“Hey, everybody. Welcome to the last day of shooting for Season 4 of ‘Hacks.’”
It was a chilly evening on the beach in Southern California, with a cold wind coming off the water near Los Angeles Harbor. And as a disembodied voice coming from somewhere in the crowd of bundled-up crew members suggested, it was indeed the final night of shooting on the fourth season of the HBO Max series that is the reigning champion in the Emmys’ Outstanding Comedy Series category.
Apart from a couple of pickup shots and a stuntwoman running into the frigid Pacific Ocean while pretending to be Jean Smart, there was one big scene to nail on this early-March night. And in many ways, it was the pivotal scene in all of Season 4. The previous season had ended with writer Ava Daniels (Hannah Einbinder) blackmailing her way into the head writer’s job on the new late-night talk show hosted by Deborah Vance (Smart), and the two women went to war for the first six episodes of the new season.
After a particularly stressful stretch, Ava finally freaked out, quit, drove off and headed to the beach, where Deborah, worried Ava might harm herself, ran into the water to save the writer she had realized is essential to her comedy career. It turned out that Ava was in the parking lot and Deborah got soaking wet trying to save somebody else, who didn’t need saving at all and who was annoyed to find a stranger trying to pull her out of the water.
And that’s when Ava and Deborah, both of them bedraggled and exhausted and at their lowest moments of the season, had a quiet conversation in which they decided to work together again. It reset the relationship for the final four episodes, which involved a trip to Singapore that had already been shot.
So all that was left of the season was this conversation at a little shack of a restaurant — The Slippery Oyster, the sign said — that the production built on Cabrillo Beach. A few palm trees were “planted” in the sand and some strings of lights were hung around the set, giving things a desultory dose of glamour.
“We knew that the sixth episode was going to be a breaking point for Ava, and it was going to be the reconciliation where Deborah says, ‘I set you up to fail, and I shouldn’t have done that,’” co-creator and showrunner Paul W. Downs, who directed the episode, said. “We always knew that, but we went through many, many, many, many, many drafts to figure out the environment and the mechanics of that reconciliation.”
Einbinder described the stakes similarly. “The idea is: How can we make sure that one conversation turns Ava from ‘I’m done’ to ‘I’m coming back’?” she said. “It is definitely a delicate and meticulous transition to play.”
As Smart and Einbinder went through a low-key rehearsal, Downs and his co-showrunners, Lucia Aniello and Jen Statsky, were still fine-tuning the scene. Downs sat close to three monitors with the script supervisor; Aniello and Statsky sat behind him, Aniello in a wool hat and Statsky in a Knicks cap, with all three sporting heavy jackets. While the actors did an initial take of the lengthy scene, the producers kept up a running dialogue out of earshot of Smart and Einbinder, offering constant suggestions for tweaks and revisions: delay this laugh, trim this line, smile at that point, rephrase this, add a little more exhaustion and a little less anger.
When it was over, Downs looked at the notes he had been writing down on a pad, then went to the set to deliver the collected suggestions to the actresses. On the second take, Smart and Einbinder adjusted immediately, making a string of deft tweaks that left Downs, Aniello and Statsky with an array of choices in the editing room.
“After you shoot a scene like this, you lie awake thinking of all the different permutations,” Aniello said with a shrug. “But the truth is, as we evolve the scene with the actors, we’re usually getting to a place — and once we know we have it, we move on. We’re not too often trying out a bunch of different things in the edit.”
On a break, Einbinder wandered over to the video village and nodded at the showrunner threesome huddled together. “So,” she said, “you’ve seen the hive mind at work.”
Of course, the hive mind has been responsible for “Hacks” from the beginning. Aniello, Downs and Statsky have steered the relationship between Deborah and Ava from antipathy to friendship and back, carefully calibrating how much verbal and behavioral brutality they can display. “We are very aware that viciousness can sometimes be uncomfortable, but it also serves as great grist for the two characters and as a very strong POV for their jokes,” Aniello said.
Statsky added, “It has to feel like an evolution, and it has to get to a place in their relationship that they’ve never gotten to before.”
The evolution has impressed Smart, who won the comedy-actress Emmy for each of the show’s first three seasons. “Every season, the relationship has gone to a different level and gotten deeper and deeper,” she said. “I was worried that it was so dark in Season 4. You know, we get pretty ugly between them.”
She laughed. “But they still managed to keep the humor in the show, and they timed it so well that we could do things in Season 4 that we couldn’t have gotten away with in Season 2. Our fans are so invested in the relationship that we can take them anywhere and they’ll go with us.”
Einbinder shook her head. “I’ve been saying that the audience is the third in our toxic relationship,” she said. “We’re a throuple. And I want them to get help, frankly.”
Back at the beach, the conversation between Deborah and Ava came down to a key exchange, during which Ava confessed, “I don’t even know your voice anymore” and Deborah softly said, “Ava, you are my voice.” It changed the atmosphere, and slowly the characters built a bond in a scene that played out much more quietly and subtly than usual for the show. There was humor, but it was also wrenching, and it ended with the two sharing a bottle of bad Champagne.
When the scene ended, Smart grimaced. “Champagne mixed with cold coffee,” she said. “It’s like, yum!”
But how much more of this deliciousness is coming for “Hacks?” You could say that the show is on a roll, winning its first Outstanding Comedy Series Emmy last September in a upset over “The Bear” and taking the Golden Globe and Critics Choice Awards after that. But the upcoming season will be its fifth — and according to the outline the creators drew up when they pitched the show to networks, the series was designed to end after Season 5.
So will 2026 be the last of “Hacks?” “As of today, the answer is yes,” Aniello said, and then laughed. “But like Sheryl Crow says, every day is a winding road.”
Downs groaned. “Wow,” he said. “Wow. You did that.”
“This is something we think about all the time,” Statsky added.
“We are still planning to end in the same way,” Downs clarified. “But we could think, ‘Dang, we have so many stories to tell, we gotta break this season into two.’ I think that would be the only way (to extend the show past the fifth season).”
And if it ends, how hard will it be to say goodbye? “It’ll be difficult,” Aniello said. “This is lightning in a bottle. We love making a show with all the people we make it with, and we would love to do it forever. But we don’t want to overstay our welcome, and we feel really sure of how we want to end the show.”
“On the other hand, how many times can something like this happen in a career?” she added. “I don’t know. It’ll be difficult.”
The actors agreed. “I can’t even imagine it,” Smart said, who left “Designing Women” of her own accord after five seasons. “We weathered Covid and strikes and all sorts of stuff, and it’s been like a family. It’s going to be very strange.”
“It is,” Einbinder said. “My big joke is ‘If you think Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande are crying (while promoting “Wicked”), just wait until ‘Hacks’ ends.’ It’s gonna be a problem, you know?”
A version of this story first appeared in the Comedy Issue of TheWrap’s awards magazine. Read more from the issue here.
