What does it mean to be a comedy hack, and is it possible for a comic to age without becoming one? That’s one of the central questions that Paul W. Downs and co-creators Lucia Aniello and Jen Statsky explore in the HBO Max comedy series Hacks.

The Emmy Award-winning series, which recently finished its third season, was conceived during a 2015 roadtrip. Downs and his co-creators were headed to Portland, Maine, when they started talking about the idea of contemporary, “cool comedy” — versus humor that young comedians might consider “hacky.”

“We just started talking about this phenomenon and thought, ‘Oh, you know what would be a cool show is a show about an icon of comedy who is misunderstood by someone of a younger generation,’” Downs says. “And so we just emailed each other the idea for the show and kept talking about it for four or five years before we pitched it.”

The series centers on Deborah Vance (played by Jean Smart), a veteran comedian whose career is waning. In response, Deborah’s manager (played by Downs) brings in a Gen-Z comic named Ava (Hannah Einbinder) to help freshen up her act. Along the way, Hacks explores themes of sexism in comedy and the nuances of “cancel culture” — as when some of Deborah’s old offensive jokes resurface.

“It’s a comedy, but we also want to make a show that makes people think,” Downs says. “Because if we have … this platform, it’s like, why not make something that makes you … think about something and reframe something you’ve thought about in the past?”

For Downs, Hacks is a family business; he’s married to his co-creator Aniello, who went into labor with their first child while he was acting in and she was directing the final episode of season 2.

“In this particular scene I had to be nervous. And so guess what? I had a lot to draw on,” he says. “We always say that, right now, Hacks is our first born, and our son is our second.”

Interview highlights

On what Deborah and Ava have in common

I think both of them turn to comedy for the same reason that a lot of comedians do — because there was something in their life that was either painful and they needed to laugh through it, or, for some people, they feel isolated or different or “othered,” and it’s a means of connecting with people or it’s a means of, sometimes, self-protection, to make other people laugh. So I think there’s a lot of reasons people come to comedy. But certainly for both of them, they have a similar use of comedy, which is, it’s a defense for them. It’s armor for them. …

For someone like Ava, who grew up lonely, it was a means of feeling connected to other people and making sense of the world and the things that she was observing. So it is certainly the tie that binds. It’s the thing that makes them very much kindred spirits. I think there are some people who are just giddy and funny. Some people are just naturally liquid funny. But I do think that there is certainly truth to the richness of material that comes from a place of pain and hardship.

Jean Smart and Paul W. Downs in Hacks.

Jake Giles Netter/HBO Max

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Jake Giles Netter/HBO Max

On whether or not there are lines that should not be crossed in comedy

In the pilot episode, [Deborah] does say, “There is no line. You can make a joke about anything if it’s funny.” … And I think the finer point, though, on that is you can make a joke about anything if it’s funny and if it doesn’t cause harm. … I think the thing is, when you are punching down, it’s lazy. It’s not as funny.

On meeting his collaborators Lucia Aniello (who later became his wife) and Jen Statsky at Upright Citizens Brigade

We made each other laugh. I think that was the thing. We just shared a sense of humor. There’s two things. One, I found both Jen and Lucia so funny, and two, I found myself being funnier because I wanted to make them laugh. I think when you respect someone’s brain and their sense of humor, getting a laugh out of them is sort of like the ultimate. It feels so good. … I think we just gravitated toward each other because we shared a sense of humor, which often is related to a sense of how you see the world and a sense of values, too.

On why they pitch jokes and ideas in email threads

We’ll email [a joke] to the three of us, and then it’s so easily searchable. It’s usually in the moments we’re not working that the muse strikes [and] we have an idea. Something comes to us and we write it down. … We’re on vacation. We’re out to dinner. … So it’s sort of a way to get it filed and then get back to the fun, so you can get the work filed away and you can revisit it when you’re in the writer’s room. But yeah, we do that. We’ve done that for a very long time. We still do it.

On Hacks poking fun at Hollywood only wanting existing intellectual properties, like a Gumby or Operation movie 

I do think it’s really hard to sell original ideas. Particularly right now, there’s a real crisis in selling comedy. … I think there’s less appetite to take risks on original voices and original stories. Even when we pitched [Hacks], we thought, ‘Well, a show about two women who do comedy, one of whom is in a waning moment in her career. Will people want to see that?’ And thank God they did. … Unless it’s a sure thing, I do think there’s a lot less risk happening now. … People are afraid to do something that doesn’t work.

On Hacks looking at how late night shows have changed 

Exploring the ways in which show business has changed or is changing is really interesting to us because this is obviously a character study about two people. And we always said it was a peek behind the curtain and very much about their lives offstage. But it’s also an examination of entertainment and comedy. It’s really a show about comedy. And so late night, especially for comedians who get their first break on a late night show, whether it’s doing stand-up on a late night show or being interviewed and showing a little bit of their own sense of humor on a late night show, it’s still very much an important marker of your career, I think, especially for comedians. But … it doesn’t necessarily have the same meaning or impact that it did when Carson was on.

Therese Madden and Susan Nyakundi produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Clare Lombardo adapted it for the web.