For Bazaar’s annual Performance issue, we asked some of our favorite characters in Hollywood, music, and fashion to model fall’s most defining looks—including Hannah Einbinder, fresh off the third season of Max’s Hacks. See the full photo shoot, and hear more from Einbinder below.
Ten minutes into our FaceTime call, Hannah Einbinder gets distracted. The 29-year-old comedian, who plays Ava Daniels on the Emmy-winning dramedy series Hacks, is telling me about her debut comedy special, Everything Must Go, when she spots a little green lizard through her window that appears to be doing the world’s smallest push-ups. Flipping the camera so I, too, can witness this display of reptilian strength, Einbinder cheers him on: “Hell yeah, brother, get that upper body!”
This is the kind of relatable charm that has catapulted Einbinder into fame via Hacks, which premiered on Max in 2021 and wrapped its third season in May. (A fourth is in the works.) The series follows Ava, a young comedy writer, and the demanding, at times cruel stand-up legend she works for, Deborah Vance, brilliantly played by real-life comedy legend Jean Smart. The two forge a tumultuous yet creatively transcendent relationship as they try to help Vance regain a semblance of cultural relevance. A goofy and outspoken Gen Zer who is acutely aware of the issues that matter to her peers, Ava helps modernize her boss’s sets with jokes about feminism and ageism, and encourages Deborah to reckon with distasteful bits from her past, helping her earn the respect and fandom of a new generation.
Hacks was Einbinder’s first onscreen gig, and her performance of Ava was so organic that it seemed to be an extension of herself. So when she released Everything Must Go, on June 13 on Max, it allowed audiences to see firsthand how much Einbinder shaped the character. A self-proclaimed “nature freak,” she used the natural world as fodder for her special, addressing topics like climate change, ecology, and the plight of pollinators. In one scene in Hacks, when she and Deborah are lost in the woods, Ava stops to identify a chanterelle—a skill Einbinder, an avid mushroom forager, wields in real life.
Here, Einbinder speaks with Bazaar about becoming—and inventing—Ava, revering nature, and why she should be cast in the next big action flick.
Do you remember the first time you performed in front of people?
I saw Bring It On way before it was appropriate, and I became obsessed with cheerleading. I went to a cheer camp in L.A., and then I joined competitive teams. I don’t think there’s any rush that comes even relatively close—[the feeling of] flying through the air is unmatched, so that was a highlight for me. I peaked.
You started doing improv while you were studying at Chapman University. Had you ever thought about doing it before then?
I hadn’t. I worked on a student film with the president of the improv team, and he encouraged me [to join the team]. When I started doing it, I wasn’t really good at it, because I was still so in my head at that time. But that led me to stand-up, where you can obviously plan and fine-tune and premeditate. That’s more compatible with my style, for sure.
Serendipitously, improv helped you land your first stand-up gig. What was writing your first bit like?
When I was on the improv team, [comedian] Nicole Byer came to our school and asked if any of the improv kids wanted to open for her. I volunteered and wrote an eight-minute set, and went around to open mics around Orange County, where I was going to school [to practice]. And then I opened for her, and literally the second I walked out onstage, I was hooked.
I was so nervous. I’m not so much anymore, but leading up to performing back in the day, I would be like, “Why am I doing this? This is so vulnerable and frightening. Who would put themselves in this position?” And then the second I step out, I’m like, “Oh yeah, I love this feeling. I love this method of communication. I love this thing so much.”
A lot of your comedy is centered around nature and ecology. Why are they important to you, and how do you make that funny?
I’m a nature head. I really am a nature freak. I literally stand at attention whenever a cool bug flies by. I worship the natural world. I feel so colossally rocked by the smallest flower or the way the sun shines through a leaf—some societies would call me a witch. I worship the Earth, so I think I certainly would’ve gotten on that list if I was a girly back then.
So yeah, it dominates so much of my consciousness, and frankly, it’s such a huge interest of mine that I just see it as a rich breeding ground for comedy as well as some anthropomorphization. I have a bit [in Everything Must Go] where I personify the Earth as a Marisa Tomei–type character who’s had enough of her husband, humanity. I try to get creative with it. There was [another] joke of mine that was inspired by an article that I read in Scientific American about botanical sexism, and how trees of the male variety were pretty much exclusively planted in cities across America. Comedy is the lens through which I see the entire world, and I just apply it to one of my main fascinations, which is with the natural world.
Tell me about getting cast in Hacks and what drew you to the show.
I was doing stand-up and had just quit my job as a barista, and I was starting to feature for other comedians on the road—and then the pandemic hit, and I was like, “Dude, my plans are foiled.” I was really stressing, and a couple of days before the initial lockdown in March of 2020, I had an in-person audition for Ava. Up until that point, I had not booked anything ever, and so I just got the sides [which are sections of a script], and I was immediately blown away at how funny they were. I thought, “Wow, this is going to be a great show. I can’t wait to watch it when ‘insert redheaded actress here’ plays the part.” I felt locked into it, but I was going in with no concept that I would book it.
I riffed a joke in the [audition] room and they were loving it. I got a call being like, “They really liked that you added the joke.” And I was like, “Okay. Hell yeah.” So then when they called me back, I added a couple more jokes, and I just kept adding jokes in all the auditions. I added a vape after a punch line and they were living—the girls were gagging for my prop comedy. I also think they were looking for someone who embodied a lot of the things that Ava was at the time. She’s evolved a lot since that first season. I felt like I was able to bring a lot of those things to the table because I was a lot of those things.
It feels so natural in so many ways; you and Jean Smart are so good together. What’s it like performing with her, and have you changed your approach to certain things creatively because of her?
She’s literally my greatest teacher. I learned so much from her every single day, as well as our director, Lucia. And frankly, so much of what we were doing was on the page. We both felt so close to our characters that I think that it wasn’t only our ability to connect, our bond to each other and our chemistry, but the writing was so distinct and so clear—when you walk in and you get that as an actor, it is such a gift. The jokes on Hacks are so sharp and they were so clear to us—we knew exactly what to do when we came in, because of the strength of the writing.
I want to ask you generally about the concept of character. What makes someone a character to you, and who is someone that represents that idea most?
I think a character is someone with a quirk or two—those are the best people. Those are the people we love. I also love that [embodying] a character feels like an escape from oneself. I love stepping into something that feels really different. I played a character called Gretchen Fletcher on a show called Julia, and she was a very uptight, cunty woman from the ’60s, and she worked at the White House. I was in her skirt suit with my hair all up and my little low heels, and I just was like, “Hannah’s now dead. This is so crazy.” The transformation was so bizarre and exciting. The drag of it all really does fulfill the fantasy.
Looking forward, is there a type of character that you want to play or a certain type of project you want to take on?
I really just want to do good work. I feel like I've gotten to do every type of thing under the sun on Hacks. I've done some straight drama and I've done the comedy and there's some heartfelt stuff in there, and we've really explored a lot of the areas of performance in terms of genre within this show. And so I do feel really excited about doing good work in whatever form that takes. I think it would be sick to do an action comedy. We don't have as many truly hard, funny action comedies driven by women, and I feel like I'm the girl for the job. My cheer background makes me be like, “I could do all that shit.”
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Styling: Carlos Nazario; hair: Jimmy Paul; makeup: Yadim for Valentino Beauty; manicure: Dawn Sterling for Nail Glam; production: Day International; set design: Griffin Stoddard; special thanks to Please Space Studios.
