You would be forgiven for mistaking Hannah Einbinder for Ava Daniels, the character she plays on HBO’s Hacks. The actor shares certain similarities with the comedy writer she’s portrayed for two seasons now, like their dry delivery, which leaves you less than 100 percent sure of whether they’re fucking with you until they crack a smirk and let you in on the joke. That’s not all, though.
“We’re both the same age, and we have the same face and body, of course,” Einbinder shares. “She looks exactly like me. That’s some Inside the Actors Studio stuff, a look behind the curtain.”
See also: Dry delivery.
But really, Einbinder, 28, found widespread recognition (including twin Outstanding Supporting Actress Emmy nominations) in her mid-twenties with Hacks, the same age that Ava is while finding her groove as a writing partner to comedian Deborah Vance (played by Jean Smart, who has her own pair of Best Actress statues for the show), an elder stateswoman of comedy struggling to stay both relevant and creatively fulfilled in the time of TikTok. Einbinder has her own comedic legacy influence in her life: Her mother, Laraine Newman, was part of the original cast of a little-known variety show called Saturday Night Live in 1975.
Yes, Ava walks and talks like Einbinder, with the actor saying that “as time has gone on, I’ve imbued her with my affect,” but “there are just as many fundamental differences” between them. For one thing, Ava is a Virgo. Einbinder? “Classic Gemini.”
Season Three of Hacks continues the ongoing rom-com (no happily ever after guaranteed) between Ava and Deborah. They say that if you really love something, you should set it free, which is exactly what Deborah was going for when she fired Ava in the Season Two finale after the pair pulled off a coup with Deborah’s self-financed stand-up comeback special.
“She knows Deborah is running away from stability,” Einbinder says. “Pushing Ava away because she’s scared.”
A year later in the show’s timeline, Ava and Deborah are estranged. They’re professionally successful, if a little bored, and Ava is playing house with her girlfriend, preoccupied with the minutiae of TripAdvisor ratings for a vacation she wants to go on while the show she writes for is on hiatus; and Deborah can’t be bothered to show up for the unveiling of a slot machine with her face on it. Things are … fine.
“ ‘You’re funny, but that doesn’t always yield results,’ ” my mom said. “Nothing is guaranteed.”
“Of course that only lasts so long, and Ava blows it up to return to Deborah,” Einbinder says, arid. Part of that blowing up of Ava’s life also leads to whatever was going on in those set photos of Einbinder getting hot and heavy with guest star Christina Hendricks, which set the internet ablaze. Einbinder declined to share many spoilery details, but she says she’s looking forward to the audience’s reaction to that episode. Things get so steamy that perhaps it’ll get … sweaty?
“Things on Hacks, when it comes to the hot and heavy, it’s only hot and heavy for so long, and then the comedy slides in,” she says. “The scene is explosive, of course, on that level, but also it’s really fucking funny and so outrageous and insane.”
Though she’s the daughter of a comedy great, who will be portrayed in the upcoming movie SNL 1975 by Emily Fairn, Einbinder says she’s most benefited from her mom’s hindsight. Newman was 23 when SNL premiered, not too far off from Einbinder’s age when she snagged the co-lead in Hacks. However, “my mom was a drug addict and kind of on her own in the world” when SNL came a-calling. “She didn’t really have a solid support system, and SNL is a famously chaotic place,” Einbinder says. “So I have certainly benefited from her sober wisdom about those early days.”
And that sad-clown trope exists for a reason: You’ve gotta laugh to keep from crying, and sometimes the business of comedy is anything but a barrel of laughs. Einbinder takes her professional and personal growth seriously: She watches herself on episodes of Hacks “like a football player watching game tape” and reads self-help books to learn, in her words, “how to be not shitty.” In addition to the new season of Hacks, she’s also got her first stand-up special coming to Max this June. She has a leg up in the comedy world, but she’s not skipping days at the gym, so to speak.
“At one point, I asked her if she thought I could do it,” Einbinder says of following in her mom’s footsteps. “And she said, ‘Nothing is guaranteed. I think you’re funny, but that doesn’t always yield results.’ She never really blew smoke about the reality of this.”
And that message, as we watch Einbinder, as Ava, stumble and recover, is never more clear than in Hacks.
