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‘Hacks’ Season 5 Finale: Hannah Einbinder reacts to that emotional roller coaster twist

Hannah Einbinder shared that she felt ‘pathetic’ and ‘nervous’ while shooting a particular sequence in ‘Hacks.’

'Hacks' series finale, 'Come On, Get Happy,' left many in tears. Ava (Hannah Einbinder) and Deborah (Jean Smart) plan to waltz through Paris, and when things are finally looking up, the latter delivers a devastating blow: she has been diagnosed with cancer. Instead of seeking treatment for the condition, Deborah has decided to check herself into a right-to-die facility in Switzerland. Ava is stunned to hear this and gets overwhelmed by the fact that Deborah wants her as a companion in the facility. Ava makes a final attempt to convince Deborah to choose another way and begs her mentor to reconsider. "Please don't leave me. Please," she tearfully pleads. 

Einbinder, who plays Ava, talked with Entertainment Weekly about being "nervous" while shooting the scene. Despite delivering one memorable sequence after another in the show, she was anxious about the emotional place she needed to go to perform the sequence. "To embody what Ava was feeling in that moment, I was fully experiencing what she was experiencing, and I was looking around the room between takes, and I felt ashamed and embarrassed and pathetic that other people were seeing me cry like that," she shared. "I know that sounds weird because it's my job, but I literally felt humiliated." 

Eventually, the feeling subsided, and she now feels proud of the situation. "I felt like I had done what I wanted to do, and I was happy with my work, and that's what I started to feel after a while. But in the moment doing it, I just felt like s--" Einbinder added. Jean Smart, who plays Deborah, recounted how she wanted to cry during the sequence. But the creatives did not want her to go that route. "She knows how much she's hurting her, and that makes her feel terrible, but she's not considering changing her mind at all. That was a hard scene for Hannah," the actress recalls.

Ultimately, Deborah decides to go with Ava's suggestion. While bantering with Ava in a cafe about the "best part of dying," Deborah realizes how much she is enjoying the moment and wants more of it. This makes her want to fight for her life instead of giving it up, for the sake of just one more "special," using the jokes she and Ava cook up. She chases Ava through the station and tells her, "I may not have 30 years, but I think I have another hour. Will you help me write it (the special)?" Lucia Aniello, who created the show along with Paul W Downs and Jen Statsky, told Variety that the sequence was a bit of a throwback to the pilot. "Deborah being inspired by her banter with Ava is obviously the inciting incident to the pilot," she explained, "and so, to have it also be the way the show ends is why this was always the idea from the beginning."

Considering that Deborah chose to live, fueled speculations that there could be a reunion in the future. Aniello is not averse to that. "Never say never," she stated. "It doesn't seem likely, but we love these actors, we love these characters, we love this crew. We are so lucky. I think in a perfect world, we would be making this show forever. We really would. So it is heartbreaking to us that it is over, and I think this sentiment out there that we're choosing to end the show, and while it is technically true, we're doing it to maintain a certain quality that we believe the show has been, and we just want that to be the way that people think about the show, and not anything less." 'Hacks' series finale is currently streaming on HBO Max.