Speaker 1: Hi everyone, I'm Kittie Couric and this is Next Question. Okay,
Speaker 1: this is a bonus episode of Next Question, and I
Speaker 1: must say a pretty fun one. First of all, I've
Speaker 1: got my plus one today and it's none other than
Speaker 1: my sidekick, Adriana Fazzio. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, thank you. Yes,
Speaker 1: she's terrific, Adriana. How excited are you to be here
Speaker 1: with me?
Speaker 2: I am so excited. I'm usually silently next to you,
Speaker 2: but now I get to mic today.
Speaker 1: And why are you excited? Fazzio?
Speaker 2: I'm excited because you and I both love the show
Speaker 2: Hacks on Max, which rhymes. And we get to interview
Speaker 2: the three writers today, Jen Statski, Paul w Downs and
Speaker 2: Lucia Anello.
Speaker 1: That's right. And when we watch this show, what do
Speaker 1: we always say, faz.
Speaker 2: We say that we are the real life Dubbor Vance
Speaker 2: and Ava Daniels.
Speaker 1: It's true for about or for worse.
Speaker 2: Although we're not toxic.
Speaker 1: No, well, I don't think they're toxic. Do you think
Speaker 1: they're toxic?
Speaker 3: I do.
Speaker 1: They are toxic maybe in moments, but then they have
Speaker 1: other moments of real just true affection and I don't
Speaker 1: know and connection, but anyway, I digress. First of all,
Speaker 1: they were so nice to spend so much time with us.
Speaker 1: But here is our conversation with the writers of our
Speaker 1: favorite show, Hacks.
Speaker 3: Well.
Speaker 1: First of all, I can't tell you how excited Atriona
Speaker 1: and I both are that you all have carved out
Speaker 1: a little time and your incredibly busy schedules to talk
Speaker 1: to us about Hacks. Because we love the show. We're
Speaker 1: obsessed with the show, and we actually think the show
Speaker 1: is about us. We do well. I'm an older, I'm
Speaker 1: sort of you know, I'm Deborah Vance and Adriana is
Speaker 1: Ava and we laugh about it all the time, and actually,
Speaker 1: following this podcast, we'd like to talk about a show
Speaker 1: based on us if you all have to do it,
Speaker 1: and you know, I know you think we're kidding, but
Speaker 1: we're actually not kidding.
Speaker 3: Okay, love that.
Speaker 4: I'm sure We're open for pitches. Let's do it.
Speaker 5: Well.
Speaker 1: First of all, I also want to say congratulations because
Speaker 1: it must be an incredible feeling. I know you all
Speaker 1: have had a lot of success in other shows, and
Speaker 1: we can talk about those, but I feel like Hacks
Speaker 1: has become so huge and has made such a mark. Paul,
Speaker 1: let me start with you. I mean, what is it
Speaker 1: like having such a hugely successful show. It must be thrilling,
Speaker 1: but also kind of a lot of pressure, right.
Speaker 6: Well, it is a lot of pressure in that I
Speaker 6: think we've had such a great response and people, you know,
Speaker 6: who tell us that the show resonates with them, we
Speaker 6: just want to make it better every season for them.
Speaker 6: And you know, as people who love film and television,
Speaker 6: I love it when a show just gets better and better,
Speaker 6: and so I think there's pressure in that way. But
Speaker 6: knowing how much content in the world there is and
Speaker 6: how much great television there is, it is so gratifying
Speaker 6: that it's cut through because you never know, you know,
Speaker 6: we feel very very lucky that people have found the
Speaker 6: show and really respond to it.
Speaker 1: Luccio, what about you?
Speaker 7: Yeah, very similar sentiment, which is just like you know,
Speaker 7: I think, especially when people tell us how much the
Speaker 7: show means to them and how much they feel seen
Speaker 7: and connect to it, or say, you know, like I
Speaker 7: watched it with my dad when he was sick and
Speaker 7: it was something we could laugh at together.
Speaker 5: You know, stories like that.
Speaker 7: They're so sweet and touching, But also it makes me
Speaker 7: want to make the show good for those people and
Speaker 7: so that is really a huge source of the almost
Speaker 7: abilitating anxiety I feel in general about making the shows,
Speaker 7: Like I really just don't want to disappoint people, and
Speaker 7: I want, like Paul saying, to give them more of
Speaker 7: what they feel like they love about the show, but also,
Speaker 7: you know, still make the show that we want to make.
Speaker 5: So it is.
Speaker 7: It is a lot of pressure, but it really comes
Speaker 7: from having such gratefulness of being able to even make
Speaker 7: a show right now, Like the industry is in such
Speaker 7: a weird place of being able to be even writing
Speaker 7: a season four of a show, which we're doing right now,
Speaker 7: feels like such a rarity.
Speaker 1: And Jen, bring it home, Jen.
Speaker 8: No pressure, no everything, these guys said, And I think also,
Speaker 8: you know, just to get to make a comedy right
Speaker 8: now in twenty twenty four, we feel really privileged and lucky.
Speaker 8: Like we the three of us. You know, the show
Speaker 8: is about creative collaboration. It's about two people who are
Speaker 8: lit up and have a love of comedy and it's
Speaker 8: what drives them. And that's very much so the story
Speaker 8: of the three of us. We met doing comedy at
Speaker 8: the UCB in New York and we love it.
Speaker 1: And upright citizens brigade for you neophyte listeners.
Speaker 8: Yeah, and so to get to do that and make
Speaker 8: this comedy show with people that I meant like in
Speaker 8: a sketch group and like a theater underneath the grocery
Speaker 8: store is like feels really cool and special and we
Speaker 8: just I don't know, Yeah, there is there is pressure
Speaker 8: with it, but you try to just focus on how
Speaker 8: lucky you are.
Speaker 1: Are you Canadian, by the way, because you say a
Speaker 1: bout I know.
Speaker 4: Okay, so this is so talking about it all the time.
Speaker 1: I'm glad she's either Canadian or from Baltimore.
Speaker 8: I'm glad we're getting into this, Katie. So I'm from
Speaker 8: I'm from Boston and my.
Speaker 1: Dad is what the hell is about about?
Speaker 8: I know, it's so strange, it does pop out some sids.
Speaker 4: What happened? Two things happened.
Speaker 8: I think when I went to I had I had
Speaker 8: a pretty thick Boston accent because my dad is from
Speaker 8: South Boston and has like a really thick South the accent.
Speaker 8: I think when I went to NYU, I kind of
Speaker 8: lost the accent. But then I did date someone from
Speaker 8: Canada for a long time, and I think I picked.
Speaker 1: Up started talking like that.
Speaker 7: I started.
Speaker 8: I think I picked up something. So shout out to
Speaker 8: Brian Bernstein. If you're listening to every piece of media
Speaker 8: I do. You're still in my life every day.
Speaker 1: Hey, I'm big in Canada.
Speaker 3: Paul, I believe it. I believe it.
Speaker 2: So Lucie, I guess you're the best person to bring
Speaker 2: together the connective tissue A. Jen was talking a little
Speaker 2: bit about how you all met, but then also how
Speaker 2: Hacks became a show.
Speaker 7: Yeah, so Paul and Jen and I, well, we originally
Speaker 7: all met when I'm Paul and I met at a
Speaker 7: level one UCB class, and then Jen and I maybe
Speaker 7: two or three years later or something like that, met
Speaker 7: because we were the only girls in a.
Speaker 5: Kind of a sketch comedy group.
Speaker 7: But then the boys stopped emailing us and so we
Speaker 7: were kind of kicked out of the group. But Jen
Speaker 7: and I remained friends, and then I introduced paulin gen
Speaker 7: around that same time, and we were just friends, you know,
Speaker 7: and then we I guess maybe when is the first
Speaker 7: time we worked together? Was it on Broad City that
Speaker 7: we actually well other than work making the videos?
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's so crazy.
Speaker 5: It was.
Speaker 4: It might have been It might have been Broad City
Speaker 4: or maybe I had done punch up for something you
Speaker 4: guys did.
Speaker 1: I don't know, because I did feel like we took
Speaker 1: their material and made it funnier Chan.
Speaker 8: Yes, which is it's hard to do because they're incredibly funny,
Speaker 8: the best writers.
Speaker 4: So I tried, at least. I don't know that I succeeded.
Speaker 7: She she always does, but yeah, and so we basically
Speaker 7: we started writing together in different ways. Punched up a
Speaker 7: movie that we made rough Night when she was on
Speaker 7: set with us, and we wrote a spec script. The
Speaker 7: three of us wrote a movie that we tried to
Speaker 7: get made that we have yet to.
