A run-in with a comedy legend led to one big revelation for Deborah Vance — and a teensy peek beneath her rock-hard exterior for us.
Thursday’s Hacks sends the new late-night host straight to a cardiologist after she experiences a sudden panic attack during her show’s dress rehearsal. While in the waiting room, she runs into none other than Carol Burnett (playing herself). After some catching up, Deborah puts her ego aside and asks Carol for a bit of advice on how to deal with stage fright. Carol’s advice: Pick one person in the crowd and do the show just for them.
The tip pays off. Once Deborah hits the stage on the night of the actual premiere, she starts to feel those same panicky feelings. But this time, she’s able to rein it in. Time slows for just a second. The entire audience disappears, all except for one: Ava. We see the young writer standing to the left of the camera, the seats behind her empty. She’s watching Deborah perform and laughing sweetly with a twinkle in her eyes. Despite Deborah’s animosity toward her head writer and the grim situation they find themselves in, it appears there’s still some love left inside the comic’s icy heart whether she wants to admit it or not.
“So beautiful. My eyeballs are getting wet in this moment thinking about it, frankly,” Hannah Einbinder (Ava) tells TVLine. “[The late-night set] is just such a loaded environment for [Deborah’s] character. She has so much riding on it and has this fraught history of losing her sister and her husband due to the pursuit of this thing. It’s a central pressure point for her and so for Ava to be a lifeline in that environment is really meaningful.”
Adds Paul W. Downs (Jimmy): “[Deborah] has a huge amount of pressure. She’s the first woman to host a major network show at 11:30, so I think for her, she’s like, ‘Oh my gosh, my success dictates the opportunity for a lot of women after me.’ So it makes sense that she would be nervous, but I think the truth of the matter is she might get through it if she had harmony in her relationship with Ava. We like to refer to it as if Ava is her ‘Dumbo’s feather.’ It’s the thing that kind of gets her through. In that moment, I think it’s a little bit of her acknowledging the fact that she does need Ava and she does care about Ava, even though obviously the grist between them is a lot of the drive of the season.”
Deborah winds up nailing her first episode (with a little help from her pal Randy Newman), and with that, Late Night With Deborah Vance is officially off and running!
But wait a minute — we can’t just casually breeze by the fact that Carol Freakin’ Burnett just popped into Hacks! We asked Einbinder and the show’s executive producers all about having the living legend on set. Here’s what they had to say.
Downs: “When we set out to make the show, it was to really celebrate the untold stories, especially of female comedians. And so to have someone like Carol Burnett on the show was an unbelievable bucket list dream. There are people who get sharper and better and funnier with age, and Carol Burnett is one of those people. She’s somebody that is an inspiration for all of us who are in comedy. Jean [Smart] rarely asks for photos with people, but she was like, ‘Carol, I need to get a photo with you,’ and it was so sweet. It was really a special day on set for everybody. And we shot in TV City where The Carol Burnett Show was filmed, so she got to go back and see her stage. It was really surreal, like goosebump-inducing.”
Einbinder: “She was so cool and sweet. Jean has been saying — I so agree with this — if I could be half as cool and with it and sharp as she is at her age, I’d be so stoked.”
Executive producer/co-creator Jen Statsky: “It was a dream come true. We obviously are massive Carol Burnett fans. She is such an incredible comedian. She is baked into the history of this show, an important part of it, and it was just incredible to have her on set. She’s so kind and so smart, so funny, came with ideas, just such a joy. Your expectations are always so high when you’re going to have a living legend on set and she still exceeded them. We feel so happy in this season to get to have her and Deborah be two comedians talking about the craft and what it means to perform to an audience. That’s just really special to us.”
Is there hope for Deborah and Ava’s relationship after all? Share your thoughts by dropping some comments!
