Hannah Einbinder on That Brilliant ‘Hacks’ Finale Twist: ‘We Were So Shook’
Welcome to My Favorite Scene! In this series, IndieWire speaks to actors behind a few of our favorite television performances about their personal-best onscreen moment and how it came together.
When it came time to watch the finale of “Hacks” Season 3, star Hannah Einbinder’s reaction to the final moments was quite similar to audiences: Shook.
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“I went over to [co-creator’s] Paul [W. Downs] and Lucia’s [Aniello] house to watch it with them and Jen [Statsky], and we were so shook; I don’t know how else to say it!,” Einbinder said. “First of all, I felt launched into the emotional reality of the moment, and my heart started to go, and I started crying. And we watched it over and over. We rewound it and watched it and rewound it and watched it. It was so, so insane to watch that.”
The finale twist heard ’round the world, or at least comedy circles, involved Hannah Einbinder’s occasionally clueless but earnest Ava Daniels blackmailing her boss, Deborah Vance (Jean Smart), with the revelation that Deborah slept with the network conglomerate CEO (Tony Goldwyn) prior to getting her late night host job. Rather than have that damaging fact get out, Deborah realizes she’s been outplayed and names Ava her new head writer on the show, just as Ava wanted.
This comes after an explosive fight between the two where Ava lets loose about all she has suffered under Deborah and realizes she values their relationship more than Deborah ever will. The final seconds find the two women — mentor/mentee, occasional adversaries, a dynamic duo more powerful together — staring each other down across a conference room table, sharing a look of recognition and perhaps pride in what Ava has proven herself capable of.
Game on.
“Sometimes I watch ‘Hacks’ like an athlete would watch game tape,” Einbinder continued. “I’m going, ‘OK, maybe loosen up the physicality there.’ Or just giving myself notes of things that I’m noticing where I can get better. And this, we just were all watching. Jean and I have been going back and forth since Season 1, but this feels like something different. It just felt like this new energy that was so crazy. It feels tonally so different but still so grounded in the reality of the show. We watched it over and over.”
Audiences can surely relate. “Hacks” hit a new high point with critics and audiences in its beloved nine-episode third season, as fans watched Ava return to working for Deborah at the expense of an outside life. The jokes ruled (“bisexual Gumby”), but it was the shifting, sometimes-troubled central relationship that kept the story fresh.
“It’s this very familiar thing to me of a comedic love language,” Einbinder said of the tied-together duo. “The lengths a person will go to justify maintaining a relationship with someone because they make each other laugh. That’s something I’m very familiar with, and that’s something that I appreciate being represented in this way. Because we’ve seen, ‘Oh, we have such passionate romantic chemistry, and so we excuse everything.’ And it’s very rare that we get to see a dynamic where humor is the thing that will excuse any bad behavior. That is something that we as comedic people, comedians, comedic actors, whatever, we really experience that.”
There will be more delicious tension to mine when “Hacks” begins shooting Season 4 in September, with Einbinder portraying a newly powerful Ava. But as the actress notes, “With Ava, it’s two steps forward, five steps back.”
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
IndieWire: When did you know this scene was going to be how the season ended for Deborah and Ava?
Hannah Einbinder: I actually found out while we were shooting. We get episodes pretty much three at a time. So it was something that I found out kind of close to when we were supposed to shoot it. Now, of course, there was a 10-month strike. So we didn’t actually get to shoot it until after that point. Jean and I tend to like to just keep it fresh and not really sit with it for too long. So we’re cool to not know what’s going to happen until it’s time to do it.
What were your initial thoughts when you read the script and saw that was how it was going to conclude for these two?
Well, I’m always shocked by whatever happens at the end of the seasons of the show, so I was definitely shocked. It felt justified. I felt like Ava had been taking a lot of abuse for a long time, and so I was sad because I want these two to get along! But of course, the friction of the show is good for television. I mean, it was shocking. I was excited to get to kind of step into more dramatic acting territory, like true, proper dramatic material. Really hopeful that I would be able to execute.
How did the creators explain to you what they were looking for in that moment? What do you remember about those first conversations?