Speaker 5: Succeed in doing. But then we were writing.
Speaker 7: Jen and I were kind of helping Paul on his
Speaker 7: Netflix special all the characters called Up Down Search that
Speaker 7: and on our drive from Boston to Portland, Maine, which
Speaker 7: is where we were shooting a segment for it, we
Speaker 7: started talking about, you know, women in this industry, especially
Speaker 7: stand ups, who like you, kind of only read about
Speaker 7: when their obituary happens, and you're like, oh, yeah, why
Speaker 7: didn't they ever have the same kind of careers that
Speaker 7: their male counterparts had, And we were just kind of
Speaker 7: talking about this idea of what it's like to be
Speaker 7: a woman of a certain age who's had to, you know,
Speaker 7: try to make it in that industry at a certain time,
Speaker 7: and then what that does to your personality, What does
Speaker 7: that do to your psyche, what does that do to
Speaker 7: your career, and how you have to kind of gravitate
Speaker 7: towards certain kinds of materials to survive. Maybe is it
Speaker 7: kind of what you initially intended to do with your comedy,
Speaker 7: but it's a way to make money, and so that
Speaker 7: kind of is like where we.
Speaker 5: Started having this idea.
Speaker 7: And then the idea of like a younger comedian, a
Speaker 7: younger woman kind of learning to respect the older comedian
Speaker 7: through working with her, and just kind of what that
Speaker 7: generational conflict would do you just felt like a great
Speaker 7: story engine. It felt like a great character engine. We
Speaker 7: kind of just never stopped talking about it. Whether we
Speaker 7: were hanging out or working together, We just kind of
Speaker 7: always would email each other ideas, Oh.
Speaker 5: It could be this idea or that idea. Like it
Speaker 5: just kind of over the course of a.
Speaker 7: Couple of years, from like I think twenty fifteen until
Speaker 7: twenty nineteen, it's just something we were always working on
Speaker 7: on the back burner and then twenty nineteen.
Speaker 5: We were like, it really just felt like the right
Speaker 5: time to pitch it.
Speaker 1: And it took you five years, as you said, from
Speaker 1: kind of the conception to getting it ready to pitch,
Speaker 1: and you were all busy doing other things. I know, Jen,
Speaker 1: you were on the good place, right And weren't you
Speaker 1: guys also working on broad City? Lucia and Paul, As
Speaker 1: Lucia mentioned, you both had plenty of other projects, but
Speaker 1: this thing was just sort of this nagging idea that
Speaker 1: wouldn't go away. And I want to talk about the
Speaker 1: characters and who they're based on in a minute, but
Speaker 1: if you will indulge me for a moment, I'm sort
Speaker 1: of interested in all of yours gin stories because I
Speaker 1: love to know kind of why people become what they become.
Speaker 1: And I know, Paul, you grew up in New Jersey.
Speaker 1: You describe yourself as kind of a weird, quiet, shy kid,
Speaker 1: and you had parents who were super funny, and you
Speaker 1: kind of related. I think you said that that comedy
Speaker 1: kind of fueled you, and it also made you less lonely,
Speaker 1: it made you connect with people. See, I did my
Speaker 1: research polem. Can you talk a little bit about that
Speaker 1: and how ultimately you decided to pursue this as a career.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, you know, I was.
Speaker 6: I certainly actually wasn't shy, is the truth. But I
Speaker 6: was very eccentric and strange as a child, I think,
Speaker 6: and my parents certainly fan the flames of that. They
Speaker 6: you know, my mom and I used to watch Nick
Speaker 6: at night and we watched I Love Lucy and Bewitched
Speaker 6: and you know, whatever else was on. And my dad
Speaker 6: was a big fan of the Marx Brothers and mel
Speaker 6: Brooks and you know, so I was watching Young Frankenstein
Speaker 6: probably before I even understood what half of the references were.
Speaker 6: And yeah, it was the thing as a kid that
Speaker 6: you know, I think a lot of people get into
Speaker 6: comedy because it's, you know, the thing that, especially when
Speaker 6: you share a sense of humor with somebody, you find
Speaker 6: your people. And certainly for me, it was also a
Speaker 6: way of, you know, you can avoid being bullied if
Speaker 6: you can make people laugh, So that was certainly it
Speaker 6: was a defense mechanism in a way too. And yeah,
Speaker 6: I just always loved it, and I loved Saturday Night Live,
Speaker 6: and I loved watching Robin Williams, and I just wanted
Speaker 6: to do what he and those people did, so I
Speaker 6: started writing for myself. In high school, I would do
Speaker 6: character monologues because I went to a school that had
Speaker 6: a great performing arts program, and there was this thing
Speaker 6: called the black Box Theater, and at lunch time you
Speaker 6: would do like lunch room performances, like a coffee shop
Speaker 6: for the kids who weren't sitting at the popular table.
Speaker 6: You could go and do like coffee shop poetry or
Speaker 6: character monologue.
Speaker 1: Oh, I love your school. I'm so glad they did that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the Pingree School.
Speaker 6: Shout out to al Romano and Patricia Wheeler who were
Speaker 6: running the program there at the Pingree School. But yeah,
Speaker 6: it was like a performance at arts high school. And
Speaker 6: I think that certainly started me off. And then when
Speaker 6: I went to college, I did improv in sketch and college,
Speaker 6: and so when I moved to New York after I
Speaker 6: was doing stand up and I was auditioning for things,
Speaker 6: and I wanted to be a comedic actor. But it
Speaker 6: wasn't until I started doing improv again. And actually it
Speaker 6: was day one of our first improv class that I
Speaker 6: met Luccia and I told them this recently, it's so weird.
Speaker 6: Maybe it's just because you know, someone's going to be
Speaker 6: important in your life. But I remember the moment of
Speaker 6: meeting both general Lucia, and I don't have that for
Speaker 6: many people in my life, which is pretty wild.
Speaker 1: What do you remember?
Speaker 3: Well?
Speaker 6: I showed up early to class because I was so nervous,
Speaker 6: and Luccia came about ten or fifteen minutes late, very nonplussed,
Speaker 6: and said what are we doing? And I was like,
Speaker 6: who is this girl who was so confident and walked
Speaker 6: in and was like essentially. And then very shortly thereafter,
Speaker 6: I was doing a scene in this class and she
Speaker 6: did turn to the instructor and said, you should write
Speaker 6: that line down, which is not something to do in improv,
Speaker 6: but she was already directing that's funny.
Speaker 3: And then I knew of.
Speaker 6: Jen because I had read some of the sketches that
Speaker 6: Lucia and Gen were writing, and for Lucia to be
Speaker 6: lit up by somebody meant they were very special. And
Speaker 6: I know Lucia spoke so fondly of Jen and how
Speaker 6: funny she was, so I was very excited to meet her.
Speaker 6: And then I met her at a coffee shop and
Speaker 6: I was struck by well, I did say, wow, funny
Speaker 6: and beautiful which is probably very inappropriate nowadays.
Speaker 3: It's like I couldn't do.
Speaker 8: It, but it's interesting because it was in front of
Speaker 8: your girlfriend at the time.
Speaker 3: I'm not that jealous tight, but that's the kind of
Speaker 3: guy I am.
Speaker 5: No, Yeah, I said, you know what, He's totally right.
Speaker 5: I agree, And that's.
Speaker 3: An exclusive Miss Katie about that.
Speaker 7: Yeah, breaking news is such an old timey line to
Speaker 7: kind of do.
Speaker 5: Also at like what were you twenty four twenty fives?
Speaker 6: Truly am I grout show Mark speaking of Yeah, I
Speaker 6: done the harp, putting my leg in her hand when
Speaker 6: I shook her hand.
Speaker 3: But it was very old school thought Villian almost.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Jen, I know that you really like the Mary
Speaker 2: Tyler Moore Show and that was part of the reason
Speaker 2: you wanted to become a TV writer. What was it
Speaker 2: about that show that drew you to the industry.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I was like, like I was an only child
Speaker 8: and my parents were around a lot.
Speaker 4: I watched a lot of Nicked Night, like old tea.
Speaker 1: Like this is a this is some connective tissue nicked Ye.
Speaker 1: Were you a big Nicked Night person?
Speaker 5: I watched it. I see liked night.
Speaker 8: Anonymous thought I were more Yeah, she was cooler, that
Speaker 8: is true.
