{"id":245067,"date":"2021-05-08T04:11:55","date_gmt":"2021-05-08T01:11:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/how-joan-rivers-haunts-jean-smarts-dark-comedy-hacks\/"},"modified":"2021-05-08T04:11:55","modified_gmt":"2021-05-08T01:11:55","slug":"how-joan-rivers-haunts-jean-smarts-dark-comedy-hacks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/how-joan-rivers-haunts-jean-smarts-dark-comedy-hacks\/","title":{"rendered":"#How Joan Rivers haunts Jean Smart’s dark comedy ‘Hacks’"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#How Joan Rivers haunts Jean Smart’s dark comedy ‘Hacks’<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

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Jean Smart headlines the 10-episode HBO Max<\/a> series<\/a> \u201cHacks,\u201d a darkly comedic look at the relationship between two women with disparate viewpoints \u2014 who have more in common than meets the eye.<\/p>\n

Smart stars as Deborah Vance, a veteran standup comic whose glitzy headlining career at a (fictional) Las Vegas hotel is jeopardized when the casino manager starts hiring acts catering to a younger audience. Through a series of events, Deborah\u2019s manager, without asking, pairs her with Ava (Hannah Einbinder), an upstart twentysomething comedy writer who\u2019s unemployed since being \u201ccanceled\u201d after tweeting a joke about a closeted politician. The hope: that Ava\u2019s say-anything app<\/a>roach will help Deborah connect with a younger audience and keep her career relevant. But there are personal and emotional hurdles they must overcome before that can happen.<\/p>\n

Smart, 69 \u2014 whose vast 40-year TV, film and stage career includes \u201cDesigning Women,\u201d \u201c24,\u201d \u201cFargo\u201d and (most recently) HBO\u2019s \u201cMare of Easttown\u201d \u2014 spoke to The Post about \u201cHacks,\u201d premiering Thursday, May 13. <\/p>\n

I see shades of Joan Rivers in Deborah\u2019s life and personality, including her shopping channel merchandise, her work and her energy and her drive.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I think the writers certainly thought of Joan. There aren\u2019t many women with that kind of [industry] history, and she was certainly one of the inspirations for Deborah, who also has that somewhat self-deprecating humor. A couple of times, though, when I\u2019m yelling I think I\u2019m channeling Sam Kinison.<\/p>\n

The series is set in Las Vegas. Do you like the city?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve enjoyed it while I was there, but I haven\u2019t been there too many times. I was talking to Hannah [Einbinder] about this. She said the last time she was in Las Vegas was when she was around 21; she and her girlfriends got very drunk and very sick on a hot food buffet and had to stay in some crummy place. That\u2019s her vision of Vegas. Mine is a nice hotel, a fabulous dinner, a nice show and blackjack tables \u2014 having fun.<\/p>\n

\"Jean
Jean Smart portrays veteran standup comic Deborah Vance in \u201cHacks.\u201d<\/figcaption>
HBO Max<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Did you need any coaching to fire off the jokes in the scenes in which Deborah is on stage doing her standup act?<\/strong><\/p>\n

No. It was great fun. I was\u00a0very excited about all those scenes. I think people who are standup comics have more guts than anybody in the entertainment industry. I did get up in front of people [but] they were actually paid to laugh at my jokes. What could be better than that? We didn\u2019t have a [live] audience most of the time \u2014 they were CGI\u2019d in later. The one time we actually used live audience members was when we were shooting at the Wiltern Theater in Hollywood, and they brought in about two dozen people and scattered them around the theater because of COVID. They were wearing masks most of the time and it was dark, so I couldn\u2019t see them. But for some reason, standing in the wings, I start getting really nervous, like I do before a play. I said to myself, \u201cWhat are you doing? These people didn\u2019t have to go and buy a ticket!\u201d<\/p>\n

Ava watches videos of Deborah\u2019s appearances dating back decades in order to get to know her better. Is that you in those videos?<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s partly me. They used my voice and morphed my face with a younger actress and put me on a younger, skinnier body. She copied my physical gestures in those scenes, then they used my voice and my movements and combined my face with hers. That was weird.<\/p>\n

\"Jean
Jean Smart takes the Vegas stage in \u201cHacks.\u201d<\/figcaption>
HBO Max<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

How do you describe Deborah?<\/strong><\/p>\n

She\u2019s such an unpredictable person; there are so many dichotomies in her personality but, because of the writing, they all see to make perfect sense somehow. She can be very cruel and unpleasant and also capable of enormous kindness; you\u2019ll see that a bit later in the series. She\u2019s cheap and such a penny-pincher but, at the same time, in other situations, she\u2019s extraordinarily generous. She\u2019s probably the most unpredictable character I\u2019ve ever played. She\u2019s very bitter about what happened to her when she was young. She enjoys that she\u2019s so handsomely paid and rewarded \u2014 it\u2019s something she feels she has over her ex, like, \u201cYou\u2019ll never be as rich or successful as me,\u201d so living well is her best revenge. But it hasn\u2019t really made her happy.<\/p>\n

Were the scenes of Deborah in her sprawling Las Vegas mansion shot in a real house?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Those were sets. Were they not to die for? I ran around like a little kid, like I was in a giant dollhouse. The set designer, Jon Carlos, is a genius. There\u2019s one detail in the living room in which he took great pride that no one else is going to notice and he did it for me, for Deborah. There\u2019s plasterwork on the wall \u2014 a row of leaves, then another shape in-between, then more leaves \u2014 and he said, \u201cLook at the shape between the leaves. What do you see? I said, \u201cIt looks like a tongue\u201d and he said, \u201cIt is, because [Deborah] describes herself as a mouthy broad!\u201d<\/p>\n

There\u2019s also a beautiful painting outside the entrance to Deborah\u2019s bedroom \u2026 of a dead matador. She obviously has a wonderful art collection. It\u2019s quite large, and Jon told me he put it there so \u201cIt\u2019s a subtle warning to any man who even gets that far!\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Photo
Hannah Einbinder as Ava in \u201cHacks.\u201d<\/figcaption>
JAKE GILES NETTER<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

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Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“#How Joan Rivers haunts Jean Smart’s dark comedy ‘Hacks’” Jean Smart headlines the 10-episode HBO Max series \u201cHacks,\u201d a darkly comedic look at the relationship between two women with disparate viewpoints \u2014 who have more in common than meets the eye. Smart stars as Deborah Vance, a veteran standup comic whose glitzy headlining career at…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":245068,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2021\/05\/jean-smart-hacks-qa-04.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=1200","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[70897],"tags":[104859,105042,105043,640,105044,95639,74764,83336],"class_list":["post-245067","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-5-7-21","tag-dark-comedy","tag-hannah-einbinder","tag-hbo-max","tag-jean-smart","tag-joan-rivers","tag-las-vegas","tag-stand-up-comedy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245067","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=245067"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245067\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/245068"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=245067"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=245067"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=245067"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}