a strong bond with. If they had been like that the first season, it wouldn’t have worked, and the audience wouldn’t have cared about them. So, it’s perfect, actually, this happening at this time, I think.

HANNAH EINBINDER: The audience is our third in our toxic relationship.

SMART: It’s a threeway.

EINBINDER: They too are kind of onboard with us.

SMART: That’s what’s so great. And again, their timing I think is perfect because the audience is into it, they’re all in. And so we get to take them where we want to take them, and I think they’re hopeful that it won’t stay that way.

DEADLINE: And how do you both feel about how things played out after that and how the season wraps up?

EINBINDER: It is so nice to see the girls in the swing of things again, finding their common enemies in Bob (Dan Bucatinsky), and frankly, Stacey (Michaela Watkins). Poor Stacey, and, by the way, Michaela Watkins is a genius.

SMART: Oh, my god.

EINBINDER: Just so funny. But yeah, I think it’s nice to see the girls united against a common enemy with a common goal. And then watching Deborah giving up the show for Ava because of Bob’s ultimatum.

SMART: Because we think, after the scene at the beach, we think, “OK, now they’re back and it’s going to…” And then it just goes [mimes nose dive]. And the audience is going to think, “After that, Deborah, you’re going to screw over Ava again?! After Ava said, ‘I can’t let you keep doing this to me. You keep promising me things and you keep breaking your promises.” And Deborah says, “I won’t. I won’t. I’ll walk back through that ocean for you, whatever you want.” And then…

I do think when I look at Ava’s life, it does feel like her whole life has been about Deborah. And I would love to see them maintain a relationship, a real relationship, whilst filling out the rest of their lives.

Hannah Einbinder

EINBINDER: But doing that for Ava’s sake, doing it for… Bob asking her to fire Ava and her just being like, “I’m going to choose her. I’m going to choose her, and I’m going to listen to everything that she’s been saying this entire season about how this is an environment that just squanders our creativity and limits us.” Deborah doing that is just, I think, so impactful and, frankly, feels like the growth that we have been yearning for all season. That is a huge point for Deborah to put, first of all, someone before herself, and also someone before her career. She does choose Ava and the relationship and makes a moral decision. And it’s really nice to see, I think.

SMART: But it’s really because Bob was crappy in bed [laughs]. No, I’m sorry. Bad joke. Bad timing, bad joke. No, but it’s true. And you just think, “Oh, my god, no! She’s not going sacrifice Ava again?” And then on national television, she says, “I’ve been asked to do something and I’m not going to do it.”

EINBINDER: Yeah, it’s really horrible.

DEADLINE: This is really the end of an entire arc for them. Everything that happened when they met was Ava trying to teach Deborah to just open her heart and care about people.

EINBINDER: Yeah. This is that. It actually is that. She won’t fire Ava, and she’d rather quit the show. It was this beautiful, point of growth and it’s really nice. And then they go somewhere after that. But I think the way that it all wraps up is exciting into Season 5.

it’s crazy that this is Hollywood, movieland, and they don’t shoot any movies here. The fact that it’s been allowed to get that bad.

Jean Smart

DEADLINE: Well, the showrunners have said that a total of five seasons would be their dream ideal. If you had your way and you were running this show, how would you have your characters’ stories end?

SMART: I’ve thought about that so often and I can’t really picture it.

EINBINDER: I agree.

SMART: I have no idea what they have in mind, and they’ve had it in mind for years. I just haven’t asked.

EINBINDER: It’s so hard to say because it’s so hard to know what the whole season brings. But I do think when I look at Ava’s life, it does feel like her whole life has been about Deborah. And I would love to see them maintain a relationship, a real relationship, whilst filling out the rest of their lives. Deborah has a grandchild. Ava should probably connect to people her age and her community. I would love to see her nurture relationships.

SMART: Yeah, then to be able to let each other go, but stay totally in each other’s lives.

EINBINDER: Yeah, they’re calling, they’re talking on the phone. It’s like a call back to when we’re doing that texting bit…

SMART: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. That was really good. And I don’t know if she’ll get back with Marty. He’s supposed to get married to somebody.

DEADLINE: The scene where Marty and Deborah dance killed me. This is what this show is about. It’s about championing women and coming down on ageism. And the messaging in the show is so clearly that Marty and Deborah have this true connection, no matter what he does. They really do. And it’s there in that dancing scene where so little is said. I did love the press conference scene too, where Deborah is announcing her new role hosting late night and all the journalists are asking her really ageist questions. It’s such a powerful scene because there’s Winnie (Helen Hunt) coming in and saying, “Oh, you have to smile and be nice. You can’t be an angry woman.” How did you feel shooting that scene Jean?