Speaker 1: I don't know, but were you watching the Mary Tyler
Speaker 1: Moore Show on Nicked Night, Because, by the way, Jen,
Speaker 1: you and I are kind of on the same page
Speaker 1: because I became a journalist because of the Mary telling
Speaker 1: Marsh and absolutely loved that show. And I thought it
Speaker 1: was so interesting when I read that you thought the
Speaker 1: pilot was the perfect pilot, and then it made me.
Speaker 1: I've rewatched the Mary Taylor Moore Show on YouTube or
Speaker 1: on what yeah, I guess on YouTube, and do you
Speaker 1: remember exactly what was in the pilot? Is that when
Speaker 1: Lou Grant said you have spunk and I hate sponsor.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, So the pilot, to me, that is exactly it.
Speaker 8: During the interview when Lou and Mary meat for the
Speaker 8: first time, it is that, you know, I think the
Speaker 8: reason it's such a good pilot is like that in
Speaker 8: that interview scene, their rapport and their comedic games are
Speaker 8: so evident right immediately, and you immediately are like, oh,
Speaker 8: I want one hundred more episodes of these two doing this.
Speaker 8: And so I thought about that scene a lot during
Speaker 8: the deborn Ava interview scene in our pilot because it
Speaker 8: kind of had the same exact feeling which was you
Speaker 8: need to buy into the dynamic between these characters immediately
Speaker 8: for it to work, and you know Mary, they have
Speaker 8: such crazy good chemistry in that scene. It's so funny.
Speaker 8: And then the other reason I think it's the perfect
Speaker 8: pilot and it did influence me wanting to be a
Speaker 8: TV sitcom writer is for me like sitcoms are so
Speaker 8: special and wonderful when they are both really funny but
Speaker 8: have heart and make you feel things, even in thirty
Speaker 8: minutes twenty one minutes on Network, and that pilot is
Speaker 8: so funny, but it also is so heart wrenching at
Speaker 8: the end when her you know X comes back and
Speaker 8: she's moved and she's like kind of kind of been
Speaker 8: longing for him and he comes back in our life
Speaker 8: and she's finally realized her value and it's just like
Speaker 8: a two line thing. But when he says like, take
Speaker 8: care of yourself, Mary, and she goes, I think I
Speaker 8: just did that like made me choke up. That made
Speaker 8: me choke up as like a ten year old, And
Speaker 8: I was like, oh, this this is so funny and
Speaker 8: also so real and emotional that those are the stories
Speaker 8: I want to tell and what I want to do.
Speaker 4: So yeah, it was incredibly influential to me.
Speaker 1: We're going to throw it to break but first, I'm
Speaker 1: Katie Couric and I'm Adriana Fasio, my plus one for
Speaker 1: today's episode, and we'll be back with more of the
Speaker 1: writers from Hacks right after this. If you want to
Speaker 1: get smarter every morning with a breakdown of the news
Speaker 1: and fascinating takes on health and wellness and pop culture,
Speaker 1: sign up for our daily newsletter, Wakeupcall by going to
Speaker 1: Katiecuric dot com. We're back with the writers from our
Speaker 1: favorite show, Hacks. Luccia, I know that you didn't get
Speaker 1: into a school you wanted to get into and you
Speaker 1: ended up waitressing at a restaurant called KOI. Yes, and
Speaker 1: even before that, tell me what drove you to this
Speaker 1: line of work?
Speaker 7: Yeah, I mean I I actually kind of what I
Speaker 7: really wanted to do when I was younger was be
Speaker 7: an MTV VJ.
Speaker 5: That was like what I wanted to do.
Speaker 1: I was like that just you wanted to be Martha Quinn, Yes,
Speaker 1: I literally did.
Speaker 7: I was like, that's right, I'm going to hang out
Speaker 7: with rock stars and just kind of hang out.
Speaker 5: I get famous doing it that.
Speaker 3: She was perfect doing that.
Speaker 9: Well.
Speaker 8: Yeah, yeah, but she has an amazing music taste, so that's
Speaker 8: very sweet.
Speaker 5: But that didn't work out. So then, you know, I
Speaker 5: also loved comedy.
Speaker 7: I loved watching you know, SNL and I was obsessed
Speaker 7: with The Simpsons and Daria was really influential to.
Speaker 5: Me as a kid. But then when I went to
Speaker 5: college and my undergrad I.
Speaker 7: Did go I went to Columbia and I was and
Speaker 7: I loved the film studies program there, but I didn't
Speaker 7: get into grad school. I wanted to go to NYU
Speaker 7: Film School and I didn't get in, and so take
Speaker 7: that and film school, so I started I started doing
Speaker 7: improv classes because I knew I literally like googled Amy Poehler.
Speaker 5: I was like, what does she? How did she get
Speaker 5: to because it was.
Speaker 7: A time where Tina and Amy were the weekend update hosts.
Speaker 7: And then that led me to UCB, and so I
Speaker 7: moved back to New York after college, I like took
Speaker 7: this summer off and then that's where I met Paul.
Speaker 7: But I kind of, you know, i'd studied film studies
Speaker 7: and so I wasn't really planning on being a director necessarily,
Speaker 7: even though like you know, I had now seen so
Speaker 7: many films as an undergrad that it was really you know,
Speaker 7: I had a certain language to discuss it, and I
Speaker 7: actually thought maybe I would go into criticism because I
Speaker 7: had a professor.
Speaker 5: There, Andrew Sarra, So I really learned a lot from
Speaker 5: and loved.
Speaker 7: But then when we started, you know, like performing and
Speaker 7: doing improv and sketches and all that, I did start
Speaker 7: to gravitate towards the directing. But part of what I
Speaker 7: felt like was a great education for directing was waitressing.
Speaker 7: And yes I worked at a couple of restaurants in
Speaker 7: New York, but the tenure, my longest tenure was like Croy,
Speaker 7: which is that the Brian Parker tell.
Speaker 1: I loved their coursby Rice with.
Speaker 7: It's fantastic, and I have to say they're like the
Speaker 7: ogs of that. I don't remember having it before or
Speaker 7: seeing it now. It's kind of everywhere, but.
Speaker 1: I know you Rice.
Speaker 7: But I also grew up in the restaurant business. My
Speaker 7: parents own restaurants and my dad was a chef and
Speaker 7: my mom designed them. It was a pastry chef, and
Speaker 7: also they ran the restaurant together. So I also grew
Speaker 7: up with a husband and wife in front of me
Speaker 7: working together as Paul, and I do now?
Speaker 1: And and where was that again, Lucia?
Speaker 5: This was an Amherst, Massachusetts.
Speaker 1: Oh that's right, that's right.
Speaker 2: Are you the one that's behind the Papa Gino's pertucciese choke?
Speaker 5: Actually no, because I would never go to another pizza.
Speaker 4: Place, like I would never go.
Speaker 8: To those places because yeah, she wouldn't be caught dead
Speaker 8: in a Papainos.
Speaker 1: Papa Gino's family.
Speaker 4: So I thank you for your six family.
Speaker 1: Also, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 5: I'm not I met my own family.
Speaker 4: Literally, you're an an yellow family.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I'm in a yellow so but I definitely felt like,
Speaker 7: you know, working as a waitress was such a great
Speaker 7: education for show running and directing, because you deal with
Speaker 7: front of house, back of house, you know, which is
Speaker 7: very much like dealing with networks and executives and you know, actors,
Speaker 7: and then also.
Speaker 5: Back of the house, which is also kind of actors
Speaker 5: but like.
Speaker 7: Crew people, and you know, learning the nuts and bolts
Speaker 7: of what goes into it and having to kind of
Speaker 7: shape shift depending on who you were dealing with, and
Speaker 7: like do I need to just be brief here and
Speaker 7: just get it done, or do I go over here?
Speaker 5: And you know, do they want to show or whatever
Speaker 5: it is.
Speaker 7: It's like everybody needs something different and you need it
Speaker 7: all to decide immediately. And also things are moving one
Speaker 7: hundred miles per hour and you get in the weeds
Speaker 7: in both scenarios where you're like, oh my god, it's
Speaker 7: so much right now, how am I going to get
Speaker 7: through this? And it's just one foot in front of
Speaker 7: the other and putting out fires and and so I
Speaker 7: really actually feel that waitressing was like the most incredible
Speaker 7: education I could have asked for.
Speaker 1: And maybe maybe you could do a show about a restaurant,
Speaker 1: maybe based in Chicago behind you chef and all your
Speaker 1: experiences at Coy.
Speaker 7: You know what's so funny is that? Okay, so now
Speaker 7: I can't do that show because of the bear. Great show,
Speaker 7: but also, you know, the other thing that I'm very
Speaker 7: passionate about is soccer.
