Hack’s co-stars talk off camera relationship
“Hacks” co-stars Jean Smart and Hannah Einbinder reveal to USA TODAY what their relationship is like in real life.
A gleeful mischief spreads over Hannah Einbinder’s face as she talks about her inspiration for the fourth season of “Hacks” taking center stage on Max (first two episodes now streaming, then weekly on Thursday).
The 10-episode return of the award winning series (which has earned Smart an Emmy for each of three previous seasons and series a best-comedy award in 2024) resumes where last May’s shocking finale left off: Ava Daniels (Einbinder) secured the head writer position on Deborah Vance’s (Jean Smart) new late-night talk show only after threatening to reveal Deborah’s dalliance with married Bob Lipka (Tony Goldwyn), CEO of the corporation that owns Deborah’s network.
Einbinder, 29, thought to herself, “Every mob movie I’ve ever watched is about to go into this moment,” she says in a joint interview with Smart, who cannot contain her laughter. Einbinder’s been “studying” those films. “I was like, ‘Oh, yeah, Ava big boss moment,’” Einbinder adds. “She’s like the Don right now.”
In Thursday’s premiere, Deborah confronts Ava in her new head writer’s office: “Well, aren’t you a big, brave girl?” she asks, glaring at her traitorous protégé.
“I guess I am,” Ava responds. “It’s for the best.”
“We’ll see,” Deborah says, letting the threat linger as she exits.
“Everybody’s world is shifting now that Deborah’s gotten this late-night show,” Downs says of the impact on those in the host’s world. “Jimmy and Kayla (Megan Stalter) have launched their own management firm, and so they’re starting their own office. They’re in their own new workplace environment with a whole new host of characters. For Marcus (Carl Clemons-Hopkins), things maybe shift the most, because as Deborah starts to do this late-night show it means there’s less of a place for him in her orbit. So his relationship to her is shifting a bit, which is not easy, because Deborah really likes people to stick around and be loyal.”
Which begs the questions: Will Ava and Deborah ever make up? What will happen with the new late-night show? And will Deborah’s tryst stay under wraps?
Smart, 73, savors the wit-drenched war of the words with Ava, “especially when they trade funny insults,” she says. “Even when I’m pissed off, like when I’m wearing that yellow dress (in Season 3), and you say it’s giving Big Bird. And I’m really insulted, but it’s so much fun.”
“It’s the basis of their relationship,” Einbinder says, bringing up the barbs exchanged in their very first meeting, when Ava interviewed to be a joke writer for the struggling comedian and knocked Deborah’s Las Vegas home as Cheesecake Factory chic.
“And I’m upset because you tracked dirt in on my rugs with your boots,” Smart recalls. “And then you said, ‘Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t know this was a shoes-off thing.’” The costars then deliver the punchline in unison: It’s “shoe dependent.”
“We love it,” Einbinder says chuckling, in a “Sorry we can’t help it” sort of way.
“At the end of the day,” says Lucia Aniello, who cocreated the series with Downs (her husband) and Jen Statsky, “Deborah and Ava’s relationship is bonded by comedy and comedy writing. And that’s the thing that does matter the most to them. I think the thing that hyper complicates that this season is their egos, especially Deborah’s.”
Landing her long-pined-for late-night gig “means so much” to Deborah, Aniello says. “And she also is still reeling at the blackmail from the end of Season 3. As for Ava, she’s doing her best while still trying to remain true to herself, yet also stand up for herself, which is a really difficult thing to do for anybody who’s now a boss, but especially when you’re going toe to toe with Deborah Vance.”
Offscreen, it seems Einbinder and Smart are less likely to go toe to toe and more likely to proceed hand in hand.
“Strangely, I think it would almost be harder to do those really biting, insulting scenes if we were two actresses that didn’t really get along,” Smart says. “It would feel very uncomfortable and get in the way of the work. But because we love each other, it’s fun to say awful things.”
Smart denies hurling a couple of unprintable names at Einbinder before shrinking with embarrassment, merely seconds later. “I can’t believe I said that,” she says with her hands over her mouth. Einbinder wraps her arms around her costar to playfully comfort her.
“The way that they laugh together, the way that they bond and connect, is true to us,” Einbinder says. But none of the “psycho” behavior, she says, or anything cruel, Smart adds.
“It’s really all just kind of positive,” Einbinder says.
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