209 | Hacks Creators Paul W. Downs and Jen Statsky: Writing and Selling a Mixed-Tone Comedy

When Paul W. Downs, Jen Statsky, and Lucia Aniello were first pitching Hacks, they didn't have a precise tonal comp when the network asked. But the trio ultimately knew that they wanted a show that was allowed to be "hard funny," but still make lots of space for rich emotional moments. Today, Paul and Jen discuss HOW they walk that tightrope while writing, and how centering Ava and Deborah's professional and personal relationship serves as their creative North Star helps the process.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:

Meg: Hey everyone, welcome back to The Screenwriting Life. I'm Meg LeFauve.

Lorien: And I'm Lorien McKenna and today we're very excited to talk to two thirds of the creative team behind Hacks, Paul W. Downs and Jen Statsky, who created the show with Lucia Aniello. Hacks, which follows the complicated friendship between an established stand up comedy legend and her younger writing partner, has become one of HBO's most celebrated comedies, with six Emmy wins and 48 nominations.

And this season, the show was nominated for 16 Emmys, with Jen, Paul, and Lucia nominated across four categories. Four categories, outstanding comedy series and outstanding writing for comedy series for all three of them, plus a supporting actor. Nod for Paul and a directing nod for Lucia

Meg: Paul, Jen and Lucia met during improv with the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater, eventually working together on the TV show, Broad City. Outside of their trio Jen has worked on shows like Parks and Recreation and the Good Place, while Paul and Lucia co-wrote Sony's Rough Night starring Scarlett Johansson with Lucia directing. Hi, and welcome to the show.

Paul: Hello.

Meg: Hello. Yes. Thanks for having us.

And now we can't wait to chat with Paul and Jen, but before we do, we're going to talk about our weeks or what we like to call adventures in screenwriting. We'll let Lorien start. Lorien, how was your week?

Lorien: My week was full of lava in terms of like, confronting myself, and what I'm actually doing, and the choices I'm actually making, and like, what the truth is.

Trying to be compassionate with myself like, okay, yes, I do these awful things, but also I'm Noticing and trying to be a little bit growthy. I'm really tired of personal growth. Like, at this point I just want to be like fucking done. Like, can I just be done? Can I be cooked? But that's not what's happening.

What it's doing though is it's giving me more perspective to tell the truth in my writing. Because if I'm a little farther ahead of my characters, then I can help them on their journey. But it makes me mad because I'd like to talk to my writer. I need some, I have notes about this show. I feel like I've totally jumped the shark.

I don't know what season I'm on anymore. I've lost the plot pretty significantly. And so all of this like truthy lava stuff, it's like, okay, I need, we need a reboot on the show. So I'm in this very like, What the hell am I doing? And why am I doing it? And what do I want to do next? And sort of pulling all the things together to try to look forward in the same direction and make sure everyone else in my life is also looking in that direction with me.

So it's a lot of personal stuff, and writing stuff, and I don't like it. And it's hard, and annoying, and really I just want to disassociate with a bag of chips. But instead, I'm going to try to do the work and have a bag of chips. So, which one of you would like to go next and tell us about your week?

Jen: Yeah, sure. My week, I am in the, you know, Paul and I have a very similar week, so I'll try to slip in something. I know, there's overlap. There's going to be overlap. There's overlap. Paul and I are in the writer's room for season four of Hacks the TV show we created together. And we are hard at work trying to figure it out because we start shooting the fourth season end of September. And so I'm very much feeling like I need them to this week. I'm feeling like I need them to invent a new month that comes in between August and September.

Paul: I always feel that.

Lorien: Six, seven weeks. Six, seven weeks.

Jen: Six, seven weeks. A month, a new month that gives me a little buffer between August and September would be really appreciated right now.

Paul: That’s the back to school dilemma. Yes. Everybody has it, Jen. We all have it.

Jen: Yeah. I know. I know. So yeah.

Lorien: Maybe we can workshop what that month would be called.

Jen: Great. That's a great writer's room activity. Yeah.

Paul: My week was similar. I was in the writer's room with Jen, I have been. I also you know, the show is we often joke that the show is our firstborn, but I have a second, who is almost two and a half. And so we're doing all kinds of great transitions now, like potty training, and trying to prevent him from climbing out of his crib. And so there's a lot of other, you know, there's a lot of other life that has been going on in this house.

But Jen's also very aware of that because we, we do the writing from this house together. And so, Auntie Jen is a big part of Jen's house life too.

Jen: Yeah. I'm very lucky that I get to hang around this special.

Lorien: And then you get to go home.

Paul: Yeah. She is very lucky.

Jen: Yeah. It's, aunt is not a bad job I'm learning. It's got some real perks. It's pretty good.

Paul: She avoids the early rising. He wakes up at like 5:30.

Lorien: Yeah. No, that's still the middle of the night.

Paul: Oh, I know. And we're such, we like to work late, so we're not morning people. We are definite owls. So my wife and I, we switch off in the mornings and thank God for that. I don't know how people do it every day, in fact.

Meg: Does he want to be with you because you're home writing? Do you get the knock on the door?

Paul: Yes, oh, he's pitching. He's running into the writer's room. I mean, poor Jen and our brilliant writers are all like very kind and they indulge him. What are their names? What are their full names? He wants to know everyone's full name. I don't know why he's obsessed with full names.

Jen: You know how on Zoom now you can do like, if you do like this, I don't know, Paula, if you can do it, he loves like when things fly up on the screen.

Meg: Oh, the little emojis?

Lorien: Yeah. Oh, right. Thumbs up equals fireworks. You get the little part and you get the.

Jen: That's big for a two year old. That's really exciting.

Paul: Oh, okay. There's some good thumbs up. Here we go.

Meg: Does he actually help at all in terms of breaking? Maybe if you guys are stuck or does it really just, no, any positive for the -

Paul: There's no pitching yet to be honest with you, but it's a nice, it's a nice mental break.

You know, it is a nice break. Everyone gets to watch him. Perform for a minute, and be cute. And then you say, can I have some peanut butter? You know, it's great. It's great. It reminds you of what else is going on in the world, when you're staring at a TV screen.