Speaker 5: And I can't do yo.
Speaker 1: So I'm like, what about a female soccer story. I
Speaker 1: feel like they can't have the corner on the market
Speaker 1: on soccer. I mean, I don't know. It seems like
Speaker 1: people have short memories too, which is something you were
Speaker 1: worried about because you guys had a big do you
Speaker 1: like that seamless transition.
Speaker 3: That was good. I know what's going yet, but I'm loving.
Speaker 1: That because you guys had to take a big break
Speaker 1: because Jean had some medical issues and then you had
Speaker 1: the writers strike, and I know you were concerned that
Speaker 1: viewers weren't going to stay with you or they were
Speaker 1: going to move on, but I think nobody moved on.
Speaker 1: I was so excited and Adrian, we were so excited
Speaker 1: when the third season came on. Weren't we a trona?
Speaker 1: We were so weird, so weird, and we were.
Speaker 2: Like cracking up in the theater at south By Southwest,
Speaker 2: like to a strange degree.
Speaker 3: Oh that's great, thank.
Speaker 4: You, that's so nice.
Speaker 5: Oh that's so goa. That was such a fun screening.
Speaker 3: That was really so fun.
Speaker 4: We were so happy you guys were able to come.
Speaker 1: Well, we're your biggest fans, as I said, So, I
Speaker 1: know you guys have said that Deborah is really an
Speaker 1: amalgamation of a lot of female comedians.
Speaker 2: Can you talk to us a little bit about building
Speaker 2: out her character and what you might have pulled from who.
Speaker 6: That was sort of the biggest challenge in getting the
Speaker 6: show ready to pitch was creating this history of this
Speaker 6: iconic stand up, and yeah, basically in our history of
Speaker 6: the character, she started doing a husband and wife live
Speaker 6: comedy act, kind of like Nichols and May, Mike Nichols
Speaker 6: and Elaine May, and they had a very public and
Speaker 6: messy divorce. Not unlike Lucio Ballan Desiernez, she was you know,
Speaker 6: maligned by managers. And we read Debbie Reynolds's autobiography and
Speaker 6: there's obviously a lot of Joan Rivers. She has her
Speaker 6: stand up life, but also her QVC life, and then
Speaker 6: there's you know, there's other stand ups like Paula Poundstone
Speaker 6: and Phyllis Diller, and she's sort of an amalgamation of
Speaker 6: a lot of different women who you know, suffered in
Speaker 6: dignity after indignity, especially in the industry of comedy. And
Speaker 6: Ava is much more someone you know from sort of
Speaker 6: our generation, though younger than us now, who came up,
Speaker 6: you know, through a more traditional comedy writing path, although
Speaker 6: she was plucked off of Twitter, as Debra says in
Speaker 6: the pilot, But you know, both of them are our
Speaker 6: characters that exist in our minds in the world of comedy.
Speaker 2: As someone who was an assistant, I can't imagine writing
Speaker 2: Ava's character without having some lived experience of being an
Speaker 2: assistant or a writer's assistant. John, how much of Ava
Speaker 2: is based on the early days of your career.
Speaker 8: I mean, Ava is very much her experience as a
Speaker 8: comedy writer is very much an amalgamation of all three
Speaker 8: of ours, you know, having come up doing comedy. I
Speaker 8: mean I was, I was a assistant to difficult people
Speaker 8: at times, and so yeah, there's a little bit of
Speaker 8: that in there. But I think you know, the thing
Speaker 8: that Ava has at the beginning that hopefully none of
Speaker 8: us had, is like all three of us, like like
Speaker 8: we said, waitress saying, working in service industry, like kind
Speaker 8: of pounding the pavement doing comedy like we didn't. I
Speaker 8: guess I maybe I did get my first paid writing
Speaker 8: job at twenty five, which is really young.
Speaker 4: But Ava is even more of like.
Speaker 8: Didn't have to pay her dues at all, like she
Speaker 8: kind of in our backstory for her, like got this
Speaker 8: job off of Twitter and didn't even finish college, so
Speaker 8: in a way, like, yeah, she didn't have that until
Speaker 8: she meets Debra, of course, and then she goes through
Speaker 8: the hazing prices of working for dever Vance in season
Speaker 8: one and beyond, never quite had anything as rough as
Speaker 8: the gembre A dynamic, though thankfully not yet.
Speaker 1: Anyway, I want to ask you guys about Hannah because
Speaker 1: she's got a really interesting background too, and I know
Speaker 1: that you all marvel at her acting chops, how committed
Speaker 1: she is, and also what a great person she is.
Speaker 1: I'd love to hear more about that, because we always
Speaker 1: hear when people are creeps and not when they're really nice. Right,
Speaker 1: But you know, she's got an interesting sort of family
Speaker 1: history and comedy, and just tell us a little bit
Speaker 1: about picking her for the role and where there are
Speaker 1: a lot of people who auditioned. And I know you
Speaker 1: can't tell us who auditioned and who didn't get the role,
Speaker 1: although those stories are always so fascinating, But tell us
Speaker 1: a little bit about selecting her for the role of Hannah.
Speaker 6: Yeah, we I think, I don't know, Jen, you counted
Speaker 6: it one point, how many people.
Speaker 8: Read I think I looked at all the casting tapes
Speaker 8: submissions we had gotten because we only you know, we
Speaker 8: started doing readings for her in person, and then COVID
Speaker 8: happened and so then everything switched to virtual and I
Speaker 8: think at one point I tali it up and we
Speaker 8: saw almost five hundred audition tapes for a Oh my gosh.
Speaker 1: Were they well known people or were they mostly.
Speaker 4: It was a combination.
Speaker 8: There was some definitely well known people, and then of
Speaker 8: course a lot of people who, like Hannah, had not
Speaker 8: really done much or people who had just been working.
Speaker 8: We're working actors, you know. We always in the conception
Speaker 8: of the show when we talked about casting, we didn't
Speaker 8: lock ourselves into anything, but we always felt that it
Speaker 8: was Gene and she'd be incredible, and like, you know,
Speaker 8: that it would be a known performer for Deborah, and
Speaker 8: then the dream was to find kind of a newer
Speaker 8: discovery for Ava. So we were really open to getting
Speaker 8: tapes from anyone and everyone, and we watched all of
Speaker 8: those and Hannah really in her first tape and every
Speaker 8: moment after that, every callback and to the test with Gene,
Speaker 8: she just really surprised us. And you know, you you
Speaker 8: the thing about it being a writer is you when
Speaker 8: you audition people, you hear your writing and you're scene
Speaker 8: over and over and over, and I will just speak
Speaker 8: for myself, I was like, I can't hear this scene anymore.
Speaker 4: It's not good. This doesn't work.
Speaker 8: You know, like when people you know, we were lucky,
Speaker 8: we had really wonderful people addition, but no, like you know,
Speaker 8: you just sometimes I think it's not that, it's not
Speaker 8: that and it's so specific. And when Hannah did it,
Speaker 8: she just brought something so unique and new to it
Speaker 8: but also familiar to us because we had been living
Speaker 8: with this character for so long and we knew who
Speaker 8: Aba was and who she was supposed to be. So
Speaker 8: to get that combination of someone delivering on what you'd
Speaker 8: envision but also bringing you know, newness and freshness, and like,
Speaker 8: oh I never imagined that line that way, but that.
Speaker 4: Works, That's what it should be.
Speaker 2: Like.
Speaker 4: She really had that in space.
Speaker 1: And it's so interesting that her mom is Lorraine Newman
Speaker 1: from SNL And I know, you know that was that
Speaker 1: was kind of exciting? Was she pretty much just writing
Speaker 1: and not acting? Was this? I know because I think
Speaker 1: I read Paul that you said it's just such a
Speaker 1: shock that she had never acted before.
Speaker 6: Really oh crazy. In fact, I remember when Jeane found
Speaker 6: out and she was like what Because some people just
Speaker 6: have something that Hannah has, which is it isn't innate.
Speaker 6: She has a gift for you know, she is just
Speaker 6: so natural and so watchable, and also she's able, especially
Speaker 6: in this season, to become so authentically emotional. You know,
Speaker 6: she's never acting at something, she is feeling these feelings
Speaker 6: of the character. She is so in the character. And
Speaker 6: part of it, I think because she comes from a
Speaker 6: family that valued comedy and worshiped comedy, like I think,
Speaker 6: she has the same kind of reverence for comedy that
Speaker 6: Ava has, so she really feels the character. And for us,
Speaker 6: you know, we had Gene attached and she is a
Speaker 6: national treasure. So part of the reason for the extensive
Speaker 6: search was you want someone who can go toe to
Speaker 6: toe with Gene, and if you're getting someone who's lesser known,
Speaker 6: that's a very tall task. And also, you know, we
Speaker 6: really wanted somebody that earned the role.