SMART: Well, I totally understood it. I’m sure I’m still a victim of that much of the time, that idea that you don’t… And part of it’s being a middle child. You don’t rock the boat, you try to make everything nice. And men are not… I don’t know if they don’t naturally feel that way, or if they’ve been taught to not necessarily feel that way, but that’s definitely still a woman’s burden, I think, to a certain extent to make sure everybody else is OK before her. And then that part of that’s being the mother. I mean, that is partly biological, I think, is you will put others before yourself, certainly your children before yourself. So who knows if we’ll ever get over that completely.

EINBINDER: We’ll need a liveable planet to make it to the point where we can have that kind of progress. The way it’s going, we’re not going to get there before it’s all over.

SMART: No, because now we’ve gone back to the whole idea of the trad wives. And if that makes somebody happy, fine, go for it. But the problem is, it’s indicative of some other things that are going on that are very unhealthy.

EINBINDER: Say that, queen.

I’ve been very pleasantly surprised at how many straight white men love the show. I wasn’t sure that was going to be the case, but they seem to. Because bottom line is, funny’s funny, you know?

Jean Smart

DEADLINE: One thing I really like too is where Ava has to learn what it’s like to be Deborah. She has that moment in the writers’ room, she realizes, “Oh, I’ve always championed the idea of be kind, have the birthday cake for the staff, do the sweet thing,” and then realizes in a one-two punch that her love life is grist for the mill, and the writers don’t care about the fact that she’s subsidizing them. And all this kindness isn’t paying off, it isn’t being reciprocated. And then you see that these two stories start to converge. She starts to understand Deborah, even though they’re at odds.

EINBINDER: Yeah.

DEADLINE: And then Ava drives through the studio security barrier. How much fun was that, by the way?

EINBINDER: I didn’t get to do the actual driving through the barrier. They don’t let me do the fun stuff.

SMART: I know. I was just going to say, they don’t let us do the fun stuff!

EINBINDER: I want to freaking break sh*t.

DEADLINE: And you could have done Ava’s crazy jump onto the trolley bus too, but you didn’t get to, right?

EINBINDER: I didn’t… The jumping on the trolley was also not allowed.

SMART: That kind of makes sense.

EINBINDER: They don’t let me run without sneakers. I’m not allowed to do running stuff. The rules, I understand, they’re for safety, but I want to get dirty. Anyway, yeah, [for driving through the barrier] I got to be on basically a tow truck camera rig for the speeding up and a scream. But I didn’t get to actually break the barrier, but I did get to watch our wonderful crew do it.

SMART: It looks really cool. We’ve all wanted to drive through one of those things.

EINBINDER: I’ve never driven through it, but I have ridden someone’s tail out.

SMART: Well, sure.

DEADLINE: This show is both shot and set in LA this season, which feels so important now, and especially since in the fires and so sadly the house which served as Deborah’s home was lost. How does it feel to be representing such an iconic scene in LA as the CBS studios? It just feels like it’s the right time to be doing that.

SMART: I was having that whole conversation this morning with someone about how it’s crazy that this is Hollywood, movieland, and they don’t shoot any movies here. The fact that it’s been allowed to get that bad. I don’t know, I’ve been told that the problem is that if the Governor’s office, or whoever makes those decisions, gives the tax break to the Hollywood industry, they’ll have to give a tax break to every industry that’s in California. I don’t know how that works, I don’t know if that’s true, but it’s crazy to have let your biggest, if not second-biggest, economy leave the state.

EINBINDER: Yeah, it’s crazy.

SMART: The fact that most people in this business cannot just stay at home and go to work. They cannot be with their spouses and their kids and just get up in the morning and go to work. They have to be gone for months at a time. It’s crazy.

EINBINDER: It’s nuts. And post-strike as well, we’ve had a huge exodus of really valuable, incredible crew members and actors who are in a zone of working only to a certain degree, who can’t sustain the very, very high rent here. So it’s really a huge shame, and it really should be much more of a priority, I think, for [California Governor] Mr. Newsom. Yeah, so it’s important to honor it.

SMART: Well, he did set aside a huge chunk of money for that. I hope it’s enough to get the ball rolling.

EINBINDER: I have some words for him on a list of things.

SMART: Let’s call him right now!

EINBINDER: Gavin…

SMART: Don’t let me call him.

DEADLINE: Go on his podcast?

EINBINDER: Yeah, didn’t he just have Steve Bannon on it?

DEADLINE: This season we’re seeing a lot of new shows with women at the heart of it, new great comedy, quality shows. And I feel like Hacks might have helped open the door for some of those women. How do you feel about how women in comedy is evolving?

