Hannah Einbinder says she’d always loved comedy, and she knew she was funny, so when the improv troupe at Chapman University held auditions she signed up, and found out just how funny she wasn’t.
“I was really bad at it,” says Einbinder, who stars in the comedy series “Hacks” on Max, which also recently aired her debut stand-up comedy special, “Everything Must Go.”
“It required a mental freedom that I did not at the time possess,” she says on a video call after wrapping the day’s work on the forthcoming fourth season of “Hacks.” “I think it was just, like, I’m so in my head from all the Adderall and pot that I wasn’t able to think freely.”
Still, she made it onto the university’s Improv Inc. team, and was willing to leap into the unknown when comedian Nicole Byer booked a show at Chapman and offered to let a student open for her.
“Nicole Byer asked if any of the kids wanted to open for her,” Einbinder says. “I volunteered for that, and after that I just became obsessed, and I realized that’s what I wanted to do.
“So I just bought a ton of comedy albums and started listening to them incessantly over and over,” she says. “You know, really studying rhythm and format and style. And a lot of older influences and alternative influences. People who do characters, people who are more physical, more dry. Storytellers, classic joke writers,” she says. (And, one might imagine, her mother, Laraine Newman, one of the original cast members on “Saturday Night Live.”)
“I feel like I take influence from everywhere, in every form. So yeah, around college, like around my senior year of college, I really committed to it. Started doing open mics and just became obsessed.”
Einbinder graduated from Chapman with a degree in film in 2017. In 2019, National Public Radio named her one of their young comedians to watch. In 2020, she made her TV debut with a set on “Late Night with Stephen Colbert.”
On “Hacks,” which premiered in 2021, Einbinder plays Ava Daniels, a young comedy writer, hired to help reinvent and modernize the stand-up act of Deborah Vance, a comedy legend played by Jean Smart. In September, “Hacks” won best comedy series at the Emmy Awards.
In an interview edited for clarity and length, we talked about how “Hacks” helped her get her first stand-up special, how acting and stand-up complement each other, and how she offered stand-up advice to Smart to help her play a comic in “Hacks.”
Q: What was it like opening for Nicole Byer? It must have been kind of terrifying.
A: I was so nervous. Sometimes, back in the day, I’d call stand-up like 23 hours of agony and one hour of ecstasy, where you wake up and you’re like who would agree to do this? Who in their right mind would put themselves in this situation?
You know, I was a very insecure kid, young adult, whatever, 20-year-old. I didn’t really have a lot of self-worth. That’s what pushes, I think, most people to do stand-up. [laughs] But when I opened for Nicole, and I was so nervous, so nervous, I stepped out onto the stage and I just felt every ounce of nerves melt away.
I just felt good and really confident and really just excited. It was a very foreign feeling for me. I feel good with other people, but not on my own. So I became obsessed with and addicted to that feeling. And it actually went really well. One of the jokes in that set is in my special.
Q: Oh, which one?
A: The two ’20s or ’30s women talking over the phone. Blanche and Maude. That was one of the first jokes I ever wrote.
Q: How long was your set opening for Nicole?
A: Eight minutes.
Q: Well, that’s where you start, and then you build up to the hour.
A: Three to five to eight to 15 to 30 to 45 to the 60, yeah.
Q: When did you start to feel like you were getting to the level where you might do a one-hour special?
A: Really, it was not something that I considered until I started acting, because the idea that I could headline was not as realistic. I didn’t have a following and people didn’t know who I was.
The visibility that ‘Hacks’ brought me was really, really helpful in being able to just be in that position at all. Because of that, I started to realize, OK, I want to go on the road and figure out what my hour is. It definitely felt like it was time. After season one, I toured. After season two, I toured, and after that tour, I was like, ‘I’m ready.’ So going into season three I knew that I wanted to shoot it when we wrapped.
Q: What was the experience of creating an hour of stand-up like?
A: It was agonizing and also total ecstasy. Stand-up is both incredibly frustrating and also the greatest joy. But mostly it was positive. I like the work, A lot of the stuff in my special I haven’t really had to punch up or work on.
But there are jokes that didn’t come to me fully formed, and that is the process I enjoy. Going out, doing punch-up, having 12 or 13 drafts of something. Building it, if I felt there were bones, and the bones were things I’d been doing for a while, and felt like a good representation of my work, from those I built the connective tissue, I think.
Q: What’s an example of a joke in the special you really had to workshop and do multiple drafts until it felt right?
A: I think one would be the tree, the botanical sexism piece. I had a lot of (scientific) information, and I was like, OK, well, this does have to be funny. My editor called my special ‘funny school.’ [laughs] So when I do stuff that feels more educational, if you will, I do have to parse what to explore, what not to.
Q: Now that you’re established as an actor and stand-up, did your stand-up help you on ‘Hacks’ or ‘Hacks’ provide ideas that helped you stand-up?
A: I think both are true. When I started acting, my ability to really tap into comedic rhythm and riff and add jokes here and there. That felt like it aligned with (‘Hacks’ creators) Paul, Lucia and Jen’s voice in their writing. That they liked. It was a great service to my performance.
And vice versa, my time and experience as an actor has helped me commit more fully on stage as a stand-up. My stuff has always been theatrical in its nature, but it has just been furthered by my ability as an actor to really commit to a performance where I need to yell and scream and, you know, embody Planet Earth as Marisa Tomei. [That’s an actual bit in the special.]
Q: Jean Smart had no stand-up experience before playing one on ‘Hacks.’ Could you, as a brand-new baby actor, offer stand-up advice to her, an acting legend?
A: Well, the lucky thing was Jean started in the theater, and then ‘Designing Women’ was for a live studio audience. So she’s such a performer. I mean, even between takes, when we have background actors in, she’s telling stories. She’s making them laugh. She’s such a gifted, natural performer for an audience. She’s so dialed in.
She asked me, ‘Do you have any tips?’ Because she doesn’t have an ego about it, and I would never say anything, but she asked me. The only thing I told her was about microphone distance. Like this [she holds an imaginary microphone several feet from her mouth] the dead giveaway is holding the microphone away from your mouth. This is the sign of the novice. That’s all I told her.
Q: You’ve got more ‘Hacks,’ and eventually more stand-up. How do you see yourself balancing both careers?
A: I think stand-up, I’m able to take my time with. After releasing the special, I really started to write more material. I just got right back into it after we finished the post-production on the special. I literally did a set the night my special came out in New York. But it doesn’t have a ton of pressure on it for me. Acting is something I really enjoy and it’s given me the chance to take it a little slow.
I’m not a prolific comedian. I write very slow. I feel like my writing process is similar to a harvest. Like I plant seeds and I water them, and once or twice a year, have a rush of inspiration.
I don’t want to compromise quality. I’d rather use the privilege that I have, which is time, and only contribute something to the medium if I feel it’s worthy.
Related Articles
Allee Willis wrote the ‘Friends’ theme and countless hits. Now her story gets told.
Real Housewives of Orange County: Friend-zone celebration
‘Parks and Recreation’ was Jim O’Heir’s dream job. So he wrote a book about it.
Sharon Horgan says ‘Bad Sisters’ ending was ‘perfect.’ Here’s why it came back.
Real Housewives of Orange County reunion: Constipation consternation