Speaker 3: And so actually, when.
Speaker 6: We googled Hannah, the only thing we could find was
Speaker 6: she had done Colbert, which is ironic and very full
Speaker 6: circle since doing Late Night is very much the white
Speaker 6: whale for our main character. So she had done some
Speaker 6: stand up and she is a stand up but that
Speaker 6: was about it. And then we also discovered who her
Speaker 6: mom was, and that her mom was Loraine Newman, who
Speaker 6: all of us were fans of. But we also were like, oh, nope,
Speaker 6: I hope people don't have the misconception that she got
Speaker 6: her foot in the door because we had no idea
Speaker 6: when she auditioned who she was, much less who her
Speaker 6: mother was, you know what I mean. So it was
Speaker 6: a really interesting thing that I think it gives her
Speaker 6: so much to draw from in her actual life in
Speaker 6: terms of what women in comedy have gone through and
Speaker 6: in terms of like what comedy means to people. But
Speaker 6: for us, we never we didn't ever want that to
Speaker 6: precede her because she is so so good and she
Speaker 6: is She's always like, well, I'm I'm a comedian. I
Speaker 6: come from comedy, And we're like, sure, you're a comedian,
Speaker 6: but you are a gifted actress.
Speaker 3: You are an.
Speaker 1: Actresspitala And I guess she's been nominated for Emmy's but
Speaker 1: hasn't won one yet. And I think this is going
Speaker 1: to be her year. Kids. You know, you say, Jeane
Speaker 1: Smart is a national treasure, and honestly, you know, as
Speaker 1: somebody who was a big fan of hers, who watched
Speaker 1: Designing Women, you know, I feel like she hasn't had
Speaker 1: a platform like design since Designing Women to really show
Speaker 1: her incredible skills and just how funny she is. Was
Speaker 1: that a natural thing going to Smart? And I love
Speaker 1: what Atrona was mentioning about this amalgamation of comedians, because
Speaker 1: you know, these are kind of my generation, like Elaine Boosler,
Speaker 1: like when it was last time you heard that name,
Speaker 1: and Paula Poundstone and all these women who You're right
Speaker 1: it was it must have been so hard for them
Speaker 1: back in the day. But was Jean Smart just an
Speaker 1: immediate thought from you all, or how did you come
Speaker 1: up with her as the lead?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 7: It was a very short list, you know, and Genie's
Speaker 7: very much at the top of that list. And I
Speaker 7: think the thing we were searching for was somebody obviously
Speaker 7: who could be a believable stand up, because if you
Speaker 7: don't believe this woman is a stand up and like
Speaker 7: kind of this iconic Eva, then the whole thing Paul's apart,
Speaker 7: you're like, eh. But we knew that we wanted to
Speaker 7: write towards some more dramatic elements and to be able
Speaker 7: to find somebody who could do comedy and believably be
Speaker 7: a stand up but also can do serious dramatic work.
Speaker 7: And it has a resume that shows that it was
Speaker 7: really hard there's some people that were like, that person's
Speaker 7: so funny, but can they do drama?
Speaker 5: They've never really done it? Do they want to do it?
Speaker 5: Is that going to be a stretch?
Speaker 7: But Gene was really the perfect person for us because
Speaker 7: not only can she do comedy and drama in equal measure,
Speaker 7: but there's something about also her stature, her aura that
Speaker 7: just gives like this fabulous twist to it as well
Speaker 7: and feels like this. You know, it's partly because she's
Speaker 7: a tall, gorgeous blonde, but there's just something about she
Speaker 7: has a command and she just draws your eye and
Speaker 7: it just felt like that is what you kind of
Speaker 7: need to believe that this is a woman whose entire
Speaker 7: ecosystem circles her.
Speaker 6: And you know what not to diminish her prolific career
Speaker 6: because she's been working, honestly, NonStop, she works so much.
Speaker 6: But she was always one of our favorite things when
Speaker 6: we would see Frasier. She stood out in that show
Speaker 6: so much. And you know, when she did the Brady
Speaker 6: Bunch movie, she plays like a really seen stealing person
Speaker 6: in that movie. And it's crazy to think that she
Speaker 6: very much embodies Debora because even though Jane has worked
Speaker 6: forever and is beloved. She'd ever been number one on
Speaker 6: the call sheet. She had never had a lead that
Speaker 6: could show her range. So it was sort of like, Oh,
Speaker 6: here's someone who maybe hasn't had their due to show
Speaker 6: the world everything that she can do. And so in
Speaker 6: that way, she very much was Debra Vance.
Speaker 1: And she's I think she's seventy three geen and you
Speaker 1: meet shen't ask me. I mean she's she is so gorgeous.
Speaker 1: I met her at gosh, I think I went to
Speaker 1: a Vanity Fair party for the Oscars. I know I'm
Speaker 1: very cool, and were walking out at the same time.
Speaker 1: First of all, she's so lovely and I've interviewed her before,
Speaker 1: but that lady is one tall drink of water. Yes,
Speaker 1: she was amazing, and she's just so gorgeous.
Speaker 2: When we met Jean and Hannah and all of you
Speaker 2: at south By Southwest, Jean was presenting Hannah with a
Speaker 2: an award, and their relationship in real life just seems
Speaker 2: so authentic and so sweet. Did their Chemist Street Was
Speaker 2: it obvious just from the first table read?
Speaker 7: It was actually from the audition, I would say, yeah,
Speaker 7: it was just like an immediate even just the way
Speaker 7: that they like, you know, there's something also about their.
Speaker 5: Gender expression that also just felt like the right thing.
Speaker 7: Where you know, Debra, I mean, Gene is just kind
Speaker 7: of this like statuus, you know, female ideal, and Hannah
Speaker 7: also so beautiful, but like has kind of you know,
Speaker 7: she she showed up.
Speaker 5: In the Doc Martin's and the Gunians and it was
Speaker 5: just kind of like.
Speaker 1: She had a grunge going.
Speaker 7: Yeah, just something about just the way that they looked
Speaker 7: together that just felt right. And it's true that like
Speaker 7: their relationship mirrored that, like, and they've really been there
Speaker 7: for each other through a lot of hard, hard moments.
Speaker 7: We've had some you know, really sad things happen on
Speaker 7: our show.
Speaker 1: I was going to mention because I talked to Jane
Speaker 1: about this, and I think, you know, she was very
Speaker 1: generous about talking to me because I lost my husband
Speaker 1: a number of years ago, but she lost her husband
Speaker 1: of thirty five years, I know, in March of twenty
Speaker 1: twenty one. And you know, gosh, I guess work, at
Speaker 1: least for me, it was really invaluable for me because
Speaker 1: you could compartmentalize and focus on something other than your sadness.
Speaker 1: But that must have been a tough period for her
Speaker 1: and for you all for her.
Speaker 6: Right, Oh yeah, we've all I mean, and this is
Speaker 6: overused this term, but we really have become family. You know,
Speaker 6: you become that when you're together with people for so
Speaker 6: long in so many places, and especially when you've been
Speaker 6: through things like that. And I think, you know, it
Speaker 6: happened during shooting. It was like the last couple of
Speaker 6: weeks of season one, and.
Speaker 3: I know that.
Speaker 6: Hannah was really there for her, and Caitlyn Olsen, who
Speaker 6: plays her daughter on the show, was really there for her.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 6: Jeane has now a thirteen year old and she has
Speaker 6: two children. But it was really it was a very
Speaker 6: hard time. But Jean, I think she wanted to finish
Speaker 6: the show and come back and have you know.
Speaker 3: She didn't want the crew to be out of work.
Speaker 6: She was like, let's finish, and I think it was
Speaker 6: nice for her to be back together with this little family.
Speaker 6: But yeah, it was. It's been kind of crazy the
Speaker 6: things that have happened. A lot of life has happened
Speaker 6: behind the scenes.
Speaker 1: I wanted to ask you all, Sorry, Faz, you want
Speaker 1: to ask something.
Speaker 2: I was going to ask Paul about Meg Stalter because
Speaker 2: she's your counterpart on the show, and I love.