Obviously in the script, there is a line where Deborah says, “Stop crying,” right? So just reading the scene, it felt like the creators intentions for the performance felt really ingrained in the dialogue. I think my initial conversations with them were just like, how much of this felt sad, how much felt angry.
Frankly, this was one of the scenes where I really worked on it by myself and just kind of like, let it rip on the first take. I think this was just something where I went line by line and thought really intentionally about what each line needed to feel like and what it needed to be loaded with; what from their relationship and their dynamic needed to play out line by line. So the conversations were kind of minimal, just because, again, there’s so much there in the writing that almost serves as that conversation.
Why do you think that that finale worked so well for audiences?
It feels like what we have been leading up to. You know, we see Deborah. We see how she operates in the world. We see how she treats people. We see Ava. We see her desperation to be near Deborah, to put everything aside for her. …[This is the] denouement of their relationship thus far. I think it works for people, because everything feels really justified and earned, and it’s such a wonderful device that they use of the student becoming the teacher in a way. It’s so, so good.
To me, Deborah is also proud of her in some sick, twisted way.
I think so, too. And that’s something that I think Paul, Jen, and Lucia have talked about, and certainly on the day when we were shooting that, there was some direction on Lucia’s part for Jean of, “You’re angry, there is anger, but you’re also kind of excited, because now there’s this challenge, and there’s this new dynamic, and you’re excited to engage in this with Ava.” That feels so, so new. We’re used to seeing them spar, but there’s always like that underlying comedic device at play, whereas this feels like there’s going to be true sparring and true animosity, which is fun.
This is a character that has gone through a lot of changes over the last three seasons, and I’m wondering how the creators have described Ava recently to you, maybe over the back half of Season 3.
I think as a result of her, like, pledging the fraternity of Deborah Vance and really putting in the work and going on the road, and just putting her head down and being subservient to this woman … her work with Deborah has really beaten some of the entitlement out of her. I feel like she has really evolved.
She’s not perfect: Ava has her issues with her sometimes-shallow liberalism, where like in the golf episode [Episode 6] she wants to be Miss Leftist, and she doesn’t let the guy take her bag, and she orders a coffee when the lunch shift is switching over. She’s just not aware of maybe working class experiences as much as she should want to. … But she really has grown up, I feel. This season was kind of about, she got back into Hollywood, and she’s working at that show, and she’s got her girlfriend there and couples therapy and yeah, she’s not perfect. With Ava, it’s two steps forward, five steps back. But I see a huge, huge change in her.
Do you ever pitch them Ava ideas?
I have, yeah. And sometimes they just will take a couple things that they pulled from me, like Ava has a mushroom fascination with like, foraging. That’s one of my hot hobbies you could say, and then her matcha obsession. I like that.
What you’re saying is over three years has been some melding.
A little bit.
What did your friends or people in your life say to you when they watched the finale?
They expressed pride. They were really proud and supportive and like, kind of gagged. They were really happy for me, and it felt nice. I will say, this is the first time I’ve been able to accept compliments, like, I’ve always struggled with that. I’ve done a lot of work on myself, frankly, over the strike when there was nowhere to run, and I was like, “Okay, I guess I should fix all this mess,” and did a lot of work on my self esteem. And so it was really nice to be able to take that in and feel good.
It’s lovely that you were able to take that in. Where would you like to see Ava go from here?
I definitely don’t want to see her go Darth Vader; I don’t want her to go to the dark side. I hope that she maintains that sense of morality and doesn’t let Deborah’s standards seep into hers.
Looking back, can you tell me a little about what being a part of “Hacks” has meant to you?
Oh, my God. It is the most charmed experience that an actor could ever hope for [in] a safe work environment, which is not the norm. Every person who works on our set is funny and cool, like every department, and the creators of this show are egoless and loving and collaborative and supportive, and they’re my friends and they’re my family now.
Jean is an anomaly because actors who are as decorated and are as much of veterans as she is from what I hear are not typically as warm and sweet and welcoming and supportive, and she is. I got lucky in every possible conceivable way that I could have. [Tears up] And I mean, this will be the most special experience, I think, probably of my life. So I’m really grateful. I really love everyone.
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