This article contains spoilers for the Hacks season four finale.
By now the familiar pattern of Hacks season finales are well established—a little predictable, even. The knife always gets twisted just as we think Deborah (Jean Smart) and Ava (Hannah Einbinder) have established the terms of a ceasefire.
But this season had a different rhythm to those before it, with the pair taking longer to make up after Ava blackmailed Deborah into making her head writer at the end of season three. By the time they fully reunited and celebrated creating the number one late-night show together, there wasn’t much road left.
It seemed, for a moment, as though we had our classic Hacks betrayal cliffhanger in episode nine, with Deborah locking Ava out of the studio. But, in a genuine moment of surprise given the cruelty we’ve been conditioned to expect from Deborah, she instead gave Ava the big declaration of love she’s always needed.
This puts the two of them in an uncomfortable new dynamic: Ava is now indebted to her boss, and Deborah, who has lost everything by sticking up for her, grows resentful and increasingly unhinged. In the whirlwind final episode, Deborah diverts their plane to Singapore and expects Ava to smile along as she drinks her way through endless karaoke nights and falls asleep during her (translated) casino stand-up set.
Ahead of the final episode airing, we spoke to Hannah Einbinder about shooting the finale’s chaotic montages, the heavy emotions in filming Deborah’s near-death experience, and that brutal confrontation.
GQ: Let’s go back a little first. The penultimate episode feels like the classic Hacks twist, where we think Deborah is betraying Ava. How did you approach playing that knowing what was really coming?
Hannah Einbinder: I’m very lucky that on this show the strength of the writing dictates a lot of my performance. Deborah is making this declaration of her love for Ava, she’s standing up to the network, which is so meaningful to her and so meaningful to me. It is this beautiful declaration of love and personal risk tied into one, and it’s moving. Whenever I heard that monologue in the table read I just could not stop myself from being pretty visibly emotional.
Did it still feel emotional while you were filming that scene?
I was in the security booth and I had [showrunner and co-creator] Paul [W. Downs] off-camera reading Deborah’s dialogue. He’s such an expressive, amazing actor, so hearing his voice definitely got me there.
Were you surprised when reading the final episode?
I was shocked. I couldn’t have predicted the way that it ended up, but I love the place that they’ve left it. I think it’s got a lot of momentum and it would lead to a brilliant fifth season.
Deborah diverts the plane from their planned trip to Hawaii and you end up in Singapore. How was it filming there?
It was wild, man. We were there for five days and it was my first time in Asia. I went to a really cool nature park that was a hike that led to a suspended bridge at the top of a rainforest. Frickin’ sick as hell.