Jen: It is, I will say, when he gives me like a hug, I'm like, okay, that grounds me, and what's important. It's, it is very helpful to have him around. That's sweet.

Paul: The potency of my hugs have worn off, because I hugged your mom. But his hugs, the hug of a two year old.

Jen: You’re trying to squeeze pitches out of me, I can tell. That's right.

Paul: I'm going to tickle the pitch right out of you. Good. I know.

Lorien: Okay, I have a question. What about, like, language? Right, around your kids. So I would work very carefully to teach my child What's where words are when it's okay to swear, and she is the most uptight kid now she hates it when we swear she won't say the words out loud. So I didn't do this on purpose I was like, I'm gonna have a cool kid who knows how to swear but she like won't, but she's very squirmy when she hears it.

So I'm wondering like, you know, as writers we use language and we're pitching and talking to ourself, are you very like, can't swear in front of them, or.

Paul: I mean, we try not to. We're not as cool as you. We do try to censor ourself, but I have to say, we don't -

Lorien: Oh no, when she was two and a half, it was not on purpose. This was much later, when at three, she said, “Oh shit, we forgot to go to the park.” And I was like, oops. Yeah.

Paul: Oh, we constantly are. We're, you know, and it's that thing of they catch up and absorb everything long before you are in practice of self editing your, you know, what you're saying. So.

There have been some wild there have been some wild words repeated, but some of them are actually just, you know, not even curse words, it'll just, he just said the other day, we were reading Curious George, and he said, “This book is so random,” and I said, “Wow, it is random,” and that, you know, so there's it's really interesting, the things that, they are such sponges, it's really crazy. I hope I have the bravery to let him curse like you have.

Lorien: Well, she doesn't. So follow me for more tips. Meg, how was your week?

Meg: My week is super easy and short. I was on vacation. There were some surprises, like when we parked the car in the middle of the ranch, the lady was like, you know what, park over there because there's a rattler over here.

And it was a giant 11 year old rattler that she walked over and decapitated with her shovel. And I was like, I won't be going hiking. Oh, my God. Okay, so let's just jump into our questions because again, we're such big fans. So let's just start with the most basic, which is where did you come up with this idea for hacks?

Jen: We came up with this idea in 2015. We were actually on a road trip from Port from Boston to Portland, Maine. Lucia and Yellow and myself were helping Paul with a Netflix character special that he was shooting. And he was shooting it at a monster truck rally in Portland. And, you know, Lucia and I were along to, you know, at that point in our lives, we had met doing comedy at UCB, Paul and Lucia were dating, they'd been in an improv class, started dating after.

And we all kind of helped each other out on our own things. We wrote sketches together. And I was lucky enough that Paul asked me to come along to help.

Paul: I was lucky enough that she said that.

Jen: And on the drive up, we just started talking about women of a certain age in entertainment, particularly comedians, and how they had never really gotten their due in the same way their male counterparts had.

And that only when you read about them in their obituary do you go, Oh my God, she did that and that. And why wasn't she praised and held like at the pinnacle that these men were. And we just started talking about women like that who had to be Teflon and who had to just like pound the pavement and do a million shows and work twice as hard to get half as far.

And we were like, that's a really interesting character study. And there's so many shows about comedians. They're frankly pretty much all about men. And so that was the genesis of the idea. And then quickly, I think also because as You know, as women, Lucia and I were like, Oh yeah, and like these women also were paved the path for us to do this, you know, like they had to suffer so many indignities to do it just to get there.

And we like we benefit from that. And so then it became a conversation about this lens of a younger writer. Who maybe wouldn't appreciate her, but they would have this very funny dynamic and they would be able to essentially crack each other open and make them, make each other not just better comedians, but better people on the whole.

Yeah, so that was, it was that drive where it all. That idea sparked, and then for years after, we were all working on different stuff, but the idea just like, it was one of those ideas that nagged at you. Like, you just, we kept having different ideas for things. We would email each other, and we just really wanted to see the show.

Lorien: Were you, did you come up with the name Hacks right away, or what was the words, how were you describing the show that you were working on when you were sending each other ideas?

Paul: I think we were like “Assistant Writer Show.”

Jen: Yeah, “Personal Joke Writer show.” That was, yeah. Because we had an email chain from 2015, which I think Paul has posted a screen grab of, where it was called “Personal Joke Writer Show.”

And we would just email each other anything that came up. And now it's like, you know, hundreds of emails long because it was, but that's, it was just “Personal Joke Writer Show” for a while. And I don't think until we were taking the pitch out in 2019, did we come up with the name Hacks, right?

Paul: Yeah, I think that's right.

Jen: Yeah.

Lorien: Jonathan was at a WGA event where the three of you pitched or you talked about the pitch and how you sold it the room, which is awesome. Congratulations. Right. That happens once every never. What was that - can you walk us through like prepping for the pitch and what the pitch was like and how, you know, I think it's so mysterious to our audience. What the hell is a pitch?

Paul: Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, we should also say that while we did sell it in the room, that was a miraculous event that we had never experienced. We had pitched many other things that had not sold. In the room or out of the room, quite frankly. But this pitch, we, you know, again, we had a long time for this idea to gestate.

And in, in making the pitch, we created a backstory for all of the characters. We kind of broke the pilot episode so we can talk more specifically about that episode. As well as what we wanted. The entire series to look like. So we kind of laid out the major 10 poles of where we wanted it to go from A to Z.

And I think the most important part of that pitch, which for us was a script, we wrote a script so that three of us could share. Pieces of dialogue and, you know, hopefully make it entertaining by getting to mix it up. But you know, I think one of the most important parts of the pitch was actually getting to, this is what the show is about underneath and all this show is a character study of this woman, but it's really about, it's a redemption story for two people who are kindred in their love of writing comedy. And it's about, you know, how they crack each other open and make each other better. And so getting, I think, to that, you know, people, I think were able to hook into what our intent was sort of, sort of the purpose of the show on a deeper level. And yeah, we just basically, Pitched it and went off book as much as we could to make it conversational.

