This article contains spoilers for the series finale of Hacks.
It’s fitting, if still heartbreaking for fans, that on Thursday night HBO Max’s Hacks went out with an episode all about leaving the stage. Some people, like Kayla’s (Megan Stalter’s) talent-executive-boss father, refuse to quit unless pushed, creating resentment. But Deborah (Jean Smart) wants to call her own light—a reference to the signal comedians get when it’s time to leave. After a long and storied career—the last phase of which saw her reaching new heights alongside her much younger comedy partner, Ava (Hannah Einbinder)—she’s ready to go, even if we don’t want her to.
Having successfully performed a once-in-a-lifetime comedy show in Central Park that far eclipsed the Madison Square Garden production that executive Bob Lipka (Tony Goldwyn) stole from her, Deborah is finally at peace, comfortable that her legacy is forever secured. It’s fitting because, as she reveals to Ava, she’s dying and has opted not to pursue cancer treatment. Deborah’s decision to die with dignity and quit while she’s ahead causes Ava—who has spent the season finding her own way to success as the creator of a new TV show inspired by their friendship—much pain and distress, but she eventually agrees to accompany her boss/mentor/soulmate on one last trip to Paris.
In a beautiful scene in the episode’s final few minutes, Deborah and Ava are sitting in a train station, awaiting their train to Zurich, where Deborah plans to die by assisted suicide. Slowly, they begin riffing about the fact that Deborah seems to finally be allowing herself to enjoy unlimited pastries without a worry for future repercussions. Then suddenly, the pair are riffing, trying to find the best joke about dying. As Ava excuses herself for the bathroom, Deborah instinctively reaches for her notebook, writing down a joke she’s workshopped for a crowd for whom she’ll never again perform—or will she? As the music swells, Deborah realizes she’s not done and never will be. She needs to keep working. “I may not have 30 years, but I think I have another hour,” she tells Ava, as they embrace. “Will you help me write it?” In the last shot of the series, the pair walk a French street, trying to one-up each other with the best joke about death, as the Eiffel Tower slowly fades into its replica at the Paris Las Vegas hotel. While Judy Garland and Barbra Streisand croon “Get Happy/Happy Days Are Here Again,” Deborah and Ava walk the Strip, still riffing, still joking, still laughing till the end.
I couldn’t imagine a better conclusion for a series that, across five seasons and a slew of awards, established itself not just as the best comedy on television, but the best show about the people who entertain us. Hacks was a love letter to comedy and art, but also the work that goes into them and the primal, pathological hunger for an audience that the best creators among us enjoy. It was sublime television, and I’ll miss it tremendously.
I was lucky enough to speak with two of the three creators of Hacks, Lucia Aniello and Jen Statsky (Paul Downs, who plays Jimmy, is also one of the showrunners), about how they’d planned the finale for years, the weird coincidence they had while filming in Paris, and the struggle they felt in deciding to go out on top. Our conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.
“The major arc of these two characters and where they were starting and where they would end up was always what we had pitched.”
Slate: Rather famously, when you first were pitching Hacks around Hollywood, you had the five-season arc ready to go, including the final scene. Take me back to those conversations. What were they like? How were you selling this ending?
Jen Statsky: One thing that is nice is that, because we’d been talking about this for so long and we knew what we were building to across the five seasons of this show, it allowed us to lay in things that we wanted to plant as Easter eggs or that would come back later. In doing that, and having such a clear idea of where we were going, it allowed us to build it more wholly and give it layers. Obviously, we changed the tentpoles within the seasons, but, really, the major arc of these two characters and where they were starting and where they would end up was always what we had pitched when we took this out to the town in 2019. It allowed us to really stick to the plan. Of course, we would stress-test the plan and talk about it and turn it over, but at the same time we knew that that’s where we were headed.
How close were those last five minutes to what you’d envisaged originally? Was this the ending the whole time? The series of jokes about being dead?
