Well, it’s excellent. We knew you had a career in comedy but watch out for a call from Lorne [Michaels].

Look, he knows where to find me.

And you are tech avail because, as we’re here to talk about today, Hacks has come to an end. Let’s go back to the beginning. What were you thinking or hoping this final season would look like?

I would say I never know where they’re gonna go with the show before I get the scripts. I never knew what the twist was. And every season before I get scripts, I’m just so excited. And my mindset going in, I think, was just really to savor every single moment. From Season 1, it has never been lost on me how important everybody there is and how special the experience is. I found the video diary that I made in my trailer Season 1, and I was just saying, “I just have a feeling these people are going to be really important to me and like that this might be the thing that maybe changes my life,” not even in like a career way, but in the way of like the connections that I’m making here. Before I went into shooting Season 5, I just — the thing I am most proud of is that I never, ever, ever for a second took it for granted. I knew that it was special.

Did you make video diaries like that for every season?

I did it a couple times, like at the end of the season. I made a couple, like, captain’s logs.

I’m so curious: did you do one for the final season? What did that one look like or sound like?

I don’t think I did it for the final season. I maybe did it 1, 2, and 3. I feel like I have such visceral memories and connections to all of those moments in Season 5. I was telling someone else that like, literally the day we wrapped, the night we wrapped outside the Louvre, like we were all outside and I just got this wave of heat all over my body. And I just felt like immediately so nauseous and we were all supposed to go get dinner. And I was like, “I have to go, guys. Like, I have to go back to my hotel room,” and I went back and I slept for like 14 hours. I woke up the next morning feeling really peaceful and I was just like, “Damn, my body was so overwhelmed with the experience of it being done.” It took me down. I think it’s this thing that’s very visceral for me and I feel very connected to the emotions around the show and the people and what it’s meant all along the way, especially in the last season.

I love that you had a physical reaction reminiscent of Merritt Wever’s Emmy acceptance speech; just like, “thank you so much… I gotta go.”

Exactly.

Well, let me ask you about that final episode. There are so many moments in there that I have to assume felt nearly impossible to get through. What ended up being maybe more challenging than you even anticipated?

I mean, it’s hard to say because I don’t know if I would necessarily use the word “hard” because I would use it in the sense that feeling the things that Ava is feeling was incredibly hard. That was painful and sad, but it is mixed with this weird duality as an actor where it’s cathartic. You have this feeling where you’re experiencing it, but also it’s tied to this sense of justice and accomplishment that you’re doing her justice and that you are communicating her feelings well. So there’s something positive about it too, but that shit took me down. The scene with Deborah in the hotel room, of course, in the finale is so hard to watch without getting emotional. Hard in that sense, but like ultimately, I think, I’ve been fortunate to be very genuinely connected to the stakes and the emotions that the character’s going through on Hacks.

I think that commitment goes back to what we were talking about at the beginning with voices, too. It shows in everything and it’s been there since Season 1, but I want to know how you approached Ava differently this season than you maybe did in Seasons 1-4?

My approach changed in that from Season 1 to Season 5, I’ve just grown more confident. And I’ve also started to understand that it’s not arrogant to be proud of yourself and like to feel like you’re doing good work. I kind of had that feeling where I was so self-loathing and so self-deprecating that I thought having self-esteem was arrogant or ugly or something. I’ve just grown to understand that that’s not true. So I think I’ve become genuinely more confident as a performer and as a human being. I’ve become more confident in myself, so that has helped me as an actor. It allows me to be freer. It allows me to feel more secure.

You should have been confident from Season 1 because that moment of you doing the cartwheel into the splits is forever going to be ingrained in my mind.

That was a fun moment. We finished the scene and we were going to walk away and I was like, “Wait, wait, Lucia [Aniello], can I do one more?” And she was like, “Yeah, sure,” and I just whipped it out and she was like, “Wow, that’s going on TV.”

And I’m so glad it did because that is a highlight for me. What are the other moments for you?

Oh my god, so many. Most of them are just the times that I remember Paul [W. Downs], Jen [Statsky], and Lucia laughing the most. That’s always, for me, the metric of what I’m most proud of. The one for Paul is in Season 2 when they’re on the tour bus and Ava wakes up in the night, the driver slams on the brakes, and she hits her head. But I mean, in the lesbian cruise episode where I forgot what I was supposed to say, but I was trying to say “lights my soul on fire,” but I said, “lets my soul on fire.” It doesn’t make sense, and Lucia thought it was so funny and it’s in the show. We just were clowning and having fun, there’s a million things like that, where we were just fucking around, making each other laugh. And that’s the whole thing, it’s this meta thing. That’s what the show’s about, you know? And we get to live that. I’m grateful for that, majorly.

Hacks is streaming on HBO Max.

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