That was one thing in doing the pitch again, we just naturally fell into, but it does make it feel, I think a little more alive and a little bit more like a conversation, but it's so funny when we did that WGA event and we pitched it. I said to Lucia, I'm getting so nervous because it just brought me back.

I mean, we were so desperate to sell the show. It was so important to us. It's really our story. It's the story of people who are. devoted their lives to comedy and love comedy writing and we had been working on it for five years so the stakes were so high for us and we were like oh please somebody make this show that I was brought back to that place and I was so nervous even just to do it over zoom for the WGA members who were watching but It was really fun to do again, too. I was like, oh yeah, this is fun. This is a, you know -

Meg: It's a good show.

Paul: I like the show.

Jen: Yeah, the show works.

Meg: Oh my god, the show's good. Did you use any tonal comps? Because your tone is so specific, and I love the tone of the show, and often when we're trying to help people with pitches or whatever, we can't figure out what they're doing tonally. Did you have comps or how did you address that?

Paul: Yeah, we, I mean one thing we did say was it was a mixed tone show. We wanted to be a show that was allowed to be really hard funny without feeling broad or, you know, feeling fantastical that these people could make jokes. At the drop of a hat, but again, it's about a comedy writer and a legendary standup comedian.

So it was a sort of cheat code to be hard, funny, but also we wanted it to have a lot of heart. You know, we think that some of the funniest stuff happens at the saddest moments. So it was a tone that we hadn't seen, but I think what we said was, it was like a little devil wears Prada in terms of the dynamic between this dark mentor and mentee.

Jen: Yeah.

Paul: Right. And do we say anything else?

Jen: I remember tonally, and I think this is what Paul is speaking to is that we hadn't quite seen the tone we were trying to embody in TV, which was like hard, funny, but like really emotional moments. And so I remember, you know, devil wears Prada was definitely a comp, but I remember in a pitch and executive asking us like, what show on the air is most like this tonally.

And that was like a tough question for us to answer because we, again, hadn't really seen the tone we were going for, which is why we felt like, oh, we really want to make this. And I think we said Veep as a comp because Veep was not at the time, which by the way, Veep is unbelievably funny, has a incredibly strong female comedic legend at the center of it.

Really, like, you know, but I don't know that it ever Tried not a, like, it wasn't meant to be as emotional as hacks is. It's just built in a different way. So it was really hard to give an exact tonal comp.

Paul: Yeah, I mean, I think now looking back. One show that we all really admire and love is Getting On, the HBO show that, you know, it was originally like a BBC show and it was adapted, but that had a little bit of the very, like, real grounded character work that we wanted to do.

I mean, it allowed Niecy Nash to do something so different than she had done before. And obviously, Look at her now, she's done so much of that great dramatic work, but I think that was one. I don't think we said it, you know, it's so hard when they're like, what's the, what is it? You know, it's so hard to come up with the calm, especially when there isn't an exact.

Lorien: I'm so, can you talk about hard, funny? So I've gotten this question before from execs. Is it hard, funny? And I'm like, tell me what you mean. By hard funny and I will tell you if I think like it's one of those executive words that you hear so what does that actually mean?

Jen: You know, I think it can mean different things because hard funny can be a set piece, it can be a joke, it can be, you know, I think just like there's a, an intention for comedy behind it, an intention to make someone laugh.

And so I think quite often hard comedy, in dialogue, you have jokes. To me, Hard Funny, I find it hard to imagine a hard comedy that doesn't have jokes.

Paul: Yeah, I think that's right. I think intention is really good that when your North Star is being funny and it's funny first, I do think that's maybe the stand in for Hard Funny because it's there are plenty of shows that have, you know, Succession has so many amazing jokes, but obviously it's a Shakespearean family drama and it's about, you know, the succession of this company. And yet there's so much humor to it. So I do think that, but I think for them, they were like, let's make sure that this. Is alive with humor, but I don't think they were going into scenes thinking what is the scenario that's comedic and what is the comedic game of the scene and what are the comedic barbs that these characters are going to deliver to each other?

Lorien: I have a follow up question. So the half hour space that Hacks is particularly in, right? It can be like, dramedy, traumedy, like it's hard now to figure out what exactly is a half hour in that comedy space, but it sounds like it's that. It's the intention to be funny, so it would be the half hour comedy rather than an hour, which can also be funny, but it's in a different space. This helps my brain. Thank you very much. I appreciate this.

Paul: And it's so funny too, with streaming it's like the lengths of shows are all over the place because there are plenty of comedies that are like 60 minutes in the past five years, you know, or you know, I think, and I think actually if there's a really tight episode of a drama that's 39 minutes, I'm like, cool, you know, so I think it's weird, the flexibility now, because it's not like to the minute with commercial breaks. You know, when we came from doing Broad City, it was like, had to be 21 minutes, which was so, looking back now, I'm like, 21 minutes. I know.

Jen: 21 minutes is crazy.

Lorien: Not that many minutes.

Meg: So I want to talk about the relationship between Debra and Ava, which is almost a love story of sorts. They break up and come back together and break up. And I just love that as the centering heart of the show, that humanity you guys were talking about. How are you keeping that balanced as that love story that has to keep firing and firing for the show? How are you guys approaching that?

Jen: Yeah. I mean, I think we've always said it's one step forward, two steps back for the two of them in that they make progress and they get somewhere.

You know, season one is, of course, they buttheads at first, they hate each other, they can't make it work. Then they finally start working together and then something happens, you know, they are constantly trying to navigate being in a relationship, you know, a friendship, a working relationship with each other.

While also having their own ambitions and having their own emotional perhaps let's call them frailties come into play. And so I think for us, we're just always looking to evolve their relationship. Their relationship is the north star of the show. That is what the beating heart of it is. And so the relationship needs to evolve, but it also needs to evolve as we place our characters in news.

And different situations as they continue to grow and rise. And so we meet them and it's very much on purpose that they are both at the lowest point. You know, Debra is just a hack doing a residency in Vegas as Debra, as Ava calls her out for on the pilot and Ava can't get hired in LA and has been relegated to the desert to work.

