‘Hacks’ Team On Late-Night TV And Impact On Season 5

The Late Show with Stephen Colbert was canceled less than two months after Late Night with Deborah Vance suffered a similar fate on HBO Max’s Hacks.

It’s a fate that has not gone unnoticed by the stars and creators of the latter.

“What’s happening in late-night happened on the show. Deborah left the show and in the world of Hacks, the franchise ended, so it’s very weird that this is happening with Stephen Colbert right now because a lot of our season [four] was building up to that moment,” Paul W. Downs, who is a co-creator and co-showrunner of the series who also plays manager Jimmy, told Deadline.  

Speaking at the Deadline Contenders at HBO Max event in Hollywood, Downs added that it’s been a “surreal moment for us, in light of what’s going on.”

Watch the panel conversation here.

But there’s good news for Jean Smart’s Vance as the show heads into Season 5, which is currently being written. “A lot of our Season 5 is going to be about her sort of reinventing herself and rewriting her legacy after she’s been blamed for the death of late-night,” he said.

Downs was joined at the event by Lucia Aniello and Jen Statsky, who co-created and co-showrun Hacks, as well as Hannah Einbinder, who plays Ava, and Smart, who appeared virtually. The event also included scripts from Hacks as well as music inspired by the series and costumes from the show, which TV Academy voters could peruse in between sessions. There was also a conversation with a number of the below-the-line folk from Hacks including cinematographer Adam Bricker, costume designer Kathleen Felix-Hager, casting director Linda Lowy, production designer Rob Tokarz and editor Susan Vaill.

(L-R) Jean Smart (on screen), Jen Statsky, Lucia Aniello, Paul W. Downs and Hannah Einbinder

Michael Buckner

(L-R) Jen Statsky, Lucia Aniello and Paul W. Downs

Michael Buckner

‘Hacks’ costumes

Michael Buckner

Lucia Aniello

Michael Buckner

Jen Statsky

Michael Buckner

Hannah Einbinder

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Paul W. Downs

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‘Hacks’ editor Susan Vaill

Michael Buckner

In the show’s ninth episode, after having a sex-pest movie star on as a guest, Ava leaks the fact that a joke was cut to protect his reputation. This leads Vance to quit live on air in a special post-Oscars episode.

Aniello said, “We wanted to explore less so the exact what is late-night in this moment, even though we do explore that, but we really wanted to explore who is Deborah now, hosting late-night. It’s more interesting to explore the relationship with Ava in making this and of course, there is the battle of art, commerce and what happens with Bob Lipka.”

“We have a very optimistic perspective about the industry. What Deborah does in ‘A Slippery Slope’ — the ninth episode — when she leaves late-night, she does it because she wants to fight for an industry that works better for artists, and as a comedian, she doesn’t want to let herself be censored and capitulate to this tech company and her corporate overlords. We try to make it feel aspirational. We wish there were a female late-night host. We wish there was someone who stood up to corporate greed the way that Deborah does. It’s wish fulfillment,” added Downs.

Smart said that she loved watching Johnny Carson and Steve Allen host The Tonight Show when she was growing up. “I was very excited when I found it was going to be hosting the late-night show. It’s always something that I thought would be great fun, and for somebody like Deborah, it’s the perfect fit. She has control. She’s running a party. But also, too, because it was something that was unreachable for women, that made it more enticing for her,” she added.

Einbinder’s first entry into the business was doing a stand-up set on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. She was also the youngest comedian to ever do a set on the CBS show and was the last onstage set for over a year as a result of the pandemic. “It was so meaningful. It’s an institution that has meant so much, and it’s such a vehicle for so many artists. We all have people in the comedy community that came up through the late-night systems. It is cool and fun to do it that justice. It was really an honor,” she said.

In fact, Statsky interned at Saturday Night Live and Late Night with Conan O’Brien before landing a full-time job on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.

“Late Night was my first official comedy writing job. I was 24 years old. I was scared out of my mind and it really forged in fire in terms of how those shows are made. When the three of us starting writing the season, we wanted to pay homage to what it’s like to host a late-night show, what a challenge that is, but also what it’s like to write a late-night show, make your show five days a week. We wanted to show just how hard these shows are to make and how much work goes into it,” she said.

In the season, Einbinder’s Ava quits after finding out that the writers were splurging on fancy lunches, on her dime, but not before throwing a $70 branzino at the window. Statsky was asked who actually hurled the fish. “It was a different kind of fish,” she joked.