Hannah Einbinder and ‘Hacks’ Creators on the Season 3 Showdown, Where Season 4 Begins and Ava’s ‘F— A– Bob’

The final moments of Season 3 of Max’s critically acclaimed comedy “Hacks” introduced a new character element: Ava’s “fuck-ass bob.”

Named by episode director and series co-creator Lucia Aniello, never has a hairstyle heralded a shift in power dynamics like Ava’s (Hannah Einbinder) new look, which debuted just before the credits rolled.

Betrayed by her boss, Deborah Vance (Jean Smart), the comedy writer puts everything she learned from her former mentor into practice, blackmails her friend and consolidates her job as head writer of Vance’s new late-night show.

“Ava embodies a new version of herself,” says co-creator Jen Statsky. “It’s not a totally new version, of course, but it’s the next level of taking everything Deborah has taught her and implementing it into her life and into what she wants and feels she deserves – and also, what she feels she has to do to make the show work and keep what Deborah and Ava have built alive. So yeah, it was supposed to feel like her hair was supposed to be a fucking bob, straight.”

Statsky, Aniello, co-creator Paul W. Downs and star Einbinder spoke to Variety’s ‘Making A Scene,’ presented by HBO, to analyze the epic final moments of the season finale, ‘Bulletproof’ – and what it means for the season 4.

“It felt serious,” Einbinder remembers. “Obviously we straightened my hair and the bob went crazy. It was intended to be angular and strict and have a businesslike appearance. That was quite clear in our conversations beforehand.”

The finale wasn’t all bitchy bobs and power suits, though (Einbinder’s immaculate armor for her final big boss moment). Before the audience could get to the breathtaking twist, Deborah and Ava first had to absolutely explode their entire relationship in a gripping living room showdown in which Ava confronted Deborah for lying to her face about the head writer position.

“It’s probably the scene we wrote the most,” says Downs. “It’s really about how honest they are, how cruel they can be, because they’ve both been hurt… and wanting to revisit the mythology of these characters and the history they’ve had. It was written very specifically, and it’s a scene where there was no improvisation, because we worked for a very long time to find that balance that would provoke Ava to do what she does in the last moments, but also the feeling would have thought it was true. also for both characters.”

‘Bulletproof’ is far from the first time these two women have turned on each other, and yet somehow this battle is the most devastating yet. Perhaps those emotional fallout also inspired the 17 Emmy nominations, including a nod for best comedy series, that the show received.
Both Smart and Einbinder were reluctant to over-rehearse the big moment on set, which is common on “Hacks.”

“We generally don’t rehearse that much,” Aniello says. “There’s something about having the actors just play for the camera, because sometimes there’s something really beautiful about those raw choices.”

Furthermore, Einbinder worried that the weight behind the dialogue would cause an emotional response.
“That’s a testament to the way these women, both Jean and Hannah, are not playing for anything,” Downs says. “They don’t act as artisans. They really are artists who fully embody these characters and I think it’s very real for them. For Hannah, she says, “I can’t say these words without really getting upset,” because what’s happened between these two characters for three seasons all builds on this.

To make each line tantalizing, Aniello mapped out the fight’s escape plan, befitting the breakdown of their friendship. “The first thing I really wanted to do was have the camera at the top be very active, so that it would kind of match Ava’s energy,” she says. “The camera both pulls with her and pushes behind her. So it feels like you’re literally with Ava attacking Deborah. You’re very much in Ava’s POV.
The dialogue is peppered with venomous lines. An emotional Ava begs Deborah to be honest, which the veteran comedian then turns around by calling her requests naive and ordering her to “stop crying.”

“We try a lot to make our dialogue say more than it says on the page, and I think there’s a double meaning in that moment because Deborah says, ‘stop crying,’ both because she [doesn’t] show weakness as a woman in this industry, but are also self-protective,” says Downs. “She says, ‘Please stop crying,’ because it affects Deborah, and Deborah doesn’t want to feel the pain that Ava feels. She says, “Stop crying because it makes me emotional too.” I think there’s a little bit of that self-protection in there.”

Statsky agrees, noting, “She’s a narcissist, but she does feel things. She doesn’t want anyone’s emotions reflected back at her, and it forces her to confront what she did to get them there. She really asks Ava not to go there so she can keep this armor she’s been using in this career for 50 years.

Ultimately, Ava asks if Deborah is willing to throw away their entire friendship over this job, to which the comic replies that she is indeed willing to lose her friend because of her dream.

“There was only one alternative to that particular scene, which is when Ava says, ‘And you’re willing to lose me too,’ and Deborah says, ‘I’m willing to do that.’ We also had her say, ‘If she has to,’ which was a little softer,” Downs reveals. “But every action has an equal and opposite reaction, and so to have Ava get to the place where she says, ‘You’re going to die alone,’ we felt like it needed to be a little colder from Deborah, so we chose the take in which she said, “I’m willing to.”

The seriousness of this exchange left little room for levity. The showrunners ultimately cut the particular joke from the dialogue, which they said they would keep in future episodes, because it was too good to lose.

Luckily, like all ‘Hacks’, with bad comes good, and the power suit/betrayal bob showdown that followed opened up the new season to all kinds of exciting new power struggles between our leads.

The creators are currently working on the next batch of “Hacks” episodes and teased that Season 4 will kick off almost immediately after the “Bulletproof” final scene.

“There will be no shortage of suits,” Statsky promises.

Downs adds, “Dress for the job you want.”