And then as the relationship evolves and they make each other better, they reach higher Heights. They are, Ava's got a job at a very popular show. Debra has the biggest special in the world. And in that success, that changes the dynamic of their relationship. That changes what they want. That changes what they want for each other.

And so it's always evolving the relationship, being true to what it is, but putting them in new and interesting situations that I think highlight how good that relationship is, how necessary it is, and then yet also how challenging it can be at times.

Meg: Yeah, sometimes they're each other's worst enemy and sometimes they're each other's best intimate relationship that they have. And I love that -

Jen: Yes.

Meg: - dynamic that you can pull either direction. I just think it's so brilliant. It's such brilliant writing. What about mapping out seasons? You know, I don't even know if we should ask you this question because you're in the middle of it and it might cause PTSD, but if you're mapping out a season, people ask us a lot about There's the difference between an episode and then the arc of the whole show.

Do you guys have any approach like let's figure out the season and then we'll figure out the episodes or do you just start spitballing episodes? Like how do you approach breaking a season?

Paul: We did have the seasons in mind sort of what the thrust would be which came out of the or you know was included in our pitch but I think, correct me if I'm wrong, Jen, we tend to look for an ending first.

If we can figure out where we're going in the season, it helps us with the architecture of the rest of it. And then we do map out the tent poles of that season. We sort of track the arc of the characters and also the plot, which is usually, you know, whatever Deborah's new quest is. And Also there for Ava's quest, but yeah, I we figured out the architecture and then we go back and we break individual episodes.

And what I think we always try and do is while we think very strongly about the propulsive engine of the season, like what is that story? This season was getting this late night job, getting that chair. We also try our best to do, in each episode, a very clear beginning, middle, and end. So we do resolve some story, and usually we're dealing with something very specific.

Often through the lens of two women of very different generations, and so you get to see the grist between them as they unpack whatever the episode's about. But that is something that we try and do. We try to have mini resolutions throughout. as we then follow what the season arc will be.

Meg: I just wanted one quick follow up. It's interesting that you said that in terms of we pitched it, because when you say that, I'm like, oh, right, because I could hear, I could conceive of hearing this pitch and saying, but is it one season? Because once she comes back, how do you have a season two? So of course, in the pitch, and I'm just saying this for our listeners who are emerging writers, you have to show that this has multiple seasons.

Were you able to say, It's five seasons. It's four. Or were you kind of showing it can go on until. We don't want to do it anymore. Kind of like, how did you approach that engine season engine?

Paul: Yeah, we didn't it's not a kind of show where it's like, oh, we're just going to see this situation over and over again, because we did want it to feel more like in, in the way that the plot works, it hopefully works a little bit like a very serialized show.

And so we said five seasons, I think we said probably five seasons, but we essentially said, In season one, they don't know anything about each other. And as they get closer, this happens. And then it's blown up at the end of the season when this email is sent. And then in season two, they're on the road and they're workshopping this new special.

And at the end of that, they break up. And in season three, she's after her white whale because this opportunity presents itself. So it was that, I think. Top line. It was literally like that much information about each season. And I'm not going to tell you four and five because hopefully we can.

Meg: Darn it, that was my try. That was my try.

Paul: Almost got it. Almost got it.

Lorien: So what you're working on now is pretty close to the pitch you pitched?

Jen: Yeah, the, you know, again, we didn't get so super granular in that but we definitely, yeah, we knew where Debra's goals, what they would be, what she would achieve, and then what the struggle would be and kind of where it would all land. I'm being coy.

Lorien: I know, it's okay. I know it's a rough question. It's not a gotcha. I'm just very curious because, you know, I've pitched a show and they're like, great, we'll do this. And then it's like, or come up with a new pitch, you know, so it. It's cut. We need a new take. I'm like, Oh, okay, sure. When the check clears, I'll give you a new take. So it's just such an interesting balance. When you're pitching a show, you sort of have to account for the fact that things are going to change, you know. Writers in the room, personal point of views, change things happening in the world and sort of how did those things affect and impact the writing of the show season wise.

Meg: And those two great actresses too.

Lorien: Yeah, what's going on with them?

Paul: Yeah. Because they're so brilliant, we were able to be like, okay, we can throw anything at them. We can go really deep with this show because they're so good.

Jen: It was such like a blank check to us to just get to further, you know, like Paula said, when we were, you know, The tone of the show is this thing we hadn't quite seen.

And once we saw what Gene and Hannah could do, we were like, Oh, we can really lean into this unique tone of hard, funny, but also not shy away from hard emotional moments, because they are so gifted at that. And yeah, you're right. Of course, as you know, the show we started, we pitched it in 2019. It's now 2024.

While we're not a very topical show, we certainly You know, do react to things happening. And even I think season three, we finally did do Debra going back to her alma mater and dealing with the topic of cancel culture and being canceled for old jokes. And that had been in the original pitch that episode, but we felt that If we did it too early on in series, it would make it seem like the show, that would become what the show was about.

And that was just one thing we wanted to explore. And so it's like, it's both reacting to things in the moment, also seeing how hot buttons an issue is and being like, maybe let's wait. Cause if we tackle this now, it's going to seem like that's what this show is about. If we do a season one episode about it.

And also Deborah as a character. wouldn't have been ready to hear it and change the way she is in season three after she has grown and evolved.

Paul: Yeah. You know, you also mentioned like we have this room of writers who also changed the show, you know, like we, we knew that she was going to go after this chair, but it really wasn't until I think really early in the writing of season three that we collectively as a writer's room discovered, you know, we knew that she was going to eventually get this job and that Ava then would come with her and be a writer on the show.

We didn't know until we started writing season three that there was going to be in bulletproof this finale, this surprise betrayal. So we didn't know that she was going to take the job. Even though, you know, we did know, once we knew that, then we could lay her into the entire season, we could open with a shot of Caesar, we could, there were so many things we could do once we figured it out, but we didn't pitch the show being like, and then one day, she's going to stab her in the back.

You know, we knew that it could be continued risk, and that we would, you know, Blow things up and handcuff them to each other. And we didn't know we wanted to do all of those kinds of turns, but you know, we didn't know. And we also didn't know exactly what the blackmail would be until we broke the season.