Speaker 1: Her, love Meg Stalter Adron, and I love I mean,
Speaker 1: we love everyone on the show. Paul, we also love
Speaker 1: you on the show. Well, thank you very much. So yeah,
Speaker 1: we think you're great and so funny, but thank you.
Speaker 1: Meg is so funny. Yeah, and that first season especially
Speaker 1: just so annoying and so hilarious. I felt for you
Speaker 1: having her work for you. Tell us about her because
Speaker 1: she kind of came came out of no where, didn't she.
Speaker 6: I mean, she's another one who this was her first
Speaker 6: like television job. You know, she had been doing live
Speaker 6: comedy and she is like she comes from the alt
Speaker 6: comedy scene where the three of us met and was
Speaker 6: doing like Instagram videos. Really we had we had written
Speaker 6: this character and we're basing it on like again. This
Speaker 6: character was also, weirdly an amalgamation of people we have known.
Speaker 6: But Meg, in her character work on Instagram did this
Speaker 6: thing of having like bravado but also kind of a weird,
Speaker 6: kind of stuttery way of speaking in a nervousness that
Speaker 6: weirdly like was exactly what we wanted. And then I
Speaker 6: did a stand up show that she was on, and
Speaker 6: she was I had never seen anything like it. It
Speaker 6: was To call it stand up is unfair. Honestly, it's
Speaker 6: performance are like she you know, you like write a
Speaker 6: set in jhone a set and she came in. She's like, okay,
Speaker 6: hello everybody. Oh that's my daughter right there. Please be
Speaker 6: nice to my daughter. It was just so like the
Speaker 6: stream of consciousness bizarre. So like I'm going to show
Speaker 6: you how to enter a party and make a scene.
Speaker 3: I can't.
Speaker 8: Even if you get a chance to see her performing,
Speaker 8: you guys have to because it's like her live is incredible.
Speaker 8: I've never seen someone so connected with the audience but
Speaker 8: like off book and like you're chaotic, chaotic, but it's
Speaker 8: like she's in control because it works and everyone's laughing.
Speaker 6: She's so free. I think that's the thing. She's so free,
Speaker 6: and that's like a great thing to have in a
Speaker 6: scene partner because it allows you to be free too.
Speaker 6: You have to be because there's just like it's just
Speaker 6: an electric thing and we have a lot of fun,
Speaker 6: sometimes too much fun that she and myt the time.
Speaker 4: She's like, guys, get the story.
Speaker 5: Please, we make.
Speaker 3: Each other laugh, you know, like she was.
Speaker 6: She and I both had a mutual affection for each other,
Speaker 6: and that night we met, we were able to tell
Speaker 6: one another and it was really like even though she
Speaker 6: audition for the role, and even in her audition, she
Speaker 6: was like she was remembering that she had like a
Speaker 6: lamp on the floor.
Speaker 4: She was like, yeah, it was like an interrogation room.
Speaker 3: There was like one bowlb on a thing, and she's like,
Speaker 3: I thought this would look good. Sorry, it became like.
Speaker 6: A performance piece just getting her to start the audition
Speaker 6: over zoom.
Speaker 3: So there's no one like Meg's aalter.
Speaker 1: Well, I was going to say, this is probably one
Speaker 1: of the best things that ever happened to her to
Speaker 1: be in the show, because she's just exploded as a result.
Speaker 1: We're going to throw it to break. But first I'm
Speaker 1: Katie Couric and I'm Adriana Fazzio, my plus one for
Speaker 1: today's episode, and we'll be back with more of the
Speaker 1: writers from Hacks right after this. We're back, And of
Speaker 1: course I couldn't let them go without talking about a
Speaker 1: scene from my favorite season, season three, and you'll hear why.
Speaker 9: Look, I'm your sister and I shouldn't have done it,
Speaker 9: But you two weren't even sleeping in the same room
Speaker 9: for months he made the first move and I.
Speaker 1: Was only nineteen years old.
Speaker 5: To give me a fucking break, you stayed married to him?
Speaker 1: Yeah, because he made me happy.
Speaker 9: I mean, you don't want to hear this, but we
Speaker 9: were a better match than you two were.
Speaker 1: And thank god because.
Speaker 5: Because I lost my sister for it.
Speaker 3: Oh, I'm sorry. You've been so much pain.
Speaker 5: Well I have been.
Speaker 1: I've also paid for it.
Speaker 9: I've taken all your punishment over the years, billboards for
Speaker 9: all your specials on my street. You told Katie Couric,
Speaker 9: I can't read.
Speaker 3: It's a joke.
Speaker 1: Who thought of the Katie Curic line? I'm going to
Speaker 1: give full credit where credit is due, Lucia, was that you, Paul?
Speaker 5: I don't remember.
Speaker 8: I actually, I think guys correct me if I believe
Speaker 8: we have to credit our writer's room with that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I probably.
Speaker 8: I think one of our writers wrote that joke. And
Speaker 8: and we will find their name. We will tell you names.
Speaker 8: We'll find out who and tell you and you can
Speaker 8: send them a gift basket.
Speaker 1: Or I don't know them a Katie correct media mug.
Speaker 4: Okay, I guess.
Speaker 7: One of the things that we sometimes do is we'll
Speaker 7: have like a lot, like an area and we'll highlight that.
Speaker 7: We'll write a joke and we'll highlight it and send
Speaker 7: it back to our writers, and we'll basically get pages
Speaker 7: and pages of alts, and we won't know which of
Speaker 7: our writers wrote which jokes, and then we'll go through
Speaker 7: them and just pick our favorite one or two. Those
Speaker 7: will be perhaps what will end up in the draft,
Speaker 7: which is why we're saying we don't actually know it
Speaker 7: was in that list of joke.
Speaker 5: But I will say I don't ever. I didn't think
Speaker 5: of it as a Paline reference. I just thought that
Speaker 5: it was a Deba either you did, Deborah No.
Speaker 7: I thought that was like just Deborah did a one
Speaker 7: on one with you and she's talking about her sister
Speaker 7: and she said, well, you know you can't read, And
Speaker 7: that just was part of even for some reason.
Speaker 6: I mean, maybe maybe they thought of it that way.
Speaker 6: But it's so funny because Luc and I just rewatched
Speaker 6: Game Change and we were like, man, what a pivotal
Speaker 6: moment in political history was.
Speaker 1: I had a good I thought Jay Roach did such
Speaker 1: a good job. And Janny Strong, who I think is?
Speaker 1: I think Danny Strong is so amazingly talented. I I
Speaker 1: thought dope SIIC was one of the best shows. I'm
Speaker 1: fantasticing as hell, but so good and so well written.
Speaker 1: I just think Danny Strong is a genius. Well, Adriana,
Speaker 1: I feel like I kind of picked this conversation as
Speaker 1: I usually do. It's fine, it's all good. You did
Speaker 1: he not put makeup on for this?
Speaker 7: No?
Speaker 1: I did tell so so.
Speaker 2: Among the things, among the things that contribute to the
Speaker 2: Katie Adrianna Deborah aerodynamic one. Katie always picks up my
Speaker 2: shoes and says, are these yours? Are these John's her husband's.
Speaker 5: Because she said.
Speaker 1: Achana has very big feet.
Speaker 2: I wear a nine. But I literally put like lit
Speaker 2: bom on before.
Speaker 1: There, and I feel like, you look like you have
Speaker 1: mess scar on. I don't you just have very pretty eyelashes.
Speaker 4: Then the show, it might be a reality show for
Speaker 4: you guys.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, I know pretty good, Adriana. I'll tell you
Speaker 1: very quickly and then I'll let you guys go to
Speaker 1: a million things to do. But Adriana uh went to
Speaker 1: Notre Dame and she wrote her thesis about me and
Speaker 1: what was the name of the thesis?
Speaker 2: Adriana Katie Kirk's career and shifting perceptions of femininity in
Speaker 2: broadcast Journalissa thank.
Speaker 5: You Cool.
Speaker 1: Was very smart because she somebody she knew, the mother
Speaker 1: knew a producer I had worked with on Sixty Minutes
Speaker 1: and eighty Way. Adriana tried every which way to get
Speaker 1: to me, and I think my friend Deirdre actually was
Speaker 1: a producer on sixty Minutes. She wrote me and said,
Speaker 1: you know this girl is writing her thesis about you.
Speaker 1: Can you do an interview with her? And you know
Speaker 1: I do get a few requests like that, and I
Speaker 1: was like, oh well. I was very flattered, like wow,
Speaker 1: the whole thesis about me. That's gonna that's gonna be hard,
Speaker 1: but okay. And I remember my assistant at the time
Speaker 1: was like, you don't want to do this, really, do you?
