Statsky: Yes, everything that is said in that episode about their history is true, and you’ve seen it all happen in the course of the show. That’s why, I think, that episode was so fun for us to write. You’re seeing all the things you’ve watched over five seasons come to fruition. It’s like, Oh yeah, they are intimately involved.
Aniello: Not to mention that they look great together.
They would’ve had beautiful (and funny) babies.
Aniello: Well, they’re not dead yet!
You’re saying there’s the possibility of a Hacks reboot someday?
Aniello: Cold open: Deborah and Ava are in Provincetown during Dyke Week, having a blast.
Statsky: The camera pans down to Ava’s pregnant belly…
This season delved into one of Deborah’s emotional wounds: the way her ex-husband took her idea and made himself the sole creator of her sitcom, Who’s Making Dinner? And in fact there were hardly any shows created solely by women in the 1970s. Then you have Ava getting to remake it today, working, as you are, in the aftermath of streaming’s golden age…
Aniello: Because we are making things right now, it’s hard for us to not feel like this is the golden age.
Statsky: It’s hard to even assess where we’re at in this moment, because of the speed at which this landscape is changing. And so you almost need to just home in on what you’re getting to do and feel grateful for it, while also keeping your eye on what’s happening so that the industry doesn’t crumble and fascism takes over.
Hacks feels very prescient now in its treatment of late night. Last season, you had Deborah quitting her late-night show partly because she saw the network pressure to censor jokes as a “slippery slope.” And here we are now, watching the finale of The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, canceled under politically murky circumstances.**
Statsky: We’re people who exist in the world and are responding to what we see happening—the ways in which free speech is being threatened by fascism, the consolidation of media outlets, and who gets to speak. So it’s unfortunate that what we depicted turned out to be even truer to life than we ever imagined.
The other major thread in the series is Hollywood itself. This season, talent managers Jimmy and Kayla seem to be fighting to prove that it’s possible to have an industry that isn’t cutthroat, that respects creatives and isn’t bewitched by AI. I’m curious how industry people you work with respond to that.
Aniello: Jimmy and Kayla are good people who work really hard for their clients and have a good moral code, and I know that at least some people feel very seen by that. There are so many depictions of executives who only care about money and power and are bullshit people, but there are really so many people here who are helping artists. So we think maybe it is nice to shine a light on people actually really trying to do provocative, cool work. We do think that there is a space here for those people, and we love those people.