Meg: So good. All of it is so smart. So let's talk about the writer's room a little bit. So we have three creators. Who's running the room? How are you guys agreeing on an idea and a direction to go to? Do you have hand signals? How are you keeping it one direction with all those writers and three creators?

Jen: You know, I think we're all three of us lead the room and I think we kind of maybe take turns of who's. I don't know, just it's all very, it sounds Pollyanna or something to say like this, but like it all works very naturally and kind of easily. There's not a lot of like, it's not like one of us is jockeying for control of the room or anything like that.

And then sometimes it is just like, oh, well, shouldn't it be that? And like, shouldn't it be this? And like, but we pretty quickly, I feel like even when we are disagreeing on the direction, come to a better path. Yeah. Of what it should be, right?

Paul: Yeah. I mean, it's funny that we all met doing sketch and improv at the Epoch citizens brigade, because you know what, as you're even saying this, Jen, I don't know if I've never said this before, but there is an improv game slash opening.

Where you're flocking and basically somebody's leading and the group kind of follows and then you switch and someone else takes the lead and then the group falls in line and you kind of follow. And I think we weirdly have this ability to kind of like flock because we have worked together so much that it is really a hive mind thing.

We, we, yeah, three of us at least. Have a real shorthand and often, without even having to check in, know what feels right when we hear a pitch from a writer.

Jen: Yeah.

Paul: What doesn't feel exactly right. And then we're pitching on pitches and we're all kind of just, you know, it's very, it feels very, there's like no hierarchy, really, you know, it does feel like it's a really communal and shared experience.

Jen: Like, it could be really disorienting if one showrunner was so wildly off and the other two were on one target, but yeah, we're, like Paul's saying, it's very high of mind.

Paul: And because we did map it out so much, it also helps. Like, we know what we want to do.

The writers also know where we want to go in the last scene of the last episode. So everybody kind of knows, and so in that way we can all hold hands, and it's really, I think, I hope it's While we can obviously surprise ourselves and each other as we're breaking, I do think because we have that bullseye and we know where we're going, it just makes it actually more fun to pitch because you're like, oh, and you know what, this would be great for shadowing for this.

And so I just think it helps everybody. Just feel like we're all on the same page.

Meg: Yeah, I think that's so smart to have the bullseye. What happens when you do disagree? Like, we think she should get on the bus and somebody else says, no, no way. Do you have to pitch, kind of, why, or how do you handle differences?

I mean, I think that sometimes friction in a room can be good because it brings up new ideas because you have to kind of give your side, or how do you guys handle any kind of friction or differences?

Jen: I find that the thing that I love the most about the way the three of us work and also our room is that, you know, sometimes we say oh it's great there's three because That means there's a tiebreaker if two people are at odds.

But the thing is, we don't often just go like, okay well that's it, tiebreaker, moving on. Like, we really, like, if there's something about a beat that isn't working for Paul but works for me and Lucia, we really, I think because we just trust each other's creative instincts so much and we know that it's coming not from a place of ego, which I think can be, you know, The true death of creative partnership, but coming from a place that is just all of us love this show and want it to be the best it can be.

If Paul has an issue with something, we don't just go, well, we like it. So let's move on. We go like, okay, how can we fix the issue? How can we make it better? How can we make it work for you? And I find that often we always come to a better story point or idea or move by doing that. And I think it's. then it's like the story and the characters and the moves are being tested three times, being like rigorously tested three times because we all three have to feel really good about it.

Paul: Yeah, and you know, I think Jen really hit the nail on the head that we love the show so much. We wanted to watch the show. It feels like if you have the kind of obsession with whatever you're working on, you know, we all love watching TV. We love TV. And so we love it when we watch a show and it gets better and it surprises us.

And, you know, it sucks when you watch a show and you're like, I can see this coming or I know, you know what I mean? So I think because we, I'll care about the show. Like Jen saying, we all try and continue to make it better. And if anybody has any, you know, second guess about something or feels like maybe we could beat it, we try and beat it.

And the other thing that's really helpful is we have set, you know, because again, to talk about this being a comedy. We have a very clear way of knowing if something's working. It's because one of us are laughing, you know, it's like, can you make them laugh? Can you surprise them into laughing and having that as your target?

You know, it's again, why I don't do an hour long show because, and who knows, maybe one day, but it's like, that's kind of daunting where you're like, yeah, that's a really cool, scary thing. You know, maybe in like other genre, like horror, like, you know, is it scaring somebody? Do they jump when they watch something, but it feels like you have to test it to do that.

And this, it's like, We're in the room and it's like, people are laughing. We're all laughing. This is working. So

Lorien: what do you do when no one's laughing and you're like, or is this funny enough? And do you do punch in the room on the scripts? Like I know one showrunner that'll bring the scripts and go line by line, can this be funnier to the room?

Is that your, what do you, what's your process around finding the funniest version of it that's still in character and thematic for the episode?

Jen: Yeah we punch up every line of an episode. I mean, often what happens in a great way is, you know, and in a scary way is that when you're in the midst of the room, like right now in our writer's room, we are rewriting episode three and four.

We are outlining episode seven, we are breaking episode eight, and so there's all these different things happening at various points in the process. And as showrunners, it's our job to keep our eye on all of them and be like, we need to be doing that by then, we need to be doing that by then. And so because of that, we're We like to divide and conquer a lot, meaning the three of us will go off and we will say, be rewriting an episode.

And while we're rewriting an episode or rewriting an outline, we will go to our writers room and say, Hey, can you guys, we went through and we highlighted all the jokes that we feel can be beat. Can you just give us a bunch of alts? And then our fantastic writers room will give us so many all jokes for them.

And we always say the three of us. favorite part of the writing process for us is getting to go through our writer's alts because then it's just the funniest people in the world making us laugh with their jokes. But so, yeah, it is very much so looking at each line going, can this joke be better? Can this joke be better? For every single script.

Paul: And then we do that on set as well. And sometimes we do it in the edit when we're like, can we ADR alignments? A little bit sharper. We're doing it. We're punching up a lot.

