In the final moments of the third season of the critically acclaimed comedy “Hacks” for Max, a new character element was introduced: “Damn Bob” played by Ava.
Named by episode director and series co-creator Lucia Aniello, no haircut has ever shown such a shift in power dynamics as Ava's (Hannah Einbinder) new look, which debuted just before the show ended.
After being betrayed by her boss Deborah Vance (Jean Smart), a comedy writer applies everything she learned from her former mentor, blackmailing her friend and landing herself a job as head writer on Vance's new late-night show.
“Ava is embodying a new version of herself,” says series co-creator Jen Statsky. “It’s not a completely new version, of course, but it’s the next level of taking everything that Deborah taught her and applying it to her life and what she wants and feels she deserves — and also, what she feels she has to do to make the show successful and to maintain what Deborah and Ava have built. So, yes, it was intentional that she felt like her hair had to be very short and straight.”
Statsky, Aniello, series co-creator Paul W. Downs and star Einbinder sat down on HBO's Variety's “Making A Scene” to break down the epic final moments of the season finale, “Bulletproof” — and what it means for Season 4.
“It felt so harsh,” Einbinder recalls. “We had obviously straightened my hair, and the short hair was just hanging down like crazy. It was supposed to be sharp and strong and work-like. That was very clear in our earlier conversations.”
But the finale wasn't all showboating and power suits (Einbinder's awesome last-minute shield as she takes over as Prime Minister). Before the audience could get to the jaw-dropping revelation, Deborah and Ava first had to blow their relationship up in a horrific living room confrontation where Ava confronted Deborah for lying to her face about being the Book Chief.
“This scene is probably the scene we wrote the most,” Downs says. “It’s really about how honest they are and how raw they are, because they’re both wounded… and wanting to revisit the mythology of these two characters and the history that they’ve lived. It was written very specifically, and it’s a scene that wasn’t improvised because we worked for a very long time to find the balance that would provoke Ava to do what she does in the final moments, but also feel like it was honest to both characters as well.”
“Bulletproof” wasn’t the first time these two women have turned on each other, but this fight is the most devastating yet. The emotional aftermath also inspired the show’s 17 Emmy nominations, including Best Comedy Series.
Both Smart and Enbinder were reluctant to rehearse the big moment on set too much, which is common on “Hacks.”
“We don’t do a lot of rehearsals in general,” Aniello says. “There’s something about letting the actors do it first in front of the camera because sometimes there’s something really beautiful in those raw choices.”
In addition, Einbinder was concerned that the weight behind the dialogue might provoke an emotional response.
“It’s a testament to the fact that these two women, Jen and Hannah, are not playing roles,” Downs says. “They’re not acting as characters. They’re artists who are fully embodying these characters and I think that’s very true to them. For Hannah, she’s like, ‘I can’t say these words without feeling really uncomfortable,’ because what’s been going on between these two characters for three seasons has been building to this.”
To make every line impactful, Aniello planned the fight sequence to match the breakdown of their friendship. “The first thing I really wanted to do was have the camera be very active at the top of her to match Ava’s energy,” she says. “The camera is pulling and pushing her from behind her. So it’s like you’re literally with Ava and she’s attacking Deborah. You’re completely in Ava’s point of view.”
The dialogue is peppered with toxic lines. An emotional Ava begs Deborah to be fair, then the veteran comedian turns on her, calling her demands 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,' and both because she [doesn’t] “She shows her vulnerability as a woman in this work, but she’s also protecting herself,” Downs says. “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 kind of self-protection.”
Statsky agrees, noting that “she's a narcissist, but she feels things. She doesn't want to feel like someone's feelings are reflected back at her, and it makes her confront what she did to get to this point. She asks Ava not to go there so she can maintain this shield that she's used for 50 years in this profession.”
Eventually, Ava asks Deborah if she would be willing to throw away their entire friendship for the job, to which the comedian replies that she would be willing to lose her friend for her dream.
“In that particular scene, there was only one alternative, which was when Ava said, ‘And you’re willing to lose me too,’ and Deborah said, ‘I’m willing to.’ We also saw her say, ‘If I have to,’ which was a little bit softer,” Downs reveals. “But every action has an equal and opposite reaction, so for Ava to get to the place where she says, ‘You’re going to die alone,’ we felt it had to be a little bit colder than Deborah, so we went with the shot where she said, ‘I’m willing to.’”
The seriousness of this exchange left little room for sarcasm. In the end, the showrunners decided to cut the one-liner from the dialogue, which they said they would keep for future episodes, because it was too good to miss.
Fortunately, as with all things in Hacks, with bad comes good, and the confrontation between the powerful suit-wearing Bob and the betrayal that followed opened up the new season to all sorts of exciting new power struggles between our heroes.
The show's creators are currently working on the next batch of “Hacks” episodes and have indicated that the fourth season will begin immediately after the final scene of “Bulletproof.”
“There will be no shortage of suits,” Statsky promised.
“Dress appropriately for the job you want,” Downs adds.
