Hacks was not a guaranteed hit. The show is as much about the nuances of a good joke as it is about two strong-willed female comedians from two very different generations. But, it was never afraid to get specific. Nor was it afraid to bet on some of the best upcoming comedic talent. Audiences knew and loved Jean Smart, who nabbed four Emmys for playing Deborah Vance, a comic who launches the third act of her career when her Las Vegas residency is taken away from her. Hannah Einbinder, on the other hand, had never gotten a major acting role before playing Ava, the Gen-Z May in the protagonists’ May/December-esque creative partnership—in fact, she’d never even gotten a callback.
Though there were some familiar faces like actor Kaitlin Olson (of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia fame) who plays Deborah’s daughter, Dee, the show became known for minting new stars overnight. Megan Stalter may be beloved on red carpets and comedy club stages now, but back before she played Kayla, a flamboyant assistant to Deborah’s agent, she was making front-facing videos in the throes of lockdown-induced stir-craziness. Robby Hoffman, who joined the cast in season four to play a Hasidic Crown Heights Jew turned gay, LA movie exec, remembers her career as a before-and-after Hacks.
Over five seasons, the final of which premieres tonight on HBO, Hacks took on everything from the shifting landscape of late night TV and sexism in Hollywood, to whether or not it’s ethical to order branzino on the company card. Paul W. Downs, creator of Hacks and a writer on other cult classics like Broad City, found a way to address heady topics like atoning for harmful jokes and onstage vulnerability—all without breaking the show’s mile-a-minute pace. Now in season five, we’ll say goodbye to Deborah, Ava, and all the others, but not before they get in a few last jabs.
CULTURED caught up with Einbinder, Stalter, Olson, Downs, and Hoffman to hear how they all said goodbye, who had the weirdest audition, and who would do the best on a reality TV competition.
How are you guys feeling?
Paul W. Downs: Crazy.
Hannah Einbinder: Tragic.
Megan Stalter: Happy.
Robby Hoffman: I’m fine.
Kaitlin Olson: What are they talking about?
I’m seeing all the comments on the final season announcement saying, “I can’t picture what my life is like without Hacks.”
Stalter: People are right to comment that. I post a lot of those.
Olson: Is that you?
Einbinder: She’s doing a lot of shadow commenting.
Stalter: It feels like a golden fork’s been ripped from my hands, and a dirty plastic fork-spoon put in its place. I feel like I’m living in prison.
Olson: You look pretty doing it, though.
Hoffman: Is the prison in Norway, or is it an American prison?
Stalter: It’s a prison where you go, and you’re never gonna be working with your friends. You are gonna be an unhappy person and have some slop for lunch. And you guys said you feel the same too.
Hoffman: I didn’t hear anyone say that.
Downs: I do miss people.
Olson: I miss craft services.
Do you guys get good catering on set?
Einbinder: We do.
Downs: Shout out to Humble Pie. Actually, we should have gatekept that. Redact Humble Pie.
Stalter: Loaded nachos at 10 a.m.
Einbinder: Yeah, that’s how we make the magic. You get loaded.
Stalter: You won’t believe what I’m eating on set. You won’t.
I would love to hear about your entries into Hacks. What was your audition process like? And Paul, what was your first impression of these actors?
Downs: Oh wow. Kaitlin did not audition.
Olson: Oh my gosh, you didn’t have to say that.
Downs: Well, come on. You’re an offer-only queen. We actually wondered if you would even consider it. We were so honored and lucky to have you say yes to the show, because you are literally brilliant.
Olson: It was an easy decision. I got a phone call from [executive producer] Mike Schur, and he was like, “Now, I don’t know if you’ve heard of these people, but here’s what they’ve done, and here’s what they have in mind. You’d be playing Jean Smart’s daughter.” I was like, “Stop talking. Yes to all of that stuff.” I was already a huge fan of everybody.
