Teaching an old dog new tricks can be a tricky prospect, especially if the old dog is a female stand-up comic who’s forced to find a new “voice.”
That’s the juicy premise for HBO Max’s comedy, “Hacks,” starring Jean Smart as the mouthy comedienne who is required to adapt to a millennial writer who thinks she is as funny as her boss.
Smart, who’s known for her colorful characters in shows like “Watchmen,” “24” and “Fargo,” enjoys exploring all kinds of “voices,” she says.
“Most people have many different sides to their personalities. People are always more complicated than you think, and it’s fun to be able to have an excuse or a time and a place to dig into these parts of yourself. Other people do it in their jobs in a different way,” she says.
Still, it was a shock to her family when Smart decided to take a chance on acting. “I told my mom I was going to major in theater. I think she thought that’s so frivolous, because she grew up in the Depression and even getting a chance to go to college was not a guarantee,” she says.
“She worked very hard and her mother was determined that her daughter was going to go to college. My mother’s mother actually was orphaned at a very young age, desperately poor, got married when she was still a teenager, raised her kids during the Depression, and ended up getting her doctorate from Columbia.
“They were the Greatest Generation,” she says. “My dad joined the Navy at 17 to help support his family and he ended up getting his master’s and teaching history. I always knew my parents would pay for me to go to college even on a school teacher’s salary. My father was determined to do that. So I took that part for granted. So when I announced I was going to major in theater, she thought that was a bit frivolous. She changed her mind as soon as she saw me in plays at the University of Washington – which was her alma mater – she thought that was pretty great.”
Twenty-six year-old Hannah Einbinder plays the young writer who’s thrust on the veteran Vegas diva in “Hacks.” Einbinder is a standup herself, the daughter of comic Laraine Newman and actor Chad Einbinder.
“My mom, I mean, she played comedy for me in the car growing up, like I listened to stand-up from the fifth grade on; probably not the best idea,” she says.
“I think being a comic helps in this (show) just in terms of acting, I guess I'm used to doing comedy for a group of people, and it feels like that's what this is, if you just boil it down.”
In spite of her efforts Einbinder finds stand-up comedy a game without rules. “I take a swing at it up there. I try my best. And I bomb. And I do well sometimes, and it’s really an unmasterable craft,” she says.
“You can never be a perfect stand-up comedian. I think it always depends on the room you’re in,” she says. “I’m going to do differently in Silver Lake, Calif. than I’m gonna do in Laramie, Wyo. You’re thinking, ‘Why did you bring up Laramie, Wyo.?’ It’s because I went and it didn’t go well. No, they were very nice. They were very nice. I don’t feel particularly worthy, really. I think I put comedians on such a pedestal, maybe I shouldn’t do that because all my heroes are monsters, it turns out.”
Being the star of the series can be stressful, admits Smart, who’s worked in many ensemble shows like “Frasier,” “Designing Women” and “Legion.” “Certainly I feel a big responsibility, but it's been so much fun that I haven't really worried about it,” she says.
“We have an enormous amount of freedom, thanks to our amazing writer-producers and they let us improvise. And Hannah and I especially get a lot of time to work things through, work things out. And she's hilarious, and she's a comedienne, and so I was first sort of nervous to do stuff in front of her because she has done a lot of standup. So a little pressure.”
Smart says she didn’t emulate any particular comedienne in her portrayal of the veteran comic. “I mean, I'm certainly a fan of a lot of female comics. In fact, I just recently bought a book called, ‘We Killed It,’ and it has interviews with about 30 or 40 female comediennes. But I haven't even opened it yet.
“Every once in a while there will be a scene or I'll do something and I'll think, ‘Oh, that kind of reminds me of so-and-so.’. . . I guess I borrow things from other comediennes unconsciously and certainly anywhere from Elayne Boosler or Phyllis Diller to Sam Kinison. There's a little Sam Kinison every once in a while. . . I haven't based it on anyone, and I haven't been doing that kind of research. I kind of go with my gut instinct and the writing is so good that that usually works out.”
M.O.D.O.K LANDS ON HULU
“Marvel’s M.O.D.O.K” barrels its way onto Hulu Friday. A stop-motion animated series, it stars Patton Oswalt as the lumbering evil M.O.D.O.K. Jordan Blum, one of the show’s co-creators and producers, explains how this creature wound up on Hulu.
“He's a character created by Jack Kirby and Stan Lee. These are the people who created ‘Black Panther,’ ‘Fantastic Four,’ ‘X Men.’ But he's this weird oddity, who I think is known more as that than obviously this big ‘Doctor Doom.’ That's kind of baked into who the character is -- where he's aware that he's not an A lister, and it drives him insane.”
Oswalt, who is an A-lister and also one of the producers, reports, “I had always read Marvel comics, and M.O.D.O.K. is this great figure that keeps popping up as an enemy to different heroes. . .
“We went back and looked at the original ‘M.O.D.O.K.’ comics, and he wasn't meant to be comedic, but he's so over-the-top rageful that a lot of them are very unintentionally funny, I think.
“He is truly his own worst enemy. And as far as the blood and gore, we decided to take it to just ‘Monty Python’ level, so it doesn't feel offensive or disturbing. It's hilarious. We just said, ‘Let's go way over-the-top with it.’”
‘SOLOS’ SINGS WITH SEVEN-PARTER
Amazon Prime Video is mining the best of Hollywood talent for its new anthology series, “Solos,” premiering Friday. On board for the seven-parter are facile folk like Anne Hathaway, Helen Mirren, Morgan Freeman, Dan Stevens, to name a few. Each of the episodes is designed to unify instead of divide, and to illuminate the humanity in all of us.
Freeman, who earned the Academy Award as best supporting actor for “Million Dollar Baby,” has been turning in great performances since he started. He tells me he was an obsessed student when he was starting out.
“I studied it all -- dance, voice, singing, acting (you can't teach acting, but I studied) because you have to have access to other actors and you teach each other, lean on each other, you give each other security. We don’t have very much; we live in a make-believe world that is full of real life. So trying to get through that as a harlequin is difficult unless you're among other harlequins --people who are suffering from the same malady that you're suffering with,” he says.
“As long as you can mingle with those people who live and function the way you do, the real world becomes easier to function with because you have your own outlets.”
BAKULA BIDS A LAST GOOD-BYE
Scott Bakula will make a quantum leap off CBS Sunday as his seven-season “NCIS: New Orleans” bites the dust. Bakula, who was so good as Agent Dwayne “King” Pride on the show, lapped up his first taste for acting when he was just a kid.
“When I was in the seventh grade I did a big huge production of a Christmas operetta called ‘Amahl and the Night Visitors’ and I was Amahl. And it was just a magical kind of time. The show itself is a great show, and I was a kid working with all the adults. So that was really exciting. But I had a bunch of those kinds of really wonderful experiences around theater. I was in St. Louis and it didn’t ever occur to me that that would be a way to make a living until I was in the middle of college,” he says.
“I was doing shows in the summer when I was coming home from college, and I’d done shows all the way through high school and I just thought: ‘You know, I owe it to myself to see.’ I was having a lot of success in St. Louis, but St. Louis isn't New York City, and I thought I should knock off and head up there and see what it’s like. The blessings of youth, you don’t know better. You're kind of blind and stupid,” he laughs.
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