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Wall Street Journal

How a Trio of Comedy Masterminds Cracked the Workplace Generation Gap

The three creators of the hit show Hacks are squeezed onto the same deep blue velvet couch like it's throuples therapy. They chose to sit this way. There was an open chair. But closeness is not threatening to them—it's what got them here in the first place. Hacks, now returning for its fourth season, has birthed one of the industry's most sought-after writing teams, a Hollywood threesome—but professional. Lucia Aniello and Paul W. Downs, who are married, and longtime friend Jen Statsky, who officiated at their wedding, have defied expectations not just with their success but with a work arrangement that few could replicate. A collaboration among three people is rife with potential for trouble, whether it's two-against-one battles, three-way competition or gold-silver-bronze status anxiety. But on a recent afternoon at Universal Studios in Los Angeles, Downs and Aniello sitting on either side of Statsky, no one lets another's joke go by without a laugh. 'We're not the first to do this,' Downs says, not-quite-correctly citing the Marx Brothers. 'Weren't they two?' Aniello asks. 'No,' Downs says. 'There's three of them: Groucho, Harpo and the other one.' (That would be Chico, though there were a couple more.) Vaudeville isn't their wheelhouse: The writers are all millennials roughly the same age. But in their work, they've gained acclaim by delivering sharp commentary on those much older and younger. Since its debut four years ago on the streaming service Max, Hacks has jumped headlong into the generation gap at work. In season 1 of the show, fading Las Vegas stand-up legend Deborah Vance (Jean Smart) odd-coupled with outcast young comedy writer Ava Daniels (Hannah Einbinder) on a shared quest for career reinvention. In season 2, the pair hit the road to work out new material in the age of cancel culture. In season 3, they campaigned for a late-night talk show despite Deborah's age and Ava's lack of experience. In the new season premiering this spring, the writers drop their characters into a workplace comedy, a tinderbox of baby boomers, millennials and Gen Zers. Deborah makes history as the first female late-night talk show host, while head writer Ava wrangles a staff of comedic up-and-comers. Intergenerational sparks fly over Mr. Coffee—why is it gendered?—and work hours for young staffers who consider 'me time' a medical absence if it boosts their self-esteem. The trio doesn't divide writing labors in any formal way, they say, and they note that their odd number gives them a built-in tie-breaker. On Hacks, Statsky mostly writes, Aniello writes and directs, and Downs writes, directs and acts, playing the forever-panicked manager, Jimmy. The show has won nine Emmys, including for writing, directing and best comedy series. Work infuses the personal lives of the showrunners. Statsky says she does not get drawn into marital disagreements or feel outnumbered. 'I don't know if people think they're going to be kissing and decide in the kissing that they're going to go with their pitch, not mine,' Statsky says. 'It never really comes into play in that way.' Aniello looks at Downs: 'I hope we're not talking about pitches while we're kissing.' 'We said at the beginning, we can't let this show ever get in the way of our friendship,' says Statsky. 'And obviously they have a relationship, a marriage beyond friendship.' 'We said it could get in the way of that,' Downs says. In the new season, Deborah, a lone wolf who has her first real boss in the form of a network chief, is on notice that she needs to find her own version of 'Carpool Karaoke' and dominate late-night ratings within three months or her show will be in jeopardy. The fight for attention in an oversaturated media market is as pressing for the writers as it is for their characters. 'We did create this season knowing that we were writing at a very specific time when there is tremendous pressure for all of these companies to be maximizing profit at all times,' says Statsky. 'One could assume, 'Oh, it's very inside baseball. It's the inner workings and behind the curtain of a late-night show.' And yet I think it's allowed us to most clearly talk about the state of the world than we've ever been able to do before.' Half-hour comedies are scarce in a risk-averse Hollywood, and the show's writers want to use their clout to take on the realities of their industry—the demand for instant hits, the dwindling pool of comedy jobs, the worries about the nature of future work. Writers are pushed to spend more time explaining what's on-screen, at the expense of the plot, to accommodate viewers who are also on their phones. 'This is what's happening to storytelling in our industry,' says Aniello. 