‘Hacks’ Creator Paul W. Downs Reveals the Wild Real-Life Drama That Nearly Derailed the Series Finale
MoviesHub
Paul W. Downs is reflecting on Hacks.
The 43-year-old co-creator of the hit HBO series made an appearance on Therapuss with Jake Shane, where he opened up about the making of the series, including a stressful location scouting for the series finale that almost didn’t pan out.
Plus, he talked about series stars like Jean Smart, Hannah Einbinder and Meg Stalter, and shared some of his favorite memories while filming the show.
You can watch the Therapuss episode on Spotify below or on Netflix right here.
See the highlights from Paul W. Downs…
On Hacks breaking new talent: “It is one of the great joys of the show is being like, ‘here’s people that we find so funny. Hey, world, watch them shine.’”
On Jake Shane’s role as “Social Media Girlie” in Hacks: “You were so good…thrown into the deep end with Jean Smart. And for us to be like ‘improvise’…that is so intimidating. But you didn’t seem scared at all. You were a natural. You were so good.”
On the final episode of Hacks: “The idea of right to life and ending your life with dignity when you want to was the thing that we wanted to explore. The show is at its heart about these two people that have different opinions and they grapple with things, and the rest is what makes them both better? And we were like, ‘well, what the ultimate one is life and death.’ So we pitched that. In 2019.”
On the idea for Hacks: “Jen Statsky, Lucia Aniello and I were, on a road trip. I was filming a Netflix special…I wanted them to come with me to punch it up…we were going to Monster Jam in Maine and I. Because I had a character, Jasper Cooch, whose catchphrase is ‘big trucks.’…it was actually crazy that they did this. I contacted them, I was like, ‘I’m filming a Netflix special as Jasper Cooch’. I kind of sent them with a fake email. I was like, ‘can I come and warm up the crowd?’ And they’re like, ‘Sure.’ They gave me the mic. I got in a stadium. I made them do a call and response. ‘When I say big, you say trucks.’ But they were absolutely like, ‘here you go.’
“And so anyway, they came with me to help me, just to punch it up in, pitching things to say as we film this. And on that road trip, we were talking about female comedians who didn’t have the same opportunities that a lot of their male counterparts had. And we were like a show that’s a dark mentorship between one of these comedians and a young, cool comedy kid, because we also came from UCB and we were also in the alt comedy scene. And there was a thing about cool comedy versus uncool comedy, which interested us. And so we were like, ‘that’s a cool thing to explore.’ And we wrote an email to each other being like, ‘assistant show. Vegas standup gets an assistant and tortures her.’ And it just was born there. But on that day we were like…that would be a really good show. That would be a show I want to watch.'”
On Jean Smart getting cast and her character in Hacks: “It was like an amalgamation of Lucille Ball and Joan Rivers and Phyllis Diller and Elaine May. And there’s a lot of Debbie Reynolds. There’s a lot of showbiz legends that we kind of borrowed from to make the character. And so it wasn’t anybody specifically. We didn’t think about an actress, but when we finally got it, picked up and we were thinking about who would be perfect, there was a really short list. And Jean [Smart] was the only meeting we took…she was like, ‘I wanted to be a stand up. When I was 12, I dressed as Phyllis Diller. The script is for me.’ Yeah. I mean, we were like, ‘great. We think you’re perfect for it.’ So, it was really wild. So, I was the first person attached because we wrote Jimmy for me. And Jean was the second.”
On how Paul found Meg Stalter: “Instagram — Well, she again was in the scene. And so I actually the first time I ever met her in person, we were both on a stand-up show together. And to call what she does stand up is not fair because it’s performance art, you know what I mean? She’s more than a stand up. But yeah, she actually was so weird. It was a bunch of people from New York were on an LA show that I was doing. So I met a bunch of people that night for the first time. But she. Her videos on Instagram is how we first found her. And she had this thing that was…it’s both really self-assured, but also a little bit bumbling. You know, that, stuttery thing…and we were like, ‘oh, that is right for this character’, who we were already writing to be super nepo. Super self-assured, super rich, super nepo, but also kind of bumbling. So the characters she was doing, they were, so kind of what we were envisioning that we were like, ‘she’s I think, perfect for this.’ Then I met her on the stand up show and I was like, ‘she’s next level.’ She did audition because it was her first thing and it was HBO. And but in that first audition, we were like, ‘Holy s–t, this is going to be funny.’”
