Yahoo News How ‘Hacks’ Snuck in Climate Activism Between Jokes
In the HBO hit Hacks, the quip-rich dynamic between the extravagant, cynical stand-up doyenne Deborah Vance (Jean Smart) and her anxious, earnest Gen Z head writer Ava Daniels (Hannah Einbinder) is both an engine of comedy and a way to explore generational disconnects over contemporary issues, from ageism and sexism to evolving gender norms. A major arc in the show’s third season involves the women’s contrasting views on the climate crisis. What Ava sees as an eco-apocalypse, Deborah considers a tempest in a teacup. The subplot comes to a head in the season’s fifth episode, “One Day,” in which the two urbanites go on a hike and get injured and hopelessly lost in the Pennsylvania woods. The bottle episode is a standout example of climate storytelling, in which the writers’ own deeply felt activist stances are woven in as seamlessly as possible, without sacrificing the comedy:
DEBORAH: The Earth is a billion years old. It just self-corrects from any damage that’s done to it.
More from The Hollywood Reporter
'Welcome to Derry,' 'Harry Potter' Series Move to HBO From Max in Tentpole Strategy Change
30 Production Companies and Studios Join Sustainability Push in Unscripted TV
AVA: No, we’re destroying the planet, it’s a proven fact.
DEBORAH: Trust me, we’re fine.
AVA: Um, I think I’ll trust the thousands and thousands of scientists over you on this one, thanks.
DEBORAH: Oh sure, trust a bunch of men over me.
AVA: Oh my God, you are being sexist while accusing me of being sexist. Did you know that wildlife populations have diminished 70 percent since 1970?
Ava’s arguments gradually erode Deborah’s climate skepticism, leading to an eco-conscious epiphany encapsulated in the older comic’s final line, an offhand remark to her makeup team: “You shouldn’t use plastic,” which co-creator Paul W. Downs his “favorite last line of any episode.”
Fans of the Emmy-winning show have come to trust Ava to have her facts straight. But Hacks showrunners Downs, Lucia Aniello and Jen Statsky wanted to triple check. So they sent the script to the Natural Resources Defense Council to seek their expert counsel. The result brings to mind some of the most memorable issues-focused episodes of Norman Lear’s career. It’s proof that Hollywood is in a unique position to help raise awareness of the issue, and that it doesn’t have to feel like force-feeding spinach.
In a Zoom conversation in May, before the show was picked up for a fourth season, Aniello and Downs, who are married and routinely complete each other’s thoughts, broke down the backstory behind their protagonists’ climate confrontation.
How did “One Day” come to be?
LUCIA ANIELLO Even the first episode of the season, like the first couple jokes are immediately about the environment. You know, It’s so hot in Arizona that the tires are melting to the tarmac.
PAUL W. DOWNS And even in previous seasons. One small marker of Deborah’s incremental change, as influenced by Ava, is that she buys a reusable cup, because she’s a fountain soda drinker. So, yeah, our desire to include messaging around climate action has existed since we started the show, and it’s something that’s important to us. But it was really nice to be able to find a place for it to so organically come to life.
ANIELLO I think that their contrasting POVs, of course, are both very character-specific, Deborah being kind of a capitalist, consumerist Boomer, and Ava being this person who is always trying to do good, even though she’s constantly fumbling that bag. She is also really climate-conscious, partly because she’s so young, and she knows that she’s gonna have to live with the effects of climate change far more than Deborah. We are constantly talking about, Who are you: a Deborah or an Ava? I think for Paul and Jen and myself, when it comes to climate, we’re all very much Avas. We are very concerned. We are reading about the warnings. We’re reading about the temperature of the Earth, and we’re reading about the ice caps melting nearly daily. It is something that really is at the forefront of our daily lives. We’re doing our own kind of activism, and I think being able to speak to it very specifically, especially in that hike episode, feels to us like in one of the ways in which we can use whatever little power we have in Hollywood to create a story that is so focused on that. We hope it’s not too much of a fantasy that people, older people, especially, really start to listen to the younger voices about about what an emergency this really is.
You are clearly well informed about the issue. You’re reading the headlines. What does NRDC bring to the storytelling in this case?
DOWNS We shared the script with them. Obviously when we’re writing the show, we’re thinking funny first, and how do we make the story work for the overall arc of the season. But then, when we were talking specifically about all the climate-change stuff, and specific jokes, they were able to give feedback.
ANIELLO For example, there was a quote about there being, like, 70 percent less animals since a certain year. And they were able to say, OK, this, I believe, was taken from this article, which is true, but perhaps you should phrase it this way, because you don’t ever want to be misrepresenting what’s going on, because you don’t want it to be discounted.
DOWNS It’s not “based on a true story,” right? Climate change is a true story. Just wanted to make sure that was in there.
