‘Hacks’ Jean Smart, Hannah Einbinder On Season 5 “Shocking” Ending

This is it, Hacks fans – the show’s (almost) over. Come April 9^th, Hacks’ fifth and final season will premiere on HBO Max.

Deadline sat down with Jean Smart, Hannah Einbinder and showrunners Jen Statsky, Paul W. Downs and Lucia Aniello to find out what’s coming for Deborah and Ava and how we’ll say goodbye — Einbinder said there had been “buckets” of tears while finishing up the show, while Aniello admitted “I’ve been crying every day.”

By Season 5’s start, Deborah and Ava are back from their ill-fated Season 4 sojourn to Singapore and it’s been rocky, to say the least. After the Season 4 live TV meltdown that cost Deborah her longed-for talk show, the duo are surely set to make some sort of comeback… but how did Smart and Einbinder feel when they first read the scripts and saw how it all ends?

“I don’t remember ever picturing or even imagining an ending,” Smart said. “I knew that it was going to be pretty much five seasons from the beginning, but I didn’t ask. I just was like, I’ll be surprised. When I did find out at first, I was shocked and unsure about how I felt because it was not remotely anything I could have imagined. But then I realized, no, it’ll work because they’re writing it and they’re amazing. And so I went, ‘OK.’”

Einbinder also spoke of how close Deborah and Ava have become by the time we see them in Season 5: “I feel like Ava is so committed to realizing Deborah’s dream and to contributing to all of the various things that she wants to accomplish, whether it’s the first standup special or the Late Night Show or Madison Square Garden. But I do think that through all of their trials and tribulations, they share this legacy. And it’s a really beautiful collaboration that I feel like they both get to own.”

This one, it’s for the fans. If you’re somebody who’s seen this show, then we finish it for them.

Lucia Aniello

In this new season, one exciting development is that Deborah gets to enjoy a romantic dalliance with new addition Christopher Briney (The Summer I Turned Pretty), who plays a famous rock star. How did Smart feel about Deborah getting to have some sexy fun? “I did think, oh god, I hope he isn’t just cringing,” she said. “He’s thinking, ‘Oh, I’d really like to be on that show, but oh damn, really?’ But he made me feel very comfortable and we had fun.”

Said Statsky, “We always want to portray Deborah as the full, dimensional character that she is and show that women don’t stop having sex and being sexy at any age. We also always thought it’d be funny and interesting that she would date this international rockstar that maybe wasn’t exactly her type and dressed a little bit more like her than other people she dated. And so that was just always a storyline that excited us.”

She continued, “In this final season, what we’re so excited for people to see is we get to do so many stories that we’ve been really waiting and wanting to do, but it just wasn’t quite right in earlier seasons, or it felt like we needed the relationship between Ava and Deborah deepen before we did it. So that was just one of the storylines that we knew would be funny, but also really sexy and real and grounded and important to show that, yeah, why wouldn’t these two get together?”

Regarding the finale ending that Smart found “shocking”, Aniello is eagerly anticipating viewers’ reactions. “I honestly am excited for them to see the end,” she said. “Honestly it’s the thing I’m most excited for.”

Downs added, “They get the most and the best of what Hacks does best, which is big laughs and big emotion, and I think it’s the biggest we’ve done on both counts.”

“I think that it really encapsulates exactly what we set out to do with this show and the tone of it,” Statsky said. “Like Paul is saying, that it’s funny, but heartfelt and very comedic, but also very real.”

Aniello said, “I think our actors are operating on another level in this episode. Jean and Hannah, of course, but also Jimmy (Downs) and Kayla (Megan Stalter) are so, so good in this last episode. Marcus (Carl Clemons-Hopkins) has really beautiful moments in it. This one, it’s for the fans. If you’re somebody who’s seen this show, then we finish it for them. So I really hope it’s… I would say really satisfying, but obviously that’s my opinion.”

“It’s full circle too,” Downs said. “There’s so much from the first season that’s paid off in the final episode, and in every season. I think there are seeds in every season that we pay off in the very last episode. So, I hope in that way it feels full circle and just the right amount of closure for people.”

Now, looking back over the five seasons, what were some storylines that got left on the cutting room floor?

Downs said, “We wanted to do one where due to inclement weather, Deborah couldn’t take off for a trip to LA, and so she had to take an Uber all the way. And it was just her in an Uber in the desert, with a really fun guest star.”

“Also, that she wouldn’t know what Uber was,” Anielo said. “She had never done it before. We thought it would be very funny.”

“And she doesn’t know what a Honda is,” Statsky deadpanned.

For Aniello, the one that got away was this: “We always wanted to have an episode where Deborah and Ava go canvassing for some political reason. And the idea of Deborah and Ava going door-to-door, and Deborah being driven from one house to the next house and then stopping, getting out, and going into the house and then rearranging their furniture because it has to have better feng shui while Ava’s sweating and trying to get signatures for some campaign.”

Downs said they’d also had the idea for Deborah’s daughter DJ (Kaitlyn Olsen) to start a crackpot business called Sweet Meats. “It was a food truck that made steak that was actually cake. So, it looks like a steak, but it’s made of cake, but the cake is protein.”

As for what’s next, they haven’t ruled out the prospect of a Hacks movie or spin-off  — “we’ll see” Statsky said, — but for now, they’re already into researching their next HBO series (the creative trio re-upped their overall deal with Warner Bros. Television last year).

“What’s crazy is we have already booked a research trip before we wrap the finale of this show, which is really interesting. It’s wild,” Downs said. However, they’re not able to reveal if this show will be a new rip-roaring comedy, or something completely different. Yet. So, watch this space…

Hacks Season 5 will debut on Thursday, April 9at 6 PM PT/9 PM ET on HBO Max.