Speaker 1: And I was like, no, I feel like I should
Speaker 1: do it, So go ahead to Adrian to pick up
Speaker 1: the story from there.
Speaker 2: So then Notre Dame gave me a grant to do research,
Speaker 2: and I flew to New York and I all of
Speaker 2: a sudden heard from Katie as I landed at Guardia.
Speaker 2: It was very made for TV, but you landed at
Speaker 2: La Guardia. Why So I conveniently used the grant that
Speaker 2: Notre Dame gave me to book a flight to New
Speaker 2: York the weekend that Notre Dame had a football game
Speaker 2: at Yankee Stadium, And then I was hoping that the
Speaker 2: timing would work out and it did.
Speaker 4: Smart.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah.
Speaker 2: Then Katie invited me over to her part meant to
Speaker 2: interview her, and I was hungover, slightly incredibly nervous and
Speaker 2: like sweating through my like blouse that my professor like
Speaker 2: made me wear.
Speaker 4: Oh my god.
Speaker 1: Yeah, she was so cute.
Speaker 5: Do you guys have a photo of that? Yeah?
Speaker 4: Oh we do.
Speaker 1: Then I was writing a book and she was graduating,
Speaker 1: and I was like, hey, I's Rhanna, You're you know
Speaker 1: more about me than I do, having written this thesis.
Speaker 1: Do you want to come and help me write my book?
Speaker 1: And she did, and then the pandemic happened. She ended
Speaker 1: up living with us for like over a year.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, Oh my god.
Speaker 1: And so anyway, Atreano knows me probably better than almost anyone,
Speaker 1: including my husband.
Speaker 5: Oh my god.
Speaker 3: Okay, this is a show. This is a show.
Speaker 4: It's a show.
Speaker 3: It's a show.
Speaker 4: Why you guys live together?
Speaker 1: Yeah, wow, I want to be mindful of your time.
Speaker 1: But I wanted to ask just a couple quick questions
Speaker 1: about the logistics of making the show, because I've never
Speaker 1: really been in a writer's room. I think I told
Speaker 1: you all my daughter Ellie writes for this show called
Speaker 1: The Boys Onto Side. Yeah, I think I mentioned that
Speaker 1: at South By Southwest and I kind of understand what
Speaker 1: it's like. But you know, when you sit down and
Speaker 1: you're kind of talking about what is going to transpire
Speaker 1: in each episode, is that the three of you kind
Speaker 1: of just riffing?
Speaker 4: Do you all?
Speaker 1: I mean? And are there a lot of other writers
Speaker 1: in the room. Can you just kind of give us
Speaker 1: a sense of how something goes from an idea to
Speaker 1: an actual episode.
Speaker 8: Yeah, so at the beginning, it's like the three of
Speaker 8: us really kind of hone in on what we you know,
Speaker 8: there's a tremendous amount of material that we built up
Speaker 8: while we were developing this show and when we pitched it.
Speaker 8: I think We've said this many times, but we you know,
Speaker 8: when we pitched the show, we pitched the very last
Speaker 8: scene of the series. So we know very much have
Speaker 8: a roadmap of where we want to go for each
Speaker 8: sea and in for the characters, and so three of us,
Speaker 8: you know, we talk before a season of like what
Speaker 8: we big picture ideas and what the ten polls are,
Speaker 8: and you know, we do like blue sky big picture
Speaker 8: can kind of be anything. And then we'll have you know,
Speaker 8: sometimes we'll have a few outlines even written or you know,
Speaker 8: things like that before the writer's room starts, because you know,
Speaker 8: the thing with the show, it's like such a we're
Speaker 8: very lucky to keep making it. But it's like by
Speaker 8: the time we finish post on one season, we're doing
Speaker 8: press for that season coming out, and then by the
Speaker 8: time you know it, like the press hasn't ended, but
Speaker 8: we're starting writing the next season. And so it's kind
Speaker 8: of just like this constant train that's always on the
Speaker 8: tracks and moving.
Speaker 4: You know, we talked me out. It's a it's a
Speaker 4: party train. It's a fun trains NonStop but NonStop.
Speaker 8: Yeah, And so you know, then the writer's room, well,
Speaker 8: we have a wonderful group of writers who you know,
Speaker 8: pretty much all of them have been with us since
Speaker 8: season one, and they come in and we you know,
Speaker 8: the breaking of an episode is you talk big picture,
Speaker 8: you say, okay, here are the ten polls of the season.
Speaker 8: We know, for example, in season three, we know we're
Speaker 8: building to Deborah getting this show and then taking the
Speaker 8: job away from Eva and then blackmail. But so then
Speaker 8: when you start getting more granular, it's like, okay, the
Speaker 8: premiere episode, Deborah and Ava, they've been a part. We
Speaker 8: know we're going to do a time jump, they have
Speaker 8: to come back together. Where are they coming back together?
Speaker 8: Like just kind of big idea pit, like pitches on
Speaker 8: what that can be. Then you hone in on stuff.
Speaker 8: And once you hone in on stuff, I'm getting very
Speaker 8: granular and specific, but maybe it's interesting you start writing
Speaker 8: it down. You start writing it down on cards, which
Speaker 8: is kind of breaking of an episode, which is each
Speaker 8: index card is a scene, and just saying like, okay,
Speaker 8: deborahn Neva meet in the elevator. They have an awkward
Speaker 8: interaction where Deborah's kind of cold to her and Ava
Speaker 8: is taken aback by it. And you just do that
Speaker 8: for a full episode until you have all the scenes
Speaker 8: broken and you feel good about the beats of the
Speaker 8: story and the turns and the character development and the resolution.
Speaker 8: And then once you know we've all decided that that works,
Speaker 8: someone goes off and outlines it, and then someone goes
Speaker 8: off and writes the episode, and so yeah. We usually
Speaker 8: the three of us write a half or so of
Speaker 8: the episodes, maybe a little less of the season, and
Speaker 8: then our writers write the others.
Speaker 4: But it's such a TV writing. The thing I love
Speaker 4: about it is it's like.
Speaker 8: Such a collaborative process that like sometimes when people would
Speaker 8: be like, you know, I would when I was a
Speaker 8: staff writer in Parks and Rack or good Place, They'd
Speaker 8: be like, oh, you wrote that episode. I could tell
Speaker 8: you wrote that episode, And I'm like, everyone write, you
Speaker 8: know what I mean, Like it's it's it's which is
Speaker 8: what's so wonderful about it and like so so fun
Speaker 8: is that it's really collaborative.
Speaker 1: And Lucci do you all have you all directed episodes?
Speaker 1: I know, Lucia, you have done a number of episodes, right,
Speaker 1: I mean I should know this. I apologize, but tell
Speaker 1: me about direct.
Speaker 7: I direct most of them. Paul has also done I
Speaker 7: think you've done. Has it been to each season?
Speaker 5: Yes, so Paul is directed at least yeah, to each season.
Speaker 7: And we've had a couple guests come and do one
Speaker 7: or two episodes of season. But but I usually do
Speaker 7: what a six or so at a season something with
Speaker 7: that of the eight or nine or ten.
Speaker 1: And Jen, don't you want don't you want to direct?
Speaker 4: You know, I get this question a lot.
Speaker 8: I've been really spoiled by my creative collaboration with two
Speaker 8: phenomenal directors because I'm not I'm not lacking in feeling
Speaker 8: the show is in very good hands. But if I
Speaker 8: want the show to start going downhill, I definitely will Doret.
Speaker 7: We always say we want her to direct, but you
Speaker 7: know we can't force her.
Speaker 1: You know, you say the show going downhill, and I
Speaker 1: you know it must be sort of when I said
Speaker 1: earlier on about you know, it's both exhilarating but a
Speaker 1: lot of pressure. You know, these characters do have to
Speaker 1: evolve and new things have to happen, and you all
Speaker 1: have to come up with new storylines. And I think
Speaker 1: season three was really I found it more dramatic in
Speaker 1: some ways than comedic, although of course there's so many
Speaker 1: comedic moments. But you really started to understand Debra's journey.
Speaker 1: I hate the word journey. Don't hate the word journey,
Speaker 1: like we need to strip that from the lexicon because
Speaker 1: it just is so overused by breast cancer. Journey's journey anyway,
Speaker 1: but you know, tell me about kind of what went
Speaker 1: into that and where you go from here. Obviously you
Speaker 1: go from she got the late night talk show, right,
Speaker 1: and that I can't imagine doesn't provide just endless storylines
Speaker 1: and fun things about staffing and all sorts of stuff. Right,
Speaker 1: You can introduce all kinds of characters, but can you
Speaker 1: just talk about sort of the evolution of her character
Speaker 1: and where you see the show going in season four?
