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Statsky:<\/strong> Yes, everything that is said in that episode about their history is true, and you\u2019ve seen it all happen in the course of the show. That\u2019s why, I think, that episode was so fun for us to write. You\u2019re seeing all the things you\u2019ve watched over five seasons come to fruition. It\u2019s like, Oh yeah, they are<\/em> intimately involved.<\/p>\n Aniello:<\/strong> Not to mention that they look great together.<\/p>\n They would\u2019ve had beautiful (and funny) babies.<\/strong><\/p>\n Aniello:<\/strong> Well, they\u2019re not dead yet!<\/p>\n You\u2019re saying there\u2019s the possibility of a Hacks<\/em> reboot someday?<\/strong><\/p>\n Aniello:<\/strong> Cold open: Deborah and Ava are in Provincetown during Dyke Week, having a blast.<\/p>\n Statsky:<\/strong> The camera pans down to Ava\u2019s pregnant belly\u2026<\/p>\n This season delved into one of Deborah\u2019s emotional wounds: the way her ex-husband took her idea and made himself the sole creator of her sitcom, Who\u2019s Making Dinner?<\/em> 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\u2019s golden age<\/a>\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n Aniello:<\/strong> Because we are making things right now, it\u2019s hard for us to not feel like this is<\/em> the golden age.<\/p>\n Statsky:<\/strong> It\u2019s hard to even assess where we\u2019re 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\u2019re getting to do and feel grateful for it, while also keeping your eye on what\u2019s happening so that the industry doesn\u2019t crumble and fascism takes over.<\/p>\n 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 \u201cslippery slope.\u201d And here we are now, watching the finale of The Late Show With Stephen Colbert<\/a>,<\/em> canceled under politically murky circumstances.**<\/p>\n Statsky:<\/strong> We\u2019re people who exist in the world and are responding to what we see happening\u2014the ways in which free speech is being threatened by fascism, the consolidation of media outlets, and who gets to speak. So it\u2019s unfortunate that what we depicted turned out to be even truer to life than we ever imagined.<\/p>\n 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\u2019s possible to have an industry that isn\u2019t cutthroat, that respects creatives and isn\u2019t bewitched by AI<\/a>. I\u2019m curious how industry people you work with respond to that.<\/strong><\/p>\n Aniello:<\/strong> 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.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n