On improvising: “She’s really good at improvising within the confines of the scene. Sometimes you see DVD extras and you’re like, no wonder it’s on the extras, you know, because it’s so nuts and it feels like a whole new scene.’ But she is really good at improvising within the lane of the character, but we do improvise a lot, she and I.”
On his favorite improvisation during this season: “This season, Meg improvised basically, there was a thing about how I rushed a fraternity, but I didn’t ultimately get in because I wouldn’t f–k a goat. And, yeah, she improvised. ‘He would never f–k any animals.’ And I was like, ‘no, I wouldn’t’, but then I could not get the line out. And it was the kind of thing where — we were limited on time. We had like five minutes. We had to finish and I could not get through the line without laughing. And we were her line was done, but I just couldn’t, you know what I mean? So yeah, it was the kind of thing where I would get, I would get through almost all at the last minute, which sounds so crazy. And, you know, it was hard.”
On the last day of set: “It was crazy because we had a couple wraps we wrapped in Vegas for America. And it was really sad. We literally had a group hug with our 150 person crew. And, and then we wrapped in Paris in the Louvre.”
On filming at the Louvre, and how it nearly derailed the series finale: “So here is was what was crazy. We went and scouted. We scouted because we were like, ‘what is possible?’ And they were like, ‘you can come on a day, it’s closed and do whatever.’ And we were like, ‘okay, we’re going to write a huge section of the finale on the Louvre. We’re going to talk about female artists and how, they’re not judged the same way men are.’ This is great for the show. This is a perfect place to do this. And then the heist happened. Not while we were there…and they were like, ‘sorry, no filming. We can’t let you do filming.'”
“We were like, ‘hey, this was way after we had written it. Table read it, prepped it.’ We went over to Versailles. We were like, ‘can we make this work at Versailles?’ It’s not like a museum…so we were like, ‘okay, well we’ll try and make it work.’ And then the Louvre called and they were like, ‘you can’t shoot when we’re closed, but you can maybe shoot when we’re open. If we just bring 12 of you in.’ Which is so hard to even fathom. But we were like, ‘We’ll do it.’ So we call Versailles, we’re like, we’re not going to come. They were pissed. They were like, ‘where are you going?’ We were like ‘the Louvre.’ They were really mad. We’re back in the Louvre. Then the Louvre goes on strike. The employees, the union of employees at work there are like ‘we’re on strike.’ So they’re like, ‘you can’t come now.’”
“We go back to Versailles. We’re like, ‘sorry, we can’t go there now.’ And they were like, ‘f–k off.’ They were like, ‘you may never step foot in here.’ They were like, ‘you want to go Louvre, you go to the Louvre.” So we were then stuck. We had no place to shoot. And then the president of the Louvre resigned. So the strike ended and we were able to do it. It was crazy.”
On his favorite moments from Hacks: “One of them is the very last shot. The very last shot was really hard to do, and it was something we had the song for, I think 2 or 3 seasons now. We’ve known that’s the song, and in fact, because it’s from a TV show, we were like, ‘we need to clear it early because it might be really hard to clear.’ And also it’s got two artists who, you know, could deny it. Well, I mean, the estate of one and another one who might deny the use of it. So we were like, ‘let’s get that.’ But to make that work. And then the final shot happened. And also coordinating with two different casinos to have a fountain go off all of that to, to work on those notes. Because the timing, we played the music as we did it because we had to get the timing right. And for the fountain to go off like that, because you kind of can’t be like, ‘now,’ you know what I mean? You have to, three minutes before turn it on, warm it up, you know what I mean? Just was a magical moment. It was like a pinch me moment that it worked.”
