Paul W. Downs on ‘Hacks’ Ending: ‘Big Laughs and Big Feelings’

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Editor’s Note: This conversation has been edited and condensed for publication.

How do you feel about the final season? 

I feel so many things. I feel relieved. I feel excited for people to see it. I feel sad. There are so many feelings, it’s almost net-neutral because I also just feel really grateful we were able to do it, that we actually accomplished it and were allowed to tell the story we wanted to tell. It’s a rare thing. 

We come from the same background in comedy, and to have this level of success is beyond what so many of us ever think is even possible. How do you process these past couple of years? 

It’s really hard to process. It’s hard to take in. It sounds so cheesy, but Lucia [Aniello] and I and Jen [Statsky] say to each other, every day probably, we’ll be at a location or we’ll have a meal or we’ll be doing something with Jean Smart and Hannah Einbinder, and we’ll just say, we are so lucky. It’s almost too much to fit in your head. We know how rare it is. We just wanted to be able to pay our bills doing comedy. The fact that we’ve gotten to make this show, that it’s resonated with people and been received the way it has, it does feel beyond our wildest dreams. 

This will be a part of your professional legacy for sure. And we’re not old. 

Thank you. That’s kind of crazy. We’re the same age. And so it is crazy, especially this season, which is so much about legacy and Deborah’s [Vance] legacy and what it means when someone else writes your story and getting to reclaim and rewrite your own story. It is wild that it’s so meta, that this show is a part of my legacy and our legacy. I think it’s meta not only for me, but for Jean and Hannah, for Jen and Lucia, for any of us in it. It has become something that hopefully people remember for a long time and associate with us. This period of our lives will probably be unmatched. But, not to sound too Pollyanna, I worked on Broad City with Jen Statsky and Lucia Aniello. That was a web series. Lucia directed a few of those, I was in it, we were friends with Abbi [Jacobson] and Ilana [Glazer]. That show became this little thing on Comedy Central that resonated with people and we were like, that may never happen again. We just had a great time and made a little comedy that people watched. And then for this to happen, I hope this isn’t it, but this might be the thing. It’s been a very weird, meta season making Hacks.

How does it feel to be working with someone like Jean Smart and creating something that will be the cherry on top of a beautiful legacy of a career? 

It’s an honor. One of the greatest choices we made with the show was putting people in it that we loved and thought were funny, whether that was a standup like Robby Hoffman, who hadn’t done television, or Meg Stalter, who hadn’t done television, or any of the people we know from UCB and the comedy scene. We were like, these people are really special, and they need to shine. Someone like Jean Smart, who was the funniest part of the Brady Bunch Movie and so good in Frasier. But also, of course, Designing Women. She was such a standout in so many things. To get to platform her in this way, because I think she can do it all. She’s incredible dramatically. She can nail a joke. She can believably play a standup, which not everybody can do. A lot of amazing actors couldn’t sell themselves as a standup, I don’t think. She is so multitalented, and to have her portray this person has been such a gift to us. We feel very lucky that the world has gotten to see everything she can do in this show. It is so layered, because sometimes she’ll do a scene and it’s so raw and emotional and great and we’ll say, “Jean, that was crazy.” And she’ll say, “It’s very real for me. That wasn’t that hard because it feels like my story.” Deborah is at the top of her game and has been knocked down a thousand times and gotten up a thousand and one. So it is weird, that almost layer upon layer of it being autobiographical for all of us. 

How much better an actor have you become because of Hacks? Because standing out on a show with Jean Smart is hard enough, and then you add Hannah Einbinder, and you and Megan Stalter together have created these supporting characters that we really grew to love. 

I think I’ve grown so much because of the show. It’s a hard comedy first, it’s about comedy writers and a comedian, but it’s also very emotional and heartfelt. It was a tone we hadn’t seen a ton of that we really wanted to dive into. We try to give everybody in the ensemble moments of depth, whether that’s Marcus, played by Carl Clemons-Hopkins, or Meg as Kayla. To get to do that, to work that muscle with the scene partners I have, Jean and Hannah and Meg, I’ve certainly grown so much. But it’s also so easy to be funny when you’re in a scene with Meg, or to be emotional when you’re in a scene with Jean, because they are so generous and committed and always in character in a way that’s almost anthropological. Hannah and I have some moments this season, and being able to do those scenes with her made it almost feel like not acting. It was really cool. 

