‘Hacks’ Star Hannah Einbinder Says Being Heckled as a Bisexual Comedian ‘Has Created a Thicker Skin for Me’
Marc Malkin Senior Film Awards, Events & Lifestyle EditorIt’s highly unlikely that Hannah Einbinder will ever forget her auditions for “Hacks.” Not only did it land her the role of Ava opposite Jean Smart, but the entire process happened during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.“I went into a physical casting office in Santa Monica a couple days before March 13th, 2020, that initial COVID lockdown,” Einbinder tells me on the latest episode of the “Just for Variety” podcast. “I read with someone in the office and, a couple days later, COVID hit and I found out that I was going to do a callback, but that they didn’t know how it was going to happen.
It took like two months for me to do a call back that I did over Zoom. It was all bizarre.” She was eventually summoned for an in-person chemistry read with Jean Smart.“It was a completely empty soundstage, dark with no lights and just two interrogation lamps and two chairs,” Einbinder says.Not only did she and Smart have to sit 10 feet apart, but there was a sheet of clear plexiglass between them. “It was all bizarre, but the truth of it is it’s all I’ve ever known,” Einbinder says. “All I have ever known is this and COVID sets because I haven’t really worked in this side of the business until now.
So, it’s all been this thing that everyone’s like, ‘This is crazy,’ and I’m like, ‘What was it like before?’”I caught up with Einbinder, a Los Angeles native whose mom is “Saturday Night Live” legend Laraine Newman, over Zoom from her L.A.-area home.
To hear us laugh out loud for what seemed like forever, listen to the end of the podcast because you have to hear what happens when we start talking about bonding over being Jewish.What was the biggest change you saw in Ava from Season.