Speaker 1: If you guys, are you starting to wait? When does
Speaker 1: season four come.
Speaker 3: Out next spring?
Speaker 1: Next next spring? But so we're starting to shoot in September.
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, we're writing it now.
Speaker 6: We're about halfway through, well a little bit more than
Speaker 6: halfway through writing season four. We always knew season three
Speaker 6: was going to be her Deborah's quest to get this
Speaker 6: late night job which was opening up. And you know
Speaker 6: the idea of late night. Obviously, late night is such
Speaker 6: like an institution in the comedy world, and it was
Speaker 6: the thing that you like. I think that for stand
Speaker 6: ups it was like the marquee job, the thing that
Speaker 6: they all wanted to do, and if you were a
Speaker 6: stand up, it was the show you wanted to be
Speaker 6: on because it could make your career. And so we
Speaker 6: always wanted to build to this season. But now that
Speaker 6: we're in season three and you understand the characters more
Speaker 6: and you get to see, you know, I think, a
Speaker 6: different gear for each of them. So we got to
Speaker 6: get underneath the characters. We get to meet Deborah's sister,
Speaker 6: which was obviously a point of trauma for her since
Speaker 6: her husband left her for her sister. We got to
Speaker 6: get some more you know, heartfelt moments from Jimmy and
Speaker 6: Kayla because now we've been with them and while they
Speaker 6: are the comedic duo and oftentimes comedic relief, that we
Speaker 6: got to see a little bit more of what makes
Speaker 6: them tick. And so yeah, I think partially because the
Speaker 6: stakes are so high for Deborah in this stage in
Speaker 6: her career, it lent itself to being emotional and in
Speaker 6: some in some cases more dramatic. But I think that
Speaker 6: was the thing for us, is that we always wanted
Speaker 6: to make a show that was both heartfelt and hard funny,
Speaker 6: and we never saw that to the degree that I
Speaker 6: hope we get to do because we have a show
Speaker 6: about comedians who get to deliver jokes. Like Deborah's love
Speaker 6: language is joking. She's addicted to telling jokes. She cannot
Speaker 6: not make a joke about something even you know, DJ,
Speaker 6: her daughter after feeling very maligned in that AA meeting
Speaker 6: or that NA meeting, is like, don't make jokes, Like
Speaker 6: she just can't stop making joke folks. So we get
Speaker 6: to how our cake and eat it too, which is
Speaker 6: make a show about comedy where we get to tell
Speaker 6: hard jokes but then also show the real life moments
Speaker 6: that are hard and sad and you know, real for
Speaker 6: these characters too. And then season four, like you say,
Speaker 6: it's like, we're off to the races. Because while getting
Speaker 6: that job was a huge challenge for Deborah, launching a
Speaker 6: late night show and having it be a success is
Speaker 6: an even bigger challenge.
Speaker 1: Are you going to be talking about you know, it's
Speaker 1: interesting because I know, I'm sure you all do too,
Speaker 1: people who work on late night shows. Nobody's really watching
Speaker 1: them anymore on television. They're watching them online the next day.
Speaker 1: You know, the ratings are I don't want to say infinitesimal,
Speaker 1: but they're not nearly what you would think they would
Speaker 1: be or you know, what they were in the day
Speaker 1: before digital you know, before iPhones and online stuff. Are
Speaker 1: you going to be dealing with that or is that
Speaker 1: to complex? But I feel like, if you if you
Speaker 1: want it really of the moment, you're going to have
Speaker 1: to talk about this stuff, will you? And if not,
Speaker 1: I just gave you a terrific idea.
Speaker 7: I mean, one of the things that we are going
Speaker 7: to be kind of tackling is the idea of the
Speaker 7: glass cliffs, which is that you know, women oftentimes in
Speaker 7: business especially are kind of offered hired job or you know,
Speaker 7: CEO jobs or positions of power you know, right before
Speaker 7: kind of the downfall of the company, as sometimes as
Speaker 7: a scapegoat, sometimes.
Speaker 5: As a like glass resort.
Speaker 7: Okay, finally, final, let's give it to a woman now
Speaker 7: that we've kind of already sunk the ship or whatever
Speaker 7: it is, I'm not.
Speaker 1: Familiar with that phenomenon.
Speaker 7: Yeah, so for us, that's definitely something that will be tackling,
Speaker 7: and like you said, it is of the moment. And also,
Speaker 7: you know, I think that's part of why Debra is
Speaker 7: given the show, you know, is because so you know,
Speaker 7: it's almost impossible to have a successful late show, but
Speaker 7: if there's anybody crazy enough to make something as success,
Speaker 7: it's sub Evans.
Speaker 5: So that's definitely part of what season four is a dow.
Speaker 1: And I'm so glad, you know, because really it's really ridiculous.
Speaker 1: I just wrote an op ed in the New York
Speaker 1: Times about how there will be no female anchors of
Speaker 1: evening news broadcasts after Nora O'donnald steps down after the election.
Speaker 1: And you know, that is a declining industry or declining
Speaker 1: format for sure, But it's still attracts about, gosh, nineteen
Speaker 1: million people a night now. Granted they're all out buying
Speaker 1: fix it in and depends. But you know, if you
Speaker 1: look at the commercials, you're like, whoa. But you know,
Speaker 1: I think it's so important in it it really it
Speaker 1: bothers me. That's still with the exception of Samantha Bee,
Speaker 1: there really haven't been any successful and of course Joan
Speaker 1: Verse for that moment in time, successful late night comedians.
Speaker 1: And I think it's you know, it shows a real
Speaker 1: bankruptcy of imagination for programmers and audiences.
Speaker 6: Honestly, absolutely, yeah, I think that's I mean, that's very
Speaker 6: much part of the ethos of the show is about
Speaker 6: how unfair that is and how, you know, in this
Speaker 6: world we get to do it. But you know, we
Speaker 6: were asked in an interview, do you think you'll see
Speaker 6: a female president or a female late night host first,
Speaker 6: and we said, President, it's a really weird thing that,
Speaker 6: you know that they haven't been given the chance. And
Speaker 6: I think that the same goes for broadcast journalism. It
Speaker 6: is it is really wild because audiences are also largely,
Speaker 6: if not equally, female, you know, I think women just
Speaker 6: have a greater ability to empathize and watch someone in
Speaker 6: a different gender role than their own. And I think
Speaker 6: there is still like a weird ingrained thing even in storytelling,
Speaker 6: even in shows, you know, like especially in comedies, there
Speaker 6: are not a ton of female at comedies. Yes, of
Speaker 6: course they've been fantastic ones, and we talked about many
Speaker 6: of our favorites that were on Nick at Night, but
Speaker 6: they really don't have the same degree I don't think
Speaker 6: of respect and often instant notoriety that ones that are
Speaker 6: led by men do.
Speaker 1: Thank you all so much, as you know, we've already said,
Speaker 1: we're such fans of yours, such fans of the show.
Speaker 1: And I feel like, you know, as somebody who's the
Speaker 1: mother of a writer, I feel like writers don't get
Speaker 1: enough credit because without them, these shows just wouldn't be anything.
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously the actors bring it to life, but
Speaker 1: the writing is so good and the stories and the
Speaker 1: characters are so I think beautifully drawn. That we were
Speaker 1: just very excited to spend a little time with you.
Speaker 1: So thank you all so much.
Speaker 5: Thanks for having us.
Speaker 4: This was so fun. Thank you, Thank you for having us.
Speaker 4: It's a dream come true.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you trying to anything else before we go.
Speaker 2: The one thing I was going to let you guys
Speaker 2: know is we solicited questions from Katie's audience ahead of this,
Speaker 2: and my favorite comments not question was I use SBF
Speaker 2: fifty on my hands now because of Debra Vance.
Speaker 8: Love it that that's good one one liver spot at
Speaker 8: a time, because, as she says, you can't get a
Speaker 8: hand job.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Thanks everybody, Thank you so much, Thanks for listening everyone.
Speaker 1: If you have a question for me, a subject you
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Speaker 1: from you. Next Question is a production of iHeartMedia and
Speaker 1: Katie Couric Media. The executive producers are Me, Katie Kuric,
Speaker 1: and Courtney Ltz. Our supervising producer is Ryan Martz, and
Speaker 1: our producers are Adriana Fazzio and Meredith Barnes. Julian Weller
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