ANIELLO Then there was a line we had in which Deborah says [the problem is that] there are too many people. [In earlier drafts] Ava said, “Well, that’s true, but…” blah blah and, and the NRDC’s point was, like, there isn’t actually an issue of there being too many people. It’s really about how we use our resources and how we come together collectively. That kind of adjustment was helpful, because even the way that anybody talks about it, you just want to make sure that it’s being framed as something that is accurate.
There is an element of activism that reminds me of the old Norman Lear shows, like in All in the Family or Maude, which respectfully represent various points of view on important issues, but kind of nudges them towards one. Do you agree with that?
DOWNS A hundred percent.
ANIELLO That’s our ultimate goal.
DOWNS Norman Lear is our idol, and it’s sort of like whenever we’re doing something, if it doesn’t explore culture and push culture, it’s sort of like, why do it? We don’t come at it like “A very special episode…” or we don’t come at it issue first. We come at it character first and comedy first. But if then we can use those tools to explore something deeper. Those are always our favorite episodes to write, and those seem to be the ones that are get the most response, they resonate the most with audiences. Norman Lear is the gold standard of that.
Do you ever feel the risk of getting preachy in that sense? Would you rewrite to avoid that?
DOWNS Yes. We don’t, like, rewrite it, but we also are very conscientious of it in the edit. We make sure that, Ava doesn’t ever feel too naggy or too, what’s the word…
ANIELLO Girlsplaining?
DOWNS Yeah [laughs].
ANIELLO Or condescending,
DOWNS And that’s actually one of the things that I think we have enjoyed about the show, is that neither character is a hundred percent right, a hundred percent of the time. They both have different perspectives, and we try and represent them lovingly. And so in that way, there are plenty of times that Deborah is right and Ava is wrong and vice versa. So, you know, we try and give a little bit of the best of both arguments, if we can, no matter what the topic is, whether they’re talking about, you know, sexual orientation or climate change or — I mean, should I spoil it?
Yeah, spoil it.
DOWNS OK: whether or not Deborah should employ little people to deliver her Christmas invitations as elves. We’re always like exploring these things, and they both have valid points. And, you know, it is that butting of heads that we always say is what cracks the other one open a little bit and expands their viewpoint and changes them.
Oddly, Deborah is also connected to nature in a way that Ava, with her phone addiction, is not. Like she can identify the chanterelles on a stump. Which was gorgeous, by the way. Was that a real mushroom-covered stump or was that a prop?
ANIELLO Here’s what happened. When we were scouting it, originally, there was a beautiful stump there. And we were like, Let’s add mushrooms to it, or maybe there even were a couple little mushrooms.
DOWNS There were, but we thought, We’ll add to that.
ANIELLO But because of the strikes and Jean’s heart surgery, we ended up, once we got back there for a tech scout like a year later, it was gone. So our amazing art department re-created an entire stump and mushrooms. So none of that was actually real. I tried to take it home but it actually can’t be outdoors because it’s paper-based. Hannah [Einbinder], by the way, is huge into mushroom foraging. So that line about her saying she’s getting into foraging, that’s real.
DOWNS I mean, you can watch, she just did Colbert, and she talks a lot about mycology and her love of mushrooms.
Have you tried to incorporate sustainable practices on your sets as well?
DOWNS The first season we gave every member of the cast and crew Hacks water bottles, and I have to say, I’m very proud that they exist still on the set, that people are refilling water bottles and trying to use single plastic as infrequently as possible.
ANIELLO We try to have, at least for our village in our area, no plastic water bottles. If it’s anything, it’s aluminum or glass.
DOWNS I’m trying to think of other things. A lot of our trailers are the newer, hybrid EV trailers. Also, at NBC Universal, there is a sustainability group. So because it’s a Universal show, they weigh in and there are measures that they take to help make our sets more efficient. These are little, like, almost immeasurable things, but we’re often saying, our prop department, Oh, you don’t need two hundred of those paper things. We’re not going to mess them up. Like, we’ll do it in a take, and you can stick to one. I feel happy about the way that we represent consumption on the show, but also actually execute the show. Our characters, for example, rewear a lot of the same clothes. Of course, there are pieces that are added and as any person in the world would — they update their wardrobe to a degree. And obviously Deborah Vance has a very extensive one. But, you’ll see on Ava and even Deborah, and certainly my character, Jimmy, we all wear the same clothes. We repeat them. And we do it purposefully, yeah, both storywise, but also because of consumption.
It’s also what normal people do. I’ve worn this outfit earlier this week, I hate to admit it.
DOWNS Same here, and so we do want it to feel true to life.
This story first appeared in the June 2024 Sustainability issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to see the rest of the issue.
Best of The Hollywood Reporter