'We might be insulated from it at this specific moment, but it's coming for all of us.' Statsky, 39, grew up outside Boston and attended New York University before getting her first paid job as a writer on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon. She loves junk food, devours internet memes and married comedy writer Travis Helwig at a drive-through chapel in Las Vegas. The comedic foil of the group is Downs, 42, a potty mouth with perfect diction. He grew up in rural Sussex, New Jersey. At school, he was a slightly unusual child in patent-leather wing tips and a tie with buttons glued on it. He went to Duke University and lost some eccentricity over time. Aniello, 42, left Italy as a baby and grew up in Hadley, Massachusetts, where her parents ran an Italian restaurant. At Columbia University, she joined a sorority and played varsity tennis. She's got a scratchy laugh and used to have a habit of kissing her own shoulder for self-care when she got stressed, though she hasn't done that for a while. Downs and Aniello met at an improv class at the Upright Citizens Brigade in New York in 2007. Two years later, Aniello and Statsky bonded as two of the only women in an indie sketch group. Aniello and Downs were dating, churning out digital shorts in New York while Statsky, now their good friend, moved to L.A. and landed on the writing staff at Parks and Recreation. The couple began cc'ing Statsky on their domestic to-do list emails. It was a comedy bit designed to keep her in their lives—one made funnier by the fact that no one ever said a word about it—but as a result Statsky always knew when her friends needed toilet bowl cleaner. In 2015, after Downs and Aniello had started writing on the millennial comedy Broad City, Statsky joined them. The Comedy Central show about two young women not making it in New York proved a further springboard for the writers. The idea for Hacks was born in 2015 when the three were on a road trip to a monster truck rally in Portland, Maine, where Downs was shooting a sketch for a Netflix special. The talk turned to funny women of a bygone era. Why weren't talents like Phyllis Diller and Joan Rivers more appreciated in their day? The series wasn't written specifically for Smart, 73, who nevertheless didn't need to audition. The part requires incredible stamina, and the production got a scare when Smart underwent a heart procedure in 2023. But she jumped back into work, taking an extended rest only when the strikes by writers and actors happened to shut down Los Angeles. She has won three Emmys for her performance. With stars like Nicole Kidman, 57, and Julianne Moore, 64, continuing to work steadily into their AARP years, older women are faring better in Hollywood than they ever have. But there's a cutoff, it seems, determined by whether an older woman can still look younger while playing an older woman. On Hacks, there's no fudging it: Age is central to the plot. To write with authority on comedy veterans, the team has hired advisers including Merrill Markoe, the original head writer for Late Night With David Letterman who also has a small part in the new season. Other consultants have included Janis Hirsch, who wrote for Frasier and Will & Grace; Carol Leifer, who wrote for Seinfeld and Saturday Night Live; Lisa Albert, a writer on Mad Men; and Susie Essman, the foul-mouthed friend from Curb Your Enthusiasm. 'We love writing for funny actors, and that has led us to hiring a lot of people who tend to be older women,' says Aniello. 'It's not undiscovered talent, but underutilized talent.' The Hacks writers think a lot about the indignities of show business. The constant scrapping, the ruthlessness, the fact that even a rare success doesn't guarantee happiness. Though plenty of 24-year-olds in L.A. already feel as battle-tested as Deborah, there's a different connection for older viewers—'people who are like, 'I'm standing on the couch screaming YES!' ' Downs says. The show argues that to stay still in show business is to die. 'A lot of comedians like Deborah stay relevant because they are challenged,' says Statsky. 'You have to keep challenging your point of view as you get older. 'That thing I thought a decade ago, do I still think it? Do I still believe it? Does it still feel true?' To be a good comedian and speak truth to power and comment on culture, you have to be constantly questioning yourself.' Downs chimes in: 'Which is exhausting.' On Hacks, the script is paramount. By the time the cast gets it, the writing team has examined every word choice and punctuation mark. Each show contains a lot of material—it's only a half hour because everybody talks so fast. The trio point out that each episode's run time includes 80 seconds of credits, so actually they write even tighter than it looks. The showrunners say the writers' room horrors featured in this season come from their friends on other comedy series, not themselves. 'Thank you for your trauma,' Statsky says. Every writers' room has a group text chain that leaves out the bosses. Aniello doesn't know the name of the one that excludes them. 'I hope it's, 'I wish they were on this,' ' she says. Aniello, Downs and Statsky see one more season of Hacks after this, and they say they already know how it will end. All three have overall deals at Warner Bros. (Aniello and Downs have one, Statsky has another) as well as two separate production shingles. But for the foreseeable future, as they pursue several joint projects, including a comedy series about regional theater starring Kaley Cuoco, three is their magic number. Or maybe it's four—Aniello and Downs had a baby boy in 2022, and Mom continued to direct an episode of Hacks between contractions. Smart and Einbinder threw her a baby shower. (Later, Einbinder, 29, gave the baby a copy of the novel Infinite Jest.) The toddler's parents are intrigued by what makes their son laugh when he wanders into the Hacks editing room. 'Chicken? What chicken?,' a manic question delivered by Downs's character in the new season, is the toddler's favorite line. He doesn't know what it means, he just knows it kills. Some laughs cross even the steepest age divides. 'There are things that are universally funny to people,' says Downs, 'and that's actually a really exciting thing.' Aniello: hair, Derek Yuen; makeup, Fiona Stiles. Downs: grooming, Sonia Lee. Statsky: hair, Eddie Cook; makeup, Courtney Hart. Production, Abigail Aragon.