The three creators of the Emmy-nominated comedy series Hacks had no idea they were predicting the future when they had their central late-night host character defiantly speak out against her network bosses and then lose her dream job.
In this episode of The Last Laugh podcast, Lucia Aniello, Paul W. Downs, and Jen Statsky break down the “surreal” parallels between Deborah Vance’s arc in Season 4 and the real-life tribulations of Stephen Colbert. They talk about the importance of late-night TV, what its future might hold, and reveal how they got Jimmy Kimmel to play a bully version of himself on the show.
The trio also goes deep on casting leads Jean Smart and Hannah Einbinder, as well as this year’s Emmy-nominated guest stars Robby Hoffman and Dance Mom herself, Julianne Nicholson. And they tease what might be in store for Season 5—including why fans are so desperate for Deborah and Ava to finally hook up.
“It does feel witchy,” Downs, who plays Deborah and Ava’s manager Jimmy Lusaque on the show, jokes of the Colbert parallels, before turning more serious. “It feels unfortunate that what happens on our show was echoed in actual culture.”
In the penultimate episode of the most recent season of Hacks, Deborah Vance decides to use her platform as a late-night host to speak out against her corporate overlords for trying to censor her show and force her to fire her head writer, Ava—much in the same way Colbert called Paramount’s settlement with Trump a “big, fat bribe” just days before his show was canceled. “
“And it’s really weird because, like Stephen Colbert, she was number one in her time slot,” Downs adds of Deborah. “She got the show to number one and yet still had these pressures to protect their bottom line. So it’s very surreal that that happened just months before what’s happening now with Stephen Colbert.”
Aniello, who is the show’s primary director and is married to Downs, adds that the themes of art vs. commerce “felt very of the moment” when they were putting together the fourth season. “As corporations and streaming and tech companies infiltrate or takeover our industry—this industry that has flourished for over a hundred years—people who create the work are no longer really able to share in the profits the way that they once were and people are being squeezed for every penny,” she says. “What does that do to the art? And then what situations do you find yourself in?”
“She had to make a really, really hard decision,” Aniello says of Deborah. “And I think that she made the right one, a really difficult one. And it seems like Stephen was also in a very difficult situation as well.”
They titled the episode where Deborah makes her stand “A Slippery Slope” because she had to ask herself, “If you say yes to this, what are they going to ask of you next?” she adds. Of course, unlike Deborah, it seems Colbert was not even given the opportunity to “lick the boot,” but rather was simply shown the door after nearly a decade at CBS.
All three creators stress that they wanted to make late-night TV such a big part of the show’s fourth season because of how vital they believe the “distinctly American comedy institution” remains for culture at large. In fact, if it hadn’t been for Colbert’s Late Show, they may never have found the perfect Ava in Hannah Einbinder.
After Einbinder delivered her first audition for the role of Deborah’s young millennial writer, the creators Googled her to see what else she had done and the only thing that came up was her late-night stand-up debut on The Late Show. “It is sort of like this North Star I think in the world of comedy,” Downs says. “So it made a lot of sense for us to build Deborah’s dream around that.”
Unfairly or not, Hacks has become a central part of the narrative about what the word “comedy” even means anymore when it comes to the Emmy Awards, which puts their show, which is full of hard jokes, in the same categories as FX’s The Bear, which has only gotten less laugh-out-loud funny over the course of its four seasons.
“I do think it’s unfair to point to one single show and put all this on it in terms of what is happening as a whole to the industry,” Statsky says, diplomatically. “Really, there are so few comedies being made and that’s what the issue is. I think this debate came out of the fact that so few comedies started being made that there was a hyper-focus on certain ones, and it’s too much load-bearing weight on any one show.”
Hacks came close to tipping perhaps too far into that dramatic space at the end of the fourth season when—spoiler alert!—Ava sees Deborah’s obituary on TMZ only to find out moments later that it was printed by mistake.
Getting a glimpse at how the world would see her if she were to die at this stage of her career—“They’re saying I killed late-night!”—will ultimately force Deborah out of the funk she has found herself after quitting the only job she ever really wanted.
“It wakes her up and gives her a mission to rewrite her legacy,” Downs says. It was also a “very personal” story arc for Smart, who had her own, very real health scare in 2023, forcing production to shut down on Season 3 so she could undergo heart surgery.
“I think when you watch the show, you can feel that it’s personal to her, that it’s very real to her,” Downs adds. “And it’s part of the reason she’s so poignant in the role. She’s really powerful because she isn’t playing at something, she’s really feeling a lot of it. And I think she’s going to do that again, because she has had an experience that’s not completely similar but not unlike this one.”
As for what else viewers can expect in what may or not be the final season of Hacks, which the creators are currently writing and is expected to air in 2026, they are aware of the intense desire among certain fans for Deborah and Ava to get romantically involved. They hear the feedback and they are not totally ruling it out.
“I think much like Hannah, Ava would be down,” Aniello, says, making Downs and Statsky laugh. “But much like Jean, I don’t think it’s something that Deborah’s particularly interested in.”
“And it’s not surprising that people see that or want that, actually, because it is a love story,” Downs says. “It’s about a very unique, very complicated relationship between these two women. So I fully get it.”
Nodding along, Aniello adds, “They are in love, they’re literally soulmates, they’re both really hot, why wouldn’t they?” She then stops herself and says, “Wait, I’m convincing myself, actually.”
“Yeah, now we’re talking ourselves into it,” Statsky jokes.
And finally, Downs adds, “Good thing we’re only halfway done writing Season 5…”
Listen to the episode now and follow The Last Laugh on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts to be the first to hear new episodes when they are released every Wednesday.
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