Hoffman: They wrote for me, but made me audition, so that’s the opposite. They wrote for me, and didn’t have the confidence. I had to go through a grueling audition process, and it would have been very embarrassing if I didn’t get a part written for me. Thank God I dunked it.
Downs: I will say she did dunk it. Above and beyond.
Olson: You wrote for yourself, Paul, but with Meg, did you have a person in mind for Kayla?
Stalter: My daddy paid for me to be on it. A lot of money.
Downs: He’s still sending checks! No, we based the character on a couple of assistants that we had known in the industry. And then, because we were writing the series during the pandemic, we started watching Meg, and we thought, “This is the person for the part.” Similar to Robby, Meg did audition. It’s a big show, and there was nobody else we could imagine in the part. She made our dreams—beyond our dreams—come true.
Stalter: It was really, really fun. I was having a breakdown online, so I was posting a lot of things during the pandemic. I was going on Instagram live for three hours a night. I was posting random, big characters. And then we met at a stand-up show before the audition, and I was really trying to impress him and bond with him. I didn’t even know there was the show, though. At that point, I just wanted to be your friend.
Hoffman: Randomly Paul’s good at stand-up. Nobody knows.
Olson: I didn’t know that.
Downs: I actually think that was the first time I saw you perform. That’s been one of the joys of the show, platforming comedians who we think are brilliant—some of whom have had less experiences, some of whom are already absolute stars. For us, to be able to have people that we admire and think are so funny play these parts has been such a dream. We already had Jean attached, but the Ava role was really hard. We auditioned, I think, over 300 women.
Olson: That’s crazy.
Downs: Many of whom were fabulous.
Hoffman: Who got close?
Downs: Nobody. Hannah did a preview with a casting director of ours, and we were like, “Who is this? Who is this?” She did it in a way unlike anybody else. She did it in the way a comedy writer or a comedian would do it. In the screen test, it’s the scene where she gets caught by Deborah in their first meeting, when she says, “Oh, you’ve seen my work? What have you seen?” and she hasn’t seen her work. Our casting director said, “Did you notice Hannah blushed? She’s that good.”
Stalter: She’s extremely captivating. When I saw her in a stand-up show, she was the only one I remembered from that night.
Downs: I was on that show.
Stalter: Like, who the hell is the star?
Hoffman: I remember when Hannah was going to get the part. She had been doing the audition, and we were becoming friends at that point. We were sitting on a roof, and we saw an HBO billboard. We were like, “Han, if you get the part, you’re going to be on that billboard.” Oh, lo and behold, every time I get my car washed now, I see you on a billboard.
Einbinder: I auditioned for stuff for like a year before I got Hacks because I was mainly a stand-up comedian, and once I got representatives, they suggested that I branch out. It was the first call-back I ever got for anything.
Olson: One and done.
Einbinder: I just was not killing it at the other stuff. I think that’s important to stress after all the praise.
Hoffman: Oh, yeah, you bombed.
What has the show taught you about being a comedian? What have you learned from your fellow cast members?
Einbinder: I absolutely think that acting has only deepened my commitment to various performance choices that I make within a live performance. I feel like I am just a sponge with every single person here. What I like about watching such gifted performers is that I get to truly be an audience member. I’m perfectly happy to just sit back and watch.
Olson: Same, but when I did my first episode and worked with you, I was like, “She’s amazing and fun and plays around with me, which is really nice.” And then we were sitting in cast chairs, getting to know each other, and I said, “What other stuff have you done?” because I didn’t recognize her. She replied, “This is my first thing.” And I said, “There’s no way this is your first acting job.” I was very impressed. I went home and told my husband about it.
Hoffman: Ooh. You made it to dinner.
Olson: I mean, not in real life, though. Let’s not get any ideas.
Einbinder: Don’t come to my house.
Olson: Please don’t come to my house.
Einbinder: We have security.
