On Hannah Einbinder's final day on the set of 'Hacks,' she found herself inside Paris' world-famous Louvre museum with her co-star Jean Smart. The actresses were perched on benches looking up at the gallery walls when co-creator and director Lucia Aniello approached them with a casual request: 'Just talk.'
'We just started talking in character and it was so moving to me. It felt like such an honour that the last time we were on [camera], Lucia was emboldening us to just speak freely as the characters,' Einbinder tells TVLine. 'Their work is so detailed and beautiful, and they have made such vivid people.'
The series finale of the five-season comedy saw Deborah drop a bombshell: the mass she had removed had spread, and she didn't want treatment. Instead, she planned a lavish European adventure as her last hurrah, ending with physician-assisted suicide in Zurich. Einbinder says the real-life emotions of saying goodbye were just as heavy as the fictional ones. 'I literally kind of collapsed,' she says, adding that she was jet-lagged while shooting in France.
Ava initially refused to accompany Deborah, but eventually showed up at the airport to support her friend. They ate baguettes, went shopping, rode a carousel, and Deborah took molly with Ava. But another argument over treatment erupted when Deborah refused chemo. 'It's a mixture of immense pain and frustration and anger,' Einbinder says of Ava's reaction. 'She's not willing to accept it.'
After some grieving, Ava met Deborah at the train station for the last ride of the comedian's life. But when they started riffing, Deborah had an epiphany: she might have one more hour of stand-up. She asked Ava to help her write it, to which Ava beamed and said, 'Always.' In a subsequent scene, Ava told Jimmy that Deborah had consulted a doctor and had a start date for treatment.
Einbinder is still teary discussing the 'beautiful' script. 'I thought it was classic 'Hacks,' you know? Like, stab a knife to the heart, but then somehow they dig themselves out of it,' she says. 'I think the ending is beautiful.'