“And the other one is in season one, our third day of shooting, we were in the desert. Deborah gets a flat tire and she calls a local news station, and she has her buddy pick her up in a helicopter to bring her back because she’s got a residency. She’s got a show every night. And she has this great monologue about how it doesn’t get better. It gets harder this career. And she is so good in that monologue. She’s so good. It’s one of my favorite performances. And as she says it, Ava says, ‘You’re leaving me here in the desert’. She goes, ‘Yup.’ And the helicopter, because we had a real one, landed behind her in the exact right moment. And I was like, ‘oh my God, this is so…’ That was those two things that were pulled off, because Lucia directed them beautifully and because Jean [Smart] and Hannah [Einbinder] acted them beautifully, but also because, I don’t know, there was something in the air that helped, you know, just make it work. We are very exacting. Our catchphrases, we live for timing. We’re really, really, really obsessed with timing. I mean, we’re control freaks.”
On keeping it fun behind the scenes of Hacks: “I think you can feel it in the work when it feels good. I think some people think you it has to be pain in order for it to be good. But we do want it to be fun because that’s the making is the thing. You know, and so it is important for us to keep it fun and enjoy it. And of course, are there’s so much stress. And I think it seems like we’re having more fun sometimes than we are, because at least Jen, Lucia, and I are holding a lot of stress. I’m always like, ‘I’m making a dime with my butt here.’ I’m clenching my a– the whole day. But we have to laugh and have fun. In fact, I’ve been going through all the photos, the BTS photos. We laughed so much. There was so much laughing on the set. It was really, you know, I know everyone says that on a press tour. It’s like it was magical. It was so magical.”
On having OCD: “I have a lot of rituals. It’s really good that it’s invisible to people. Because to someone like Lucia, it’s so apparent. You know, it used to be really bad. It used to be like, I would be like, ‘I have to touch that manhole in the middle of the street,’ and it’d be like, ‘traffic’s going’ and it’s like, ‘no, you don’t, you don’t need to touch that’, you know? Or it also got bad when I’d be like, ‘I have to touch that the corner of that table at a restaurant.’ And it’s not my table. It started probably cracking my knuckles on one hand. I’d have to do the other one. If I snapped I had to snap it. You know, it was about like a balance thing…when I was swimming, I would have to, stretch a certain way.”
On the Joan Rivers impact on Hacks: “We did watch it [Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work (2010)] and Rachel Hamilton, who was a great improviser and a coach of ours, was a producer of it. And what was really fascinating, and one of the reasons we wanted to make the show was at the time, there were people who were not that much younger than us, pretty much our generation, some of whom who had known Joan Rivers to just be an E! News correspondent. They were like, ‘she’s a fashion correspondent.’ They didn’t know that. She almost hosted The Tonight Show. So that did definitely impact us because we were like, ‘can you imagine being somebody who doesn’t know, the path she paved for comedians, especially women in comedy?’ So that was a big factor in just us being like, ‘oh no, this is telling the story of someone whose story has not been told. Because nobody cared to listen is the reason we have to make this show.’ And there’s a lot of Joan in Deborah.”
On having ADD: “Keeping track of dates is really hard. Especially if you have ADD.”
On what season of Hacks he is the proudest of: “I think the final season is the best season. I mean, season one was great because it was new and we got to make it. There was so many things about it that were great. But I don’t know, I think this season. But it’s also hard to choose.”
On what scene impacts him to most from the final season: “For me, it’s the it’s the church right after that. That I’m like a mess. And also when that song, there’s that lyric ‘true love’ that comes in in that song and I’m like, oh, it just really gets me. It’s when Ava is accepting what happens.”
Find out if there could be a Jimmy and Kayla spinoff series.
The post ‘Hacks’ Creator Paul W. Downs Reveals the Wild Real-Life Drama That Nearly Derailed the Series Finale appeared first on Just Jared - Celebrity News and Gossip | Entertainment.
＼ Get the latest news ／