Olson: Megan for you, I feel like there was this shift where people were really familiar with you online. You had such a presence, and then seeing you in a serious acting role? I mean, this role isn’t serious by any stretch—
Stalter: I cry in a couple of scenes.
Einbinder: Yeah, yeah very emotional, tender stuff.
Stalter: This acting job has just changed my life. Working with these people taught me everything that I know about acting, being on set, and truly doing all the funny stuff. Connecting with Paul and everyone prepared me for the more emotional scenes because, at that point, all of what we built was already there. So when I look at Jimmy in his eyes and he’s crying, then I’m crying as Kayla, because it feels really natural. I didn’t know how to do that before. I never had money to go to acting school.
Hoffman: It is criminal what they’re charging.
Stalter: I was never on screen before, besides filming myself on my phone. I did comedy for over 10 years before getting this, and I loved every second of every part of this journey. I truly learned how to act and connect with a person on camera because of them, because Paul is such an amazing actor.
Einbinder: Being in a scene with Paul is such a gift. You are just elevated so much.
Downs: Oh please, guys, stop.
Einbinder: It’s true!
Olson: You can’t see Paul behind you, but he’s beaming with pride. So the feeling is definitely mutual.
Hoffman: This show changed a lot. I was famously in one episode with Michelle Williams in Dying For Sex. I joked with Paul about this, but I was just Robby Hoffman sitting in on the scene, doing my stuff in the stand-up world. I was thinking, Isn’t somebody going to do something with me? Hacks did something. I was just a sitting duck before. They knew there was something here.
Stalter: We’re working with people that are literally our heroes. Like Kaitlin, I have been in love with her forever, and I can’t believe we’re in the same show.
Hoffman: Married, she’s married.
Olson: Listen, it’s been a long time. You’re so sweet. I feel the same way.
How did you know that season five was the proper time to end the show?
Downs: This is so weird—not everyone does this—but we pitched the ending when we pitched the show. We thought of the idea in 2015. [Co-creator] Jen Statsky and I were working on Broad City, and then Jen on The Good Place. We were all gainfully employed, which was great, but we couldn’t pitch it. Finally, when those shows ended, we pitched it. We had been thinking about it for so long that we knew where we wanted the show to go. We’ve even been misquoted saying that it was a five-season pitch. We pitched the whole series from the beginning. How long it took to get there, I think, shifted. We thought she’d get late night in season three, but she got it in season four, for example.
The tentpoles never changed, but the timeline to get there did. To use a stand-up idiom, we didn’t want to run the light. We didn’t want to overstay our welcome, and we wanted to go out with a bang. We’ve been asked, could you make more? Of course. There are episodes we never got to do, that we’ve always wanted to do, but we brought the characters very full circle and to the place that we wanted to bring them. We wanted to make sure we went out leaving people laughing.
Olson: That’s the best. I had a show called The Mick that was cancelled after two seasons, and we did not choose that. But it was kind of the best thing that ever happened to me, because you want to go out before you wear out your welcome. I mean, I will miss you all very much, but I think it’s a really admirable and pretty cool move.
You’ve brought in some really fun things to go out with a bang in season five. Most notably, in my opinion, is The Amazing Race episode. If you were on The Amazing Race, who would your partner be from the show be in real-life?
Hoffman: I’d be out first of any game show. My glasses fall off, I’m crying.
Olson: Yeah, I don’t sleep outside of my own bed, so…
Hoffman: I can’t see. I get hot. I don’t enjoy being lost.
Olson: I’ll get lost in a maze. I’ll get upset. I don’t find it fun.
Einbinder: I’m going with Lucia [Aniello, show co-creator and Downs’s wife] because she’s action-oriented, and she’s a former athlete. I need someone stronger in mind and body.
Downs: She’s very competitive in a way that you need. You need the motivation.
Einbinder: But she also can turn it on because there is a charm element. I’m queening out with her. We’re totally fine. We’re safe or whatever they say.
