Hannah Einbinder had never really acted before she was cast as Ava Daniels opposite Jean Smart’s Deborah Vance on Hacks. Now, she’s a three-time Emmy nominee.
In this episode of The Last Laugh podcast, Einbinder opens up about the overconfidence she brings to that role, as well the onstage persona she displays in her excellent debut stand-up special Everything Must Go on Max. She also talks about overcoming the intimidation of acting with Jean Smart, compares the generational gap between their characters to her relationship with her own mother (original Saturday Night Live cast member Laraine Newman), and teases what fans can expect from a more “badass” Ava in Season 4. And later, Einbinder shares her unfiltered thoughts about the “old fucking guys” in comedy who complain that political correctness is stifling their craft.
“I think my stand-up persona was kind of born out of aspiration,” Einbinder tells me. “This persona is everything that I could ever want to be.”
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And, she adds, it was there from the first time she stepped onto a stand-up stage.
“People often say that doing stand-up is brave, and I disagree. I think it’s desperate,” Einbinder says. “I needed to do that because I felt bad all the time. And I was like, maybe this will fix it.” From the very beginning, Einbinder was using the stand-up stage as an “escape from the reality of being me,” as she puts it.
“Now, thank God, I feel so much better being myself and in my life that stand-up is just additive and not a survival mechanism,” she says, acknowledging just how much her life has been transformed in just a few years.
Not even in her thirties yet, Einbinder has already achieved more success in comedy than her wildest dreams would have allowed. And she feels more ready than ever for the next stage of her career. “Twenty-nine is such a bulls--t age,” she jokes. “Can we just be 30? That’s how I feel. Let’s go!”
Below is an edited excerpt from our conversation. You can listen to the whole thing by following The Last Laugh on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google, or wherever you get your podcasts, and be the first to hear new episodes when they are released every Wednesday.
Your special is called Everything Must Go, which goes to the idea of burning your material that you’ve been working on for so long. There is that cliché about a band’s first album where it’s like, everything that you’ve ever worked on since you were started making music goes into that first album, and then the second album is like, what do I do now? Are you in that mode now of trying to figure out what to do now that you’ve burned all of the material that you had been working on since the start of your career?
Yes, I am.
And what’s that like?
Sad! [laughs] No, it’s awesome. It’s awesome to feel like a raw nerve again. I stand by and love and appreciate that hour and all of that material. I’m very, very, very proud of it. But you know some of those jokes I had been doing for years and years and years and years, and every night and on stage. So while I love that material, and I’m proud of it, I am never going to say those words again, and I’m so fine with it. There is no greater feeling for me as a stand-up comedian than feeling excited about a new chunk, new section, a new line. The newness is what makes me feel love for the art form.
You’ve talked about how Hacks has impacted your audience, and you’ve been able to play bigger venues, and it has certainly brought you more attention. But has it affected the content of your stand-up act?
I think my comic persona, and the expression of my comedy as a stand-up comedian has always been intentional and very distinct. And so, while I have settled in and become more comfortable over the years in that persona, I think ultimately, that form of expression has remained kind of consistent. Being an actor and doing the act of acting has increased my commitment to the choices that I have been making. Acting just heightened it so much more to where I’m now willing to be absolutely screaming, crying—it has just enriched my live performance so much.
We were talking about the confidence that you felt even from that first time getting up on stage, and that it was sort of out of necessity. I’m wondering if that translated to the first time going up against Jean Smart as Deborah in a scene?
First of all, it’s a credit to Jean that she really goes out of her way to make people feel comfortable. There is no air of superiority. There are no intimidation tactics. She is deeply warm, and that, I think, made me feel more comfortable to be able to do my best work.
And then, of course, the scene that you have with her in the first episode, you have to go in and basically scream at her and tell her how horrible she is. Was that intimidating?
I would say that that was intimidating. I mean, that was one of the audition scenes. So I had spent a lot of time with it. It’s such an important scene for the tone of the series. And so I just wanted to make sure that I got it right. We definitely move quickly on our show. But that was one that we spent a lot of time with, just really perfecting.