Lorien: So much of this is so familiar around the Pixar process. I don't know if that's a compliment or not. So it's like the, like, you know, I was on up for years and you know, it was always sort of like the joke would come up and if people, if I was laughing or someone else was laughing, it was like, okay, it's still funny even with all these changes.

Right. Or everybody still gets glassy at the opening of up. Right. And then of course the like alts. Right now, artists have alts and in the recording session, I bring sometimes like eight alts to a line and we record all of them and slug them in and it's sort of, it's sort of very reminiscent, probably why I love the writer's room so much because I'm like, I did this for years at Pixar and now I love the room.

Jen: Yeah. Yeah. No, it's very complimentary. Yeah.

Paul: Right, Jen, even in a table read sometimes we're like, yeah, we give our actors four alts and we just do them in the read. And then it's not like, Oh, well, we're just going to go with that one. We're like, great. We're going to rewrite those three. And then we're going to do six more on the day. You know, we're constantly doing the Pixar process, I guess.

Lorien: I mean, there you go. Well, now it's the Hacks process.

Jen: Oh, great. Great.

Meg: As a feature writer, I was like, what do you mean I do alts underneath? I didn't understand what they were talking about. But then I learned very quickly. All right, Paul, I wanted to ask you about acting in the show - which for me, it's slightly thrilling to see you here because Jimmy is also that character.

Lorien: Meg, are you fangirling right now? I am. I am. I have to be honest.

Jen: Yeah Jimmy's here. Jimmy LuSaque is here.

Meg: And I just love his character so much. But how is acting in the show when you're a creator and the writing process? Does it help? Does it hinder? Are you trying to give yourself better lines? I don't know. What's that like?

Paul: You know, it's funny because it's really like an asset to me to be able to drop into the character in the writer's room because I can just sort of, I can try things on for size. I can see how they feel.

I can improvise a little bit and we can, you know, find something. And so that's certainly very helpful. And also being in a scene then, you know, I do feel in a great way. I do feel lucky enough that I can say, you know, this is a feeling like this, let's do this. Like there can be. The rewriting as you do it, because sometimes when you embody it, and I think the best actors that we've worked with, when they're really in it, sometimes they'll see something that we won't see because they've had to just fully embody that point of view and have immersed themselves in just those lines.

And sometimes they'll say, you know, this is reminding me of this, and we did do this thing, and maybe we try this. And it's helpful because those, people wear that hat so well that, you know, it's when you're sort of having court vision about a script, it's hard sometimes to be that granular.

Again, you've heard that we do sometimes six alts to a line, so we are pretty granular. But yeah, and I think they really go hand in hand for me and hopefully they make each other better, you know, the writing and the acting.

Lorien: I was just talking to a friend on the phone right before this about character comedic point of view, right?

And how you can say like, well, you know, friends was such a great example of this. Would Joey say that? Would Phoebe say that? There's no way either of those characters could have said each other's lines. So what helps you as writers, creators, actors you know, comedy people, Develop that very clear, distinct, comedic point of view for the character so that they all do sound differently, even on the page, even before an actor gets a hold of it.

Jen: Yeah, I think, I mean, I think that's the type of work you have to really do the heavy work for when you're developing a character, like when you are figuring out what is the show and like, what is the, what is, why are these people funny together? Not just like, why is this person funny in a vacuum?

But why will Deborah be funny with Ava? Why will Jimmy be funny with Kayla? And so I think for us, it's really started very like at the inception of the idea of like, you need to work out those dynamics when you're developing a pitch. And, you know, I talk about this all the time, cause I was, But not till the later seasons, but that first season of Parks and Rec, you know, Leslie Knope's character and why she was funny was not totally figured out.

And then they had to switch gears and then they figured out what made her funny and the show kind of sailed from there. Which is to also say, like, you hope you figure it out in the development process, but especially with comedy is such an alive thing, that you have to be alive and listening and really paying attention, and I think for us, luckily enough, the Debra Ava dynamic did work as we planned it, but one thing I'll say is, a lot of Ava Like, Hannah, Ava has become more Hannah as the show's gone on.

Hannah has such a funny, unique puberty. Obviously, she's an incredible stand up on her own. And even just the way, like, Ava says things or just certain jokes are, you know, Hannah improvises too, so some jokes are hers. But it's not exactly the way we wrote Ava on the page. That's Hannah, and we have leaned into that. And so you have to be also listening and willing to adjust to those comedic POVs as they're emerging.

Paul: And it's also about, you know, working that muscle, right? Like, I think no matter who you are, you get better at it. I'm sure it was much easier for Friends writers to write, to know the Joey line in one second, season three, than it was in season one.

You just, I think it's a muscle you develop, and you just keep doing it, and then you can drop in. Coming from a performance background for me, it's, I actually like to do that with all the characters be like, well, how would I say it if I was playing that character, you know? And so you just kind of, you start to know them, you start to know them well, and you can have, you know, you have conversations with them.

Lorien: So funny. This is why I read my scripts out loud to myself. So that when my husband and my daughter come downstairs, like who you're talking to, I'm like, my characters are having a party and I need to figure out things they would actually say. But it must be, it's magic when you get actors to do it. Right? Like, it's just magic. And like you're saying, what they bring to it and how you need to adjust it. And you know, hopefully you do get a season three to figure out what that, that line is, you know, like where the character really grows.

Paul: Yeah, and especially in comedy, I do think comedies tend to get better and better, not only because the audience is familiar and they start to understand the game, and then they're, they have anticipation for it, and if you can surprise them and meet the anticipation, that's when the magic happens, but also because, You know, the characters are get you get to go a little bit deeper. So I do think comedy tends to get better and better if it's good.

Meg: That's really interesting. I love that you - that because as an audience, you do start to see. Oh, this. And then when you surprise us, it is. It's just utterly delightful. So Jen, your experience as a comedian, as a female comedian, specifically, how was it for you? Did you have to overcome any kind of misogynistic ideas or, “Women aren't funny,” which I literally have a friend who was told that.

Jen: No, Paul doesn't say that much anymore.

Meg: Were there any stereotypes? Because then I also - I can see it in the show, right? In terms of there's some deep knowledge of women in comedy that you're bringing up.