Lucia Aniello: Not those literal specific jokes! One of the messages that we’ve been saying from the beginning is that it’s not just about what the best joke is in that moment; it’s about them pitching and figuring it out and working it out. That process is so sacred and, for us, so magical. For Deborah, in this moment, it’s what is worth living for: figuring out the jokes, workshopping it, spending time with your favorite collaborators and best friend. That is something really sacred. So even though it wasn’t the specific jokes, it’s not really about those specific jokes, but the idea of workshopping and getting better.
These pitch meetings back in 2019, did they resemble some of the ones Hannah endured this season? Was it therapeutic for you to then go back and sort of dunk on these people?
Aniello: I hope it doesn’t feel like we’re dunking on them too hard! And I’m not just saying this so that I have a better career. Honestly, we’ve had incredible experiences working with our executives on this show. We have really funny, cool executives who are a big part of our process and who make the work better. So even though our executive Jessica, played by Caitlin Reilly, does seem maybe a little kooky at times, we actually do hope that she comes across as smart and good because she’s like, “Hey, this idea is not sparking joy.” And when Ava gets to this new idea, which is a better idea, she’s like, “Yes. That’s a better idea.” So I guess maybe it’s a love letter to executives who seem kind of kooky but are actually geniuses.
So you never heard the line, and I’m quoting Caitlin’s character here, “It’s so nuanced. It’s so specific. It’s so original. So obviously we could never make it”?
Statsky: Never heard that line verbatim! Well, not from the executives who work on Hacks, but certainly in the course of our careers, pitching things and talking about ideas, you do sometimes hear that an idea is too niche or not big enough to have legs. One of the great joys of this show is that we got to work and will continue to get to work with HBO. You always hear about HBO being this dream place for creatives, because the executives are so good and support the work, and their notes are so helpful. It’s not the kind of parody of executives that sometimes you see on TV. We’ve been very lucky.
Obviously, a lot of the tension of the finale is knowing when to go out on top versus this pull to continue working because you’ve got more in the tank. I’m curious how you navigated this conflict when it came to wrapping up the show. You pitched it as five seasons, but did part of you ever want to just think, Well, could we keep going?
Aniello: A large part of the first chunk of writing Season 5 was us figuring out whether or not it should be a “super season” that was divided into two seasons. So there was actually quite a long time where, even in the press, people would say, “Is it the final season?,” and we were like, “We don’t know yet.” We weren’t trying to be coy! We were genuinely trying to see if we could have two more seasons to do!
Listen, do I still wish sometimes that we had done that because the show is ending? Of course. Do I genuinely think that this version is a better version of the show? Unfortunately, I do.
Statsky Yeah, for Jen, Paul, and Lucia, and the rest of everyone who works in the show, I wish that we were doing more—very, very much. And for the legacy of Hacks, I’m glad that we’re not, because it ultimately was the right place.
Some fans might be surprised to see we spend so much of the finale in Paris. Why Paris? What took you there?
Aniello: One main reason was that Deborah said in Season 3, “You’ve never had real bread,” and so now that Ava is a boss, Deborah says, “You won’t have any authority as a boss if you’ve never had real bread.” But for Deborah, it’s a place where she would love to have her last trip. She loves Paris. I think it’s because we decided that she was an art history major and that she loves beautiful art, and would want to go and see some of the greatest work in the world before ending her life.
But also, and this isn’t why we wrote it in, but we did actually write the pilot in Paris. That’s a true fact. So, for us, there was something very full-circle about ending it there. When we wrote the pilot, we rented an apartment, and there’s a bunch of photos of us in that apartment. We didn’t realize until we were shooting the finale, but the very last shot in Paris that goes up to the Eiffel Tower was on the same street of that apartment! In all of Paris!
Statsky: Totally by coincidence! Isn’t that wild?
And with the framing you were able to get with the Eiffel Tower and the transition to Vegas?! Wow, that’s poetic.
Aniello: Clearly, we shot on that street because it made the most sense for that angle of the Eiffel Tower—which was very complicated, by the way! But the universe put us right back on that street.
Speaking of complicated, tell me about the logistics of shooting in Paris and at some of these incredibly iconic places.