The center of the show is really the relationship between these two women in comedy, who came up at very different times in comedy, and I was curious if you were able to draw on anything, or if there were any parallels between you and your mother [original SNL cast member Laraine Newman], who came up in comedy at a very different time. Was that ever something that was on your mind in terms of the generational divide?
I mean, I think anyone who has an older parent can tap into that thing. I think the types of conversations that Ava and Deborah have about, whatever it may be, like a social issue that they disagree on, that feels like the types of conversations that you have with the parent who is coming at it from a different time and a different angle. But I I think, in terms of like my mom, she’s pretty liberal and leftist.
Not that much like Deborah?
No, my mom’s from L.A. She’s a liberal Jew who’s, like, cool. So, yeah, I think Deborah probably comes at it from more of like—I don’t even know what to call her politics. I think she’s a Democrat, but with some social views that maybe skew more conservative.
She’s a Democrat that maybe voted for Reagan?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, because they were buddies, probably. Yeah.
There were so many great episodes of Hacks this recent season. The Berkeley episode [“Yes, And”], I thought, was a high point in the season, and not just because I live in Berkeley.
Yeah, that episode covers something that we’re always talking about whether we like it or not, which is cultural standards shifting in comedy. And I thought it was really beautifully done by the writers.
Yeah, it was something that the show has touched on in certain ways before, but this was the first time I feel like you guys really took it head-on, the whole cancel culture thing.
I feel like that’s something that we—[Hacks creators] Paul W. Downs, Jen [Statsky], Lucia [Aniello]—people ask us about this a lot, political correctness and comedy, so we do talk about it a lot. And we have the same opinion on it. So I definitely didn’t affect their writing on it, but we all just happen to agree and have talked about it.
Yeah, it reminded me of when Paul and Lucia were on another podcast around when Jerry Seinfeld made his comments about the “extreme left” running comedy. And I think Hacks, rightly, has been held up as a counter-example of that idea. So I was curious if you had thoughts about either Seinfeld’s comments specifically, or just that idea that we somehow can’t make funny comedy anymore.
Yeah, it’s ridiculous. You just have to be smart. When marginalized groups have heard every joke under the sun at their expense, it’s not that they can’t take jokes, it’s that they are sick and tired of hearing the hack, if you will, redundant s--t that is easy and low hanging fruit like. I don’t think that anyone I know—or I can just speak to my experience of being queer and being a woman and being Jewish—I actually don’t have any problem with jokes at my expense or the expense of any groups I may belong to if the joke is smart. I really don’t. I think everybody, especially people from marginalized groups, have to laugh to keep from crying and have to laugh at themselves. And we do. We’re just asking for better material. And I think a lot of stand-up comedians are really hardened in their perspective. That is an inherent personality trait of a comic, being like, this is what I think, and everybody pays to listen to me say what I think, so I’m the arbiter of what’s what! It’s this egomaniacal personality type. So they don’t wanna be told that they’re wrong, and they don’t want to have to waver and change, when their work is built around having a staunch perspective on something.
I would be so embarrassed to be so seen in that way. It’s so transparent when someone gets defensive and blames whatever words they want to use—the P.C. woke leftist mob or whatever—oh my God, you should be so embarrassed because we all see that you’re scared and hurt and don’t want to be wrong, and don’t want to be labeled a bad person. No one wants to feel like a bad person. So when you call someone out on something and they get defensive, it just shows sort of a lack of evolution. People who self-reflect can go, “I wonder if they’re right? Maybe I am wrong. I can learn from that.” That is actually more impressive to me. Also, I think people who are older are more hardened. So I’m not holding my breath for any of these old fucking guys who wanna blame whatever they want to blame, instead of looking inward.
Listen to the episode now and follow The Last Laugh on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google, or wherever you get your podcasts to be the first to hear new episodes when they are released every Wednesday.