Jen: Yeah, I mean, Lucia and I have talked about this, like, I think we came up at a really interesting time. I think we've heard so many horror stories, like, on this show, it's been important to us to bring in women of a certain generation who are Debra's age to speak to their experience. So, we've had, you know, women right on the show, like Susie Essman and Janis Hirsch, and Carol Leifer have come in and shared their experiences and, you know, sadly many of them have real horror stories, you know, Janis Hirsch wrote a Hollywood Reporter op ed which you can Google and read about, you know, some man put his penis on her shoulder and then the next day she was fired.

Paul: In a writer's room.

Jen: In a writer's room. And so when I hear those stories and the more and more we researched for this show. I realized that I had become very lucky that I was standing on the shoulders of giants of these women who have put, who had put themselves on the front lines and who had gone through so much and their, with them doing it made it easier for me.

And so that isn't to say that I never experienced it, you know, there's always, you know, oh, we need a girl, we need a funny woman, like you're always kind of. At least I remember when I used to be staffing for things your gender was put first, as if that, you know, you weren't equal to everyone else applying.

It was like that you might get this for this reason. And I remember when I left Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, which was my first, like, full time writing job, I left to go work on a narrative show and a writer who will remain nameless said to the writers in the room, like, they must have needed a woman.

You know, not like, Oh, Jen's really funny and they must have wanted a funny writer. And so I've certainly experienced it, but by no means to the degree that women, Debra Vance's age have.

Lorien: I acknowledge that, but it is still not amazing.

Jen: No. Oh yeah. Yeah.

Lorien: We don't have it as hard as someone else had. It doesn't mean that the struggles aren't still very real, very upsetting. And we still have a ways to go.

Jen: Totally. You know, absolutely.

Lorien: It's better.

Jen: It's better, but it's still pretty bad. Yeah.

Lorien: Yeah. So, and it's, I think it's, you know, I'm going to say the same thing everybody says it's up to us, but it's also having male allies in the room, you know, who are going to ask, like, don't - well, don’t pull your penis out, number one. And don't put it on someone else's body.

Jen: Yes. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And credit to Paul. I believe, I think since we were about 22 years old, Paul has always said women are funnier than men.

Paul: Well, you know, when you speak the truth, and it's, you know, it's true too of like, even like, I feel like media and like Jen said, when we were pitching the show, we were like, well, There have been shows about stand ups and about stand up comedy and then we were like, but no women, you know, we knew that there was a barrier to entry.

And we also knew that like finding an audience is not always as easy as a show that's led by a man. It's just a different thing. And so. Obviously, I can't speak to the experience that women have had in comedy, but I do know what it's like to make a story about a woman and the challenges of getting that on the air.

And thank God, you know, it was Suzanna Makkos at HBO Max bought the show and, you know, they made it and supported it.

Meg: Yes. Thank God for all of us. Jeff, you had a question.

Jeff: You know, I, when I talk about comedy pilots, I love, I usually list Cheers, and then I love the pilot to the Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. And I include Hacks, and I don't want to gas you up too much, but I think the pilot of your show is like one of the best ever.

And one of the things I love about it, there's a scene I'm sure you get asked about all the time, but it's like the moment that Debra and Ava finally start to fall in love by just going at each other as they're roasting each other. So just to quickly remind our audience. They're on separate tracks, they're pulled together by Paul's character, and they have this disastrous general meeting, they start arguing, and then all of a sudden it becomes this beautiful, like, meet cute of them falling in love as they try to outdo each other while they roast each other, and I don't know, I think it's such a sharp way to not only teach us who they both are, but why they would fall in love and make this beautiful partnership.

Can you talk about like arriving at that scene? Because to me it feels like It is the show in a scene, which is what I love about it.

Jen: Thank you, first of all. And yeah, that scene was designed to, we kind of were like, the entire series hinges on this scene. If this scene doesn't work, and you don't buy their dynamic, and you don't buy them falling in love with each other vis a vis their barbs back at each other, it doesn't work.

And so that was very, you know, An important scene, we rewrote it over and over again, but you're exactly right. It's the meeting's not going well until Ava says something that Debra's like Hold on, you're funny. I like that. And then they go back and forth, and Debra's like, Oh, this girl can actually go toe to toe with me, okay.

And it lights her up. You know, we show in the beginning when Marty says to her, Marty, the casino owner where she has a residency, says, Are you ha are you even still having fun up there? Is it even fun for you? And it hasn't been fun for Debra. But in this moment, when this girl challenges her, It is fun, and she realizes that, and that lights her up, and so we wanted to show Debra being lit up by that and we also wanted to show what their language would be, what their love language would be jokes, because that is how comedians speak to each other and handle each other, is that you are constantly joking, you are constantly ribbing the person.

And it is very much so how they communicate and so that for us that scene was. Really important. And it is, of course, the scene that, you know, they, we, when we audition and we tested them, they did that scene and it needed to be there. The chemistry between them needed to be present in that scene for the show to work.

Paul: Also, because that scene comes at the end of the pilot, our two main characters have not been in the same room. So, You know, we, and which is sometimes I think scary for a network or for an audience to be like, Oh, I want to see the dynamic. I want to see them together, but it's all building to that. What became, I think, what Jen, like an eight minute scene in the sequence. Because the sequence also includes when Deborah storms out of the house and races down the driveway to say, this is a better joke, and then Ava says, well, what about that? They start to punch each other up. They start to do that thing. And it's like, you start to feel that they are made for each other, that they are able to make each other better.

And so I think even at the end of that driveway, it's like such a pivotal moment, which is, well, you're hired. She's like, what? I'm trying to get out of here.

Lorien: Did you have to fight to have a premise pilot?

Jen: We didn't have to fight the, we did get a note early on just from the studio level, not even Max at that point, but the studio was concerned about having the two characters apart for so long and then only together at the very end, like Paul said.

But you know, we kind of just knew from the beginning that's how we wanted to do it. And credit to them, we explained creatively why it had to be this way. And they were like, okay, yeah, totally. I think maybe in the streaming era, like, it, we had benefited too from it still feeling like the wild west of like, yeah, do whatever. You know, I wonder it's like if it was a network pilot, they probably would have pushed back quite a bit more.