EINBINDER: That would be a really beautiful thing to… If that’s true, that’s so wonderful. I think, yeah, we have made a show with seasons that have consecutively been better and better, and I think it’s been a really great example for folks just to understand that it’s worth investing in. And yeah, I think being a woman in comedy, it’s hard to speak to that in a general sense, because there are so many sub-communities under the umbrella of comedy. I think as far as being a stand-up, it’s kind of an inherently male-dominated profession still. There are a lot more women and queer people and non-binary people doing stand-up, which is really great. And that’s a lot of the stuff that I’ve been seeing, a lot of the comics I’ve been seeing. So that’s really cool. But I definitely think that’s kind of a realm where the boys still dominate in terms of numbers.

SMART: But I would love to think that our show maybe had a little bit of an impact on that. I’ve been very pleasantly surprised at how many straight white men love the show! I wasn’t sure that was going to be the case, but they seem to. Because bottom line is, funny’s funny, you know? Do I think that there are inherent differences between men and women in comedy? I do. For whatever reason, I do think there are certain things that if men talk about, or if women talk about, we would perceive it differently. But I think there’s so much more room to be made for women in comedy. It’s not that they weren’t there, they’ve always been there. They just haven’t been given the spotlight like the men have and now they are finally. Again, it’s like anything that hasn’t been given a chance. Once you give it a chance, it’s there waiting. It’s already there. And it’s good because the more different things we see, the more people in our audience realize, “Oh, yeah, I get that. That’s me.” And it’s good for younger kids too especially.

DEADLINE: In the past we’ve talked and there’s kind of this atmosphere that I gather has some improv aspects to it, some on-the-fly jokes. I don’t know if that’s how you would describe it? What is your experience and process like with each other, bouncing the script back between you?

SMART: I think we pretty much just do what’s on the page, but we certainly feel the freedom to play with that. And they’re very respectful. They don’t have egos about that. If they think, “Oh, we come up with a joke that’s better,” they’re happy to use it. But that’s never been really an issue. I mean, at least for me, I just wait until I get the script and then…

EINBINDER: It’s so great. When we have the time, I think Lucia or Paul, or whoever’s directing will say, “This one’s for you, do what you want. Go crazy.” And that’s where we’ll just add stuff. When a scene is purely comedic, there’s a lot more room for fun runs like that. I think sometimes we’re engaging in scenes where we need to move the plot forward, and so certain things need to be communicated in those areas, but when we’re going for things that are more purely comedic, that’s where we get to kind of play.

DEADLINE: What’s the scene that was emotionally tough for you to do this season?

EINBINDER: I don’t know about tough, but I think when Deborah is quitting the late night show and Ava is stuck at the gate watching on the monitor, and basically Deborah has this monologue where she is quitting and Ava’s watching it. That was something that- I wouldn’t say tough, but we had Paul reading off-camera dialogue and-

SMART: Oh, Paul was reading my lines?

EINBINDER: Yeah, it was before you shot it, on a different day.

SMART: So if you’re crying during this scene, it’s because of Paul, not me. Great. That’s wonderful. Okay, I’m leaving. That’s it.

EINBINDER: I’m sorry.

SMART: This is very disturbing. You just ruined the show for everybody out there.

EINBINDER: I’m so sorry.

SMART: Oh, my god.

EINBINDER: I’m sorry. I’m sorry. But it just was…their writing. Because when I read sometimes the scenes between Ava and Deborah, I know that it is being written from a place of the show is Paul, Lucia, and Jen’s love letter to each other. They are comedic collaborators. They actually do the work that we as well do, but they originate that. And so to hear Paul saying it, it’s like, “Oh, he’s talking to Lucia, he’s talking to Jen.” Witnessing that element of it, that always moves me and hits me so hard. And it’s like the words there, even the table read, I don’t know if it was tough, but it was really emotional.

DEADLINE: The guest stars this season are next-level. The scene with you, Jean, and Rosie O’Donnell where you realize what Ava means to you is incredible. And tell me about working with the legend Carol Burnett.

SMART: I had worked with Carol very briefly before, so I was very excited that she was coming on. There’s never been anyone quite like her, and she’s still so sharp and so sweet and so funny. I was watching a scene she did on her variety show. Somebody said it to me on Halloween. They said, “When you wake up the day after Halloween and you realize you still have to go to work.” And it shows Carol coming down this long staircase. It’s from the Sunset Boulevard episode or whatever, the Sunset Boulevard sketch. So, she’s dressed like Norma Desmond. She finally gets down to the bottom of the stairs. And she’s looking around and she’s got the long flapper beads on, and she throws them around her neck. She literally spins herself around and plops down on the floor. I’m thinking, “She had to have cracked her tailbone.” I mean, she would do stuff like that every week and, I guess, be fine. But she’s brilliant that way because she was not only funny with perfect timing, she was a perfect physical clown, which is a whole other discipline in itself.