Statsky: It was absolutely lovely. It was like a dream. Honestly, it was. To get to film there was amazing, but to get to see it through Ava’s eyes for the first time as Deborah was showing her was really lovely and special.
Aniello: And we also really, really love the flea market and wanted to get that on film.
What train station were you in at the end?
Aniello: Gare de Lyon.
I’m assuming you went on a weekend morning, because I don’t know how you’d film in there otherwise.
Statsky: No! Not a weekend. A Thursday at 10 a.m. And it was an active train station. We only got to cordon off a small section, so credit to our assistant director team and the French AD team, because they did an amazing job dealing with the crowd. At one point, there was a French announcement over the PA system that just kept playing and playing and playing. We didn’t know when it was going to go off and we just had to hold. It was very chaotic and just what you would think filming in a French station would be like.
The only other note I made about this episode is “Deborah’s coats.” My god, the costuming in this episode is crazy.
Aniello: I’m so glad you brought this up because some people might say, “Hey, I saw a lot of clothes on Deborah, and I did not see much in the suitcase department!” Yeah, she gets that stuff sent ahead! She’s not lugging her own shit around. What are you talking about? Ava had to bring her own stuff. Deborah brought an overnight bag, as she would, but all of that stuff got shipped.
I believe it!
Statsky: Credit to Kathleen Felix-Hager, our incredible costume designer, because she’s done unbelievable work for all five seasons of the show, and she really topped herself in the finale.
I want to talk more generally about your work processes across this whole series. Tell me about the practicalities of being a trio of showrunners. How do you decide who’s writing what? Directing what? Who’s taking the first pass of something? I’m very curious about the logistics of this trio.
Aniello: We pretty much all write everything together. We all take a pass of all the outlines together, no matter who wrote it. And then, when we’re actually writing one of the scripts, we’ll usually break it up into acts, and then we’ll rewrite each other’s stuff or note it or add stuff or change stuff, but it’s hypercollaborative.
Statsky: We don’t really divvy up too much of the process, in terms of, “Oh, you’re handling that, and you’re handling that.” It’s all very collaborative. Directing-wise, obviously, Lucia has directed the majority of the series, starting with the pilot.
Aniello: Which is really hard!
Statsky: Yeah, and which she deserves a lot of credit for! But the three of us were on set every day, which isn’t always the process on other shows. There is a world where, in this show, one of us was up in the writers room and we weren’t as collaborative. But this is just what yielded the best work for us and how we came to realize that we needed to have our process.
I asked people online what I should ask you today and I got an incredible question: When it comes to depicting joke-writing in the show, how hard is it to write the not-quite-there joke and the actively bad joke versus the “That’s the joke”? It’s the whole ending of the show!
Aniello: That’s something we really lean on our writers room for, especially because we have so many stand-ups in the writers room: Pat Regan, Guy Branum, Joe Mande, as well as many others over the course of the series.
Statsky: Throughout the history of the show, we’ve also had Carol Leifer and Susie Essman consulting. We’ve had a lot of stand-ups. But it’s a great question because that is such a challenging aspect of writing. A lot of times you’ll be breaking a story and it’s like, “Then Ava and Deborah riff on the joke.” But then when you get to that part of the outline, you’re like, Goddammit. It really is very challenging, and we lean on the writers room. They write so many alts and we write so many alts, and you’re really having to turn it over and go through it and be like, “Well, that one is not quite there, and that one they’d be like … ” It’s a very specific process.
Yeah, the show did a really great job of showing the science behind the art, and the way, as you said, you were really ranking things in terms of this kind of unknowable science of it. I’m curious: The pilot was called “There Is No Line.” Did you find across the series that you were encountering lines that you didn’t want to hit? Or boundaries you didn’t want to go past? Or was it, as the pilot suggested, that as long as the joke was good enough you could go wherever you wanted?
Aniello: I think we definitely stretched what we felt like we could say because so much of the show is them discussing whether or not you can say these things. So we had to explore a lot.
In that way, I think what’s really interesting is the kinds of people who say they love the show. Of course, it’s always anecdotal, but it is a huge net. The kinds of people who love the show often are very surprising. We’ll find older conservative men love it as much as young, nonbinary—as we say—
—baristas!