Meg: This has been so awesome. I know we have to let you go back into your writer's room. So we always end the show with the same three questions. So we're going to ask you those now. So the first one is what brings you the most joy when it comes to your writing?

Paul: For me, it's making people laugh and specifically Jenna Lucia. It's making my collaborators laugh. That is the thing that brings me the most joy. It is just the best feeling in the world.

Jen: There's the problem. He stole my answer. I guess for me, the thing that brings me the most joy is when our wonderful room of writers writes jokes and someone writes a joke that just makes me laugh so hard.

And it's a joke that I'm like, in a million years, I never would have come up with that. And I'm so lucky that this person has donated their time and brain to work on my show and my show gets to benefit from it. I love that.

Lorien: We so clearly love and respect your room.

Jen: Yes, we love writers. And we, hey, we made a show about writing. So we love writers.

Lorien: Well, welcome to the screenwriting life. Yeah. Okay. So the second question is, what pisses you off when it comes to your writing?

Jen: Oh, man.

Paul: You want me to take your answer again? Yeah. Well, you know, breaking is so it can be in the beginning, the most fun and also the hardest, but I think the thing that pisses me off, and this is hard cause it's like, well, I guess it is in my own writing when I pitch something or write something and then it's like, Well, yeah, that was done by this.

That is really hard, and usually it either means like, Hey, it's a great idea, someone else did it, or maybe I'm doing something that is too first thought, you know? So that I find to be really frustrating about writing.

Jen: For me, it's just when you know it should be better and it isn't, but you don't have the answer yet.

That just drives me fucking crazy. Like when you break a story and then you read the outline and you're like, no, that story move isn't it? It should be better. It should be different. It should be something else. It's not what we need, but I don't know yet what it is. That I find very frustrating. The knowledge, and you get there, and sometimes you instantly know what it should be, but like, I hate the nagging feeling that it isn't right and needs to be better, but I don't have it yet.

Lorien: Also, great Pixar!

Jen: Pixar. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Pixar. If you're listening we aren't available, but we may be. Yeah.

Lorien: Yeah, I mean -

Jeff: Every writer comes on this show talks about it's there's something so spiritual about the process where you just have to keep, you have to trust that idea will come because you can kind of feel in your gut, there's something there, but I don't know. Definitely not the first people to acknowledge that on this show.

The last thing we always ask our guests is if you could go back and have a coffee with your younger self, what advice would you give?

Jen: Oof.

Meg: The eyes on the eye rolls. Pretty awesome.

Paul: I have a lot of advice. Where do I get -

Jen: I know it's gonna be, it may have to be, it might have to be a dinner with myself.

Paul: I know. Yeah. It's been a dinner. You know, I give myself a nice hug and a kiss and no I would, I think the advice I would give is don't worry so much. Try and enjoy the moment you're at. I do think it's so hard to, to not, especially when you want to be doing creative work. And you know, it's so hard, as I mentioned in the beginning, we pitched a lot of things before we ever sold something. And while we've had great luck, it's like, it takes hard work and dedication and luck.

And you really stress during so much of that. And it's sometimes then you're like, damn, I skipped that thing. Or I didn't enjoy it because I was worried about this. Or, you know, I was doing 19 things because I felt like I had to overload. I wish I had a little more fun. Because, you know -

Jeff: Does Ava say that during, I think she says that this season, someone asks her.

Paul: She does say, “Try and enjoy where you're at.”

Jen: “Try and enjoy,” yeah.

Paul: And that is true. I do think like, sometimes I think about like, how hard it was living in New York and like, living in a studio apartment and having a survival job and like, you know, just auditioning for things and writing things and just trying everything and throwing everything at the wall.

But I also sometimes look back and I'm like, ugh. I say that even the chick is that she and I were crammed in this apartment where we had a shower in our kitchen and we had to like, Before entering the bathroom, it was so small, you couldn't sit down because you had to move your legs around the sink. And I'm like, wasn't that a great apartment?

Wasn't that fun? You know, like there is something when you look back, it's so fun, but I remember just like sweating so much, you know, and both literally and figuratively, but just, you know, just like, worrying a lot. I mean, worry is something that I still deal with.

Jen: I think at my coffee, I probably would tell my younger self, And this will sound grim, but I would tell her that the insecurity will never go away. I think that I thought when I was young, and that once you got your first paid writing job, I really had this fantasy of like, oh, then I won't be self doubting, I won't be so in my head, I won't.

And I think I really held on to that ideal and it was just a total fantasy and I actually think if I had accepted it earlier on and just said like, this is a part of it, it's a part of the process, it'll always be with me on my shoulder, just got to deal with it and keep moving on, I probably wouldn't have fought so hard against it and felt so bad that I was feeling insecure and I would have been kinder to myself about it.

Lorien: Well, your younger self. And my week seemed quite similar.

Jen: Yeah.

Lorien: We just brought it all the way around.

Meg: Full circle. Really good.

Lorien: Yeah.

Meg: Thank you guys so much for coming on the show. It's been a lot of fun and very inspiring. Very inspiring. Thank you for having us.

Lorien: And congratulations on all your Emmy nominations.

Meg: Yes. Let's be sure to mention that.

Lorien: I'm going to want to get updates on what shoes you're both going to wear. Deeply invested in the shoes people wear to awards ceremonies.

Jen: Okay. Yeah. I'm hoping for not a stiletto. I'll say that. Yeah.

Paul: Me too.

Lorien: Yeah. Yeah. Although we, you could though, Paul, I mean, you could pull it off.

Paul: I kind of need to. I tell you what every, everyone in our cast is like 5'11 barefoot. So it's like, okay, I gotta wear the, I gotta wear the sweaters.

Meg: Platform boots. Thank you so much.

Lorien: Thank you guys.

Jen: Thanks so much.

Meg: Thanks so much to Paul and Jen for joining us on today's show.

Lorien: Season three of Hacks is streaming on Max now and we are very excited for season four and remember you are not alone and keep writing.