Is there a reason why you chose The Amazing Race?
Downs: We watched The Amazing Race during the pandemic when we were writing the first season because we couldn’t go anywhere, and we were having wanderlust. We got addicted, as you do. We started season 18, and we watched the best seasons according to Reddit. There was a scene in season two of Hacks where Deborah and Ava were watching it, and they said they’d be great on it. Ever since then, we thought of doing an episode. It makes so much sense for someone like Deborah and DJ to go on. It’s very… Joan and Melissa-coded. In fact, Lucia wanted to do a whole season of it. She said, “I want to do 10 episodes where they’re just on The Amazing Race.”
Olson: Oh, God. Why didn’t you do that? That would have been great.
Downs: It could have been six seasons if we had ended it as we ended it with a detour for The Amazing Race.
You’ve tackled so many important issues on the show. What do you think Hacks’ legacy will be?
Einbinder: What I’m most proud of with the show is that Paul, Jenna, and Lucia thoughtfully represent these issues in a way that’s, to use Paul’s words, even-handed. We get to see Deborah’s perspective on it. We get to see Ava’s perspective on it. We get to watch them have discourse that is respectful, mostly, and that doesn’t scold the audience or tell them what they’re supposed to believe. It allows people to draw their own conclusions.
In many cases, Ava is the surrogate for, I would say, a leftist perspective, which happens to be mine, and I know Paul, Jen, and Lucia’s, but it doesn’t devalue Deborah’s point of view at all. These two women are able to actually sort things out. It’s not like one’s always right and one’s always wrong, you know? I appreciate that because it is a model for exactly what we need, which is thoughtful, respectful discourse. We have enough people just shaming others.
Who was the most emotional at the season finale wrap?
Stalter: Well, I was actually really crazy. I was screaming and crying.
Einbinder: She was being carried out.
Hoffman: You might need an SSRI.
Stalter: I felt like they were leading me off set because they had to keep filming. I was saying, “I feel like I’m going to prison. I feel like I’m never gonna feel like this again.”
Hoffman: SNRIs as well, if the SSRIs don’t work.
Stalter: I was awake very, very late that night thinking about it. What is happening to us? Why is this happening? Why do things have to end? I’ve always had trouble with endings, like in high school with the school play ending. I wouldn’t even be in it. I would be the understudy.
Downs: In the audience.
Stalter: I hosted a Netflix cooking show for a week [Snack vs. Chef], and I was sobbing at the end of the day. It was the hardest job. No one was connected to me, and yet I was crying when we were leaving. But this was the hardest end ever. I mean, I felt horrible. I still do. I feel sick.
Einbinder: I didn’t have one wrap, really. We wrapped in LA, Vegas, and then Paris twice. It was this really prolonged thing where I just feel like I’ve had a million moments to grapple with the end. We were crying every day, basically.
Hoffman: I’ve not cried at all, but that’s probably more on me. I mean, I feel things, but I think we should enjoy the good.
Downs: I like that. If we all had a bucket of tears, maybe, Hannah, yours would be the fullest. Even though Meg’s was the most acute.
Olson: Less screaming, more tears?
Einbinder: You rocked out one night, crazy blowout, and I’ve been having this prolonged thing.
Stalter: I cried a lot in the scene from the night before RuPaul.
Downs: Well, you were supposed to be emotional. The characters are very real for us now. We’ve inhabited them for six years.
More of our favorite stories from CULTURED
Legendary Art World Deviant Paul McCarthy on Santa Claus, Trauma, and the Rise of Fascism
Gabby Windey Shares Her Book Recommendations for the Manosphere and Depressed Women Everywhere
15 Collectors Offer Their Best Advice For Getting Started
Bryan Stevenson on What Social Justice Movements Can Learn From March Madness
A Guide to the Real-Life New York Restaurants Where Characters Eat on TV
Sign up for our newsletter here to get these stories direct to your inbox.
in your life?