‘Hacks’ final day hit Hannah Einbinder so hard her 'body was shutting down'

Erin Jensen, USA TODAYThu, April 9, 2026 at 4:24 PM UTC

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Little Debbies, prepare yourselves for Deborah Vance’s final bow. “Hacks” inches closer to the end of its HBO Max residency, as the fifth and final season debuts April 9 (Thursdays, 9 ET/6 PT).

The emotions ran high while filming the season, Hannah Einbinder says, seated beside her costar, Jean Smart.

“We had this awareness as we were making it,” says Einbinder, the 30-year-old daughter of original “Saturday Night Live” cast member Laraine Newman.

“It was like a clock ticking down,” Smart, 74, agrees. “Like one of those things where the bomb's going to go off.”

Hannah Einbinder and Jean Smart, with their Emmy statues on Sept. 14, 2025, are saying goodbye to their "Hacks" characters. The series' final season debuts April 9 on HBO Max.

The series debuted in 2021 with Ava Daniels (Einbinder), a culturally aware yet entitled writer, helping outdated comedian Deborah Vance (Smart) reclaim her career. The intergenerational duo has kept fans hooked with their surefire wits and complicated relationship that both hurts and heals.

In Season 4, Deborah walked away from her dream job as a late-night talk show host because the menacing CEO Bob Lipka (Tony Goldwyn) wanted to fire Ava from the writing staff. While filming the final season, the actors walked away with mementos.

"That’s the first time it really became real, when they said, ‘OK that’s a wrap on Deborah’s bedroom'," Smart says, adding she "tried to take a little souvenir" from the sets.

Einbinder nabbed “All of Ava's wardrobe,” she says and was hit with “a wave of full body nausea” on the last day of filming.

“I became ill, like the second I walked out of where we were shooting, and I was doubled over. My body was shutting down,” Einbinder recalls. “I got in the car. I was just trying not to throw up – literally, it was so severe and intense – and I got back to the hotel, and I just passed out for, like, 14 hours.”

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It marked the end of working with a TV legend whose meritorious qualities continue to mount off-camera.

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“Jean is such a loving, caring person who really does cherish the people around her, and we all get to feel that warmth,” Einbinder says.

Smart admires how welcoming Einbinder makes the set for day player actors or extras.

“She makes friends with everybody,” Smart says. “You could name any crew member on our show, and she can tell you personal things about them.

“She's the kind of person who you know you could always lean on her,” Smart adds. “She'll always tell you the truth.”

Ava (Hannah Einbinder) and Deborah (Jean Smart) resume their with repartee in the fifth season of "Hacks."

This season, Deborah continues her fight to create an impressive legacy and even falls into a May-December romance. Christopher Briney, aka Conrad to “The Summer I Turned Pretty” fans, plays a musician who takes a liking to Deborah.

Backstage, at January’s Golden Globes, after winning her third statuette for best performance by a female actor in a television series − musical or comedy for “Hacks,” Smart recalled how when she first moved to Los Angeles, someone told her in real life, the average age difference between a husband and a wife is about two years, but on-screen, it's 20.

“Well, of course, when it comes to me then it's not an issue,” Smart jokes in the interview. “When I get to kiss a cute, young guy, that part of it doesn't come into play.”

Series co-creator Paul W. Downs, who also plays Deborah and Ava’s manager Jimmy, says, “We always want to upend the stereotype or upend the norm, and we thought it was progressive and cool to show someone Deborah's age dating someone younger.”

Sparks fly between Deborah (Jean Smart) and a musician (Christopher Briney) in Season 5.

Downs remembers when Briney, 28, read for the role. “We were like, ‘Who's that? He's amazing!’… He was just so good. So charismatic, so funny. He is an absolute star.

“I think normally someone who is the lead of a huge show would be like, ‘I'm not going to audition for this guest part,’” Downs, 43, adds. “I think it's cool when you're like, ‘Oh no, I want to do that. That's fun. I like that show.’ I think that's speaks to his character as a person.”

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: ‘Hacks’ final season: Hannah Einbinder says her body ‘shut down’

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