Hannah Einbinder recalls being 'very upset and scared' while reading THAT 'Hacks' finale scene
If there's one thing we know about Deborah Vance, she will have the last laugh.
But she has a bit of an uphill battle first to prove she's still a legend. Oh, and alive.
In the Hacks season 4 finale, TMZ falsely reported that the comedian-turned-late-night-host, played by Jean Smart, retired — "the r-word!" she laments — to Singapore, where she died. And it seemed like she might've been heading that direction — after quitting her late-night show rather than firing her head writer, Ava Daniels (Hannah Einbinder) — partying and drinking away her days and nights while living and working at Resorts World in Singapore instead of focusing on writing new material (which she performed via a translator, her loophole to get around an 18-month no-compete clause in her late-night contract).
But for a few minutes, Ava — and the audience — thought TMZ had the scoop on the comedy queen's tragic fate.
"I'm crying," Einbinder admits to Entertainment Weekly of her initial reaction when getting to that page of the episode 10 script. "When I'm reading the script, I am not going, like, well, of course, this could never happen. I'm in Ava's reality. I'm not [thinking], 'They're certainly not going to kill off Deborah.' So I was very upset and scared, basically all of the things that Ava ultimately feels."
Series creator Jen Statsky, chatting with EW alongside fellow creators Lucia Aniello and Paul W. Downs during a break from writing season 5, confirms the trio did not give Smart a heads up about what was coming. "But I think we have enough of a creative trust and relationship that [she knew] we wouldn't be killing her off."
Killing Deborah wasn't the point, though — it's about the comedy legend's reaction to the news...specifically, the obituary, which attributes her quitting her late-night show as the "demise of the entire franchise," she reads to Ava in a rage. "That is not how I'm going to be remembered. That will not be my legacy. I'm. No. Quitter. We have some re-writing to do."
It's that last part that delights her young protégé the most, having witnessed Deborah's decline over the past several weeks in Singapore. "It was the perfect luxury playground where Deborah could lick her wounds," Downs says of the choice to go halfway around the world — a spot Aniello calls "international Vegas." Continues Downs, "It's super high-end, a place that she would feel very comfortable and get to do the thing that she's addicted to, which is perform."
Though the resort continues to extend her residency, Deborah is less and less engaged in the act — even falling asleep during her set. When Ava confronts Deborah about her behavior, it doesn't go well for the young writer; Deborah does what Deborah does best, emotionally attacking Ava with a flurry of personal insults and telling her to go back home to get a life that doesn't include her.
"The thing we get to see from Ava that we haven't seen before is that she's really worried about her friend, because Deborah is acting in a way she hasn't acted ever before," Downs explains. "Even though Deborah lashes out, it's interesting, Ava doesn't clap back. She doesn't get as emotional or reactive as we may have seen her in the past because she's really concerned for a friend, and I think she also has a really evolved understanding of who this person is. So it's a moment of, I think, disappointment for her more than it is being deeply wounded. She's just desperately wants to wake Deborah up, wants her..."
"To fight," Statsky says.
In the moment, Einbinder says Ava walks away thinking it's the end of her work relationship with Deborah — maybe even their friendship. "They're so linked. I don't know what the friendship is without the work," she explains. "Not to say there isn't a friendship, but it's so deeply embedded in their dynamic."
But work, and specifically legacy, is now Deborah's focus — they have "some re-writing to do," after all — so consider the fight on.
Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly
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