Aniello: Baristas! It really runs the gamut. Obviously, we are closer to the nonbinary baristas than we are the guys, but I think that part of that is because we really do turn over, “Hey, this is how I feel”/“This is how I feel,” and try not to put too much judgment on it. The characters battle it out, and as a result I think that people can feel a little bit less judged and a little bit more in on the conversation about the nuance of whether you can say things and not say things, and that to us is always the most important thing. Almost every conversation has nuance; there’s no real black or white here. So to have people challenge what they think is right or not right and to get to the bottom of it in a way that feels in good faith is what so much of the show gets to explore.
Sam Adams
Stephen Colbert Closed Out The Late Show by Doing What He Does Best
Read More
Now, your actual question is whether or not we always felt we were on what side of the line, and correct me if I’m wrong, Jen, but there was a joke this season that we really went back and forth on, and in the end did a version of it, and it could have been potentially more offensive, but then we were really asking ourselves why we would want to do that.
Statsky: As our North Star, we tried to look at, Who is this targeting? Is it punching down or punching up? I find in comedy it’s hard to draw hard-and-fast rules on anything, but that is a North Star for us: Who are you targeting with this? Are we laughing at someone or something that doesn’t need to be hit?
Were there any moments this season that came naturally to you as writers or were easiest to write versus the ones that you really struggled over?
Aniello: [Season 5, Episode 7] “Montecito” flowed.
Brilliant episode.
Statsky: Yeah, “Montecito” flowed, especially because it was in Season 5 and all the stuff about Deborah and Ava’s relationship by then were real things that had happened through the course of five seasons, so we were able to draw on this history between these two characters that we have built, so that made it very easy to write, very fun to write.
Any particularly difficult bits?
Aniello: I wouldn’t say difficult exactly, but with the A.I. episode [Season 5, Episode 6, “QuikScribbl”], we really wanted to represent that in a way that felt fair—not fair towards A.I., of course, but towards the honest perspectives these people would have, and to not have it feel too preachy, and for it to also not feel like just people sitting in a room arguing. That one was one where we were just very extra thoughtful.
“The process of creating, the process of storytelling, is deeply, deeply human.”
Statsky: Anytime you’re tackling an issue like A.I. that is changing so quickly and rapidly in the culture, you’re also aware that this TV show lives on forever, hopefully, and so you don’t want it to be watched 10 years from now and for it to feel outdated. For us, it was really difficult to present fairly what people’s views on it are today, but also look at it more globally, so that it would still resonate in the future, regardless of what happens.
-
Donald Trump Is Pretending to Be a Knicks Fan for One Reason and One Reason Only
-
Apple TV’s Best New Show Is a Miracle. Its Latest Episodes Prove It.
-
Tina Fey’s Surprisingly Mature Netflix Show Is Finding a Way to Keep Things Fresh as It Ages
-
A Breakout Horror Hit Has Become a Word-of-Mouth Sensation. How Scary Is It?
You mentioned you were surprised to learn the show had conservative fans. Obviously, a lot of it is centered around Hollywood and the entertainment industry, which have become something of a political bogeyman for half the country. Robby Hoffman, who plays assistant Randi, has a line this season where she says that Hollywood is “such a fascinating mix of culture and business and art and history. It’s America.” To what extent do you feel like you got that message across?
Statsky: This country right now is in a battle of humanity versus greed and capitalistic urges for people at the very top to profit, while the rest of everyone becomes less in touch with their humanity. I think that the thing that we wanted to showcase in the show is that the process of creating, the process of storytelling, is deeply, deeply human. It’s connective. It connects people together. It connects the people who make it together. When you tell a story and someone sees that, and that they feel seen, that connects you to them, even if you never meet them.
At the end of the day, we hope that this show reflects that it is the history of America, in the sense that there’s this human impulse to tell stories, and to tell our experience, and to tell the experience of prospering over forces that are bigger than you, but maybe less human. Us saying that the process is sacred, and the process is human, and the relationship between these two people creating is sacred, is our point.