One of the most fun things over these past few seasons has been watching the internet’s reaction to you. It’s rare for an actor to have to come out as straight, and you have had to do that, between this show and judging on RuPaul’s Drag Race. 

What an honor. What a huge honor. Someone asked us yesterday about why this show resonates with a queer audience and about queer representation on the show. And I said, queerness is culture, and queerness pushes culture. The fact that it was found and embraced the way it has been, I am beyond honored. 

The replies have been so funny, people being surprised that you’re married [to Lucia Aniello]. 

I have never played into heteronormative masculinity. I’m not interested in it. I’ve always, since I was very young, been very much myself. So it is interesting that you have to declare it. But I also barely even do that. My Instagram is mostly just to get people to watch Hacks. It’s not like I’m posting pictures of me and my wife. But yeah. 

How do you close out something that has such a rabid fan base while also giving it the creative ending you always intended? 

We did pitch the final episode when we pitched the show to most of the networks. We pitched it not to HBO Max because—and this sounds like a brag—but they bought it before we got there. Suzanna Makkos, who was our executive at the time, said, “Do yourself a favor, you can stop, because I really get the show, and I think we should talk about making it.” But yeah, we’ve had this scene and this episode in mind for a really long time. Things evolved as we got to write for the actors, as we got to know the characters and experience the show with the audience. But because we are also fans of the show, I hope it feels like a love letter to the fans, because it’s something we wanted to make as fans ourselves. Hopefully it feels full circle, with a lot of closure. And I think it delivers on what we always strive for in Hacks, which is big laughs and big feelings. Not every show does that, not every show knows exactly where it’s going. Knowing where we were going allowed us to plant seeds along the way that hopefully pay off in a big way at the end. 

When you’re so known for something like this, how do you think about what’s next? 

I’m available for the first time in a long time, so I am hoping to get hired to do something. It would be really great to only wear one hat, you know? On Broad City, Abbi and Ilana were showrunning, and I directed only one episode, so I was mostly just acting and writing on that show. That would be really fun. I do want to do that. And of course, Jen, Lucia and I are working on something now that we’ll do next. But while we’re developing it, it’d be great to just play a little bit. 

Is there something specific you’re eager to do? 

I’m actually eager to do something that isn’t as comedic, partly because I’ve been in it so long. As much as I love it, I loved watching Succession so much because there were so many comedic performances within a more serious show. To do something like that, something a little more serious but where I’m still allowed to bring humor, would be a dream. There are a lot of filmmakers I would love to work with. But I’ve been literally unavailable for six years, so it’s exciting and scary, because in this business you just never know. 

But you’ve been very lucky. 

I’ve been so lucky. I’ve been sooo lucky. 

What are the moments you look back on in the series, with your character or otherwise, where you think, that’s when we got it, or that’s a great moment? 

There are a couple. One was in season one, our fourth day of shooting. We were in the desert for the episode where they go to the antique store to get the pepper shaker and have a flat tire. Deborah’s late for her show, so she calls a local news chopper. They walk into the desert, and Deborah has this monologue about the scratch and the claw and how hard it is. We had to cue a helicopter as they walked in, and she turned and she said, “It doesn’t get easier, it gets harder.” And the helicopter landed at the exact right moment behind Jean Smart doing this incredible performance. I was like, “Wow, this is so perfect. We are so lucky.” Then shooting season three, there was a scene where my character proposed to Meg on a plane to get her to stay. It was so funny on the day, you could just feel it, even from the extras. And then this season, the final shot of the final episode was so technically difficult. In my opinion, and I say it because Lucia directed it, it is perfect. I sat in the village and watched it happen. Watching Jean and Hannah and everything in the frame fall into place, it was really pretty magical. 

The helicopter scene, I remember thinking, these guys got money for this. 

It is a credit to Morgan Sackett, our producer, who figured out how to do it in COVID, when a huge part of our budget went to testing every day and to a mobile lab. It does look big, and our budget is incredibly healthy and we’ve been lucky and spoiled and supported. But those first couple of seasons, it worked because we had a really smart producer who figured out how to block shoot everything. Doing all the scenes from a location in one day and never going back. All 10 episodes in this one house in this one day, so we could save as much money as possible. It’s a credit to our producers that it looked great, even on a tighter budget than it appeared.