The Creators of Hacks Really, Really, Really Hate AI

From Wired, this is The Big Interview, where we'll get to know the people beyond the headlines in conversations that explore the intersection of technology, power, and culture. I'm Katie Drummond, Wired's Global Editorial Director. The Emmy award-winning show Hacks takes its final curtain call this month. The hit HBO Max comedy series follows the professional and personal relationship between young comedy writer Ava Daniels, played by Hannah Einbinder, and legacy comedian Deborah Vance, played by Jean Smart. It's now in its fifth and final season where we find Deborah struggling to mount a comeback and under a restrictive contract. Ava! No results. Unbelievable. Yeah, they've taken down every late night clip. This is criminal. Hang on. Oh, shit. What? They took down my bad, too. What? It's funny, moving, and ultimately has a lot to say about the business of show business. The series tackles a range of issues from the challenging relationship between Ava and Debra to the creep of AI into Hollywood to network censorship. It's also one of my favorite shows. So if you haven't seen it, pause this podcast episode, go watch seasons one through four, and then come back because the statute of limitations on spoilers from seasons one through four is now over. and I will do my best not to spoil anything I've seen from season five. I am so pleased to welcome two of the show's creators and showrunners, Paul Downs and Lucia Anielo, who also happen to be married, which I was just telling them I had no idea until I started getting ready for this taping. So congratulations on being married and welcome to the big interview. Thank you. Thank you so much. You should have been there. You should have been there. Why didn't we bring you? That's crazy. Next time. Next time. We are going to renew our tenure at the same place, though. Are you? Where was the wedding? It was in Italy. It was in Tuscany. That's all I'll say. Lucia was born there. Lucia was born in Italy, so it was closer to a lot of family. And you were married in what year? 2021. Okay, so I have some time. So I have, like, another five years to... You have time. Okay. To find your look? Yes. You have time. Don't stress. A major priority for me in my life is perfecting my look. Very important to us at Wired is having our look down. Well, congratulations on your final season. That's Wired. That's Wired. Fashion First. That's you guys, right? I mean, I do. Well, it's funny because we are, no, Fashion First is not my motto or Wired's, but we do work at Condé Nast and I, you know, my boss is Anna Wintour. So Fashion First has become maybe more of a priority for me than it used to be. It's like Fashion Third, you know? Right. Right. Fashion third. Used to be 25th. Fashion third. But I will say my husband and I blew through a bunch of season five this weekend. I'm excited to talk to you guys a little bit about that, about the show. And I want to actually start by talking about women, a subject close to my heart as I am one. But I also run a magazine that historically, you know, was run by men for years. I'm surrounded by men. They're everywhere in my life. They're everywhere in our coverage. And this show I love in particular because it centers around this relationship between these two women. I think two women who are very powerful in different ways in their own right. And they have this very complicated relationship and this big generational gap. And Lucia, I'm curious, you know, obviously you have another co-creator, Jen, who's not here. But how did the three of you think about writing those characters? Like what was important to you in centering the show around the relationship between these two women? Well, I think one of the things that was appealing to us was the idea that, yes, they are two women of different generations and who are both comedians and they have a lot in common and a lot not in common. But we were really interested in the collaboration between two female artists because that is what they are. They are comedians who love creating work. And that is in the end of the pilot. Spoiler if you haven't seen, but you should go see it. They don't get along in their initial meeting at all. And they just argue. but there's a little spark and that little spark is they're making jokes about each other they keep pitching on them and they try to make it better and you can see that it's a creative turn-on for them and so for us the idea that these women in the process of creating art together become more and more entrenched in each other's lives and it does change them as people and then therefore changes the work as well. I think we're really interested in the way that the material comes from their lives and their lives then bleeds back into the material. And so for us, you know, that was something that I don't think we had really ever seen before. And it was really exciting to us to kind of explore. Gender comes up in the show over and over, right? I mean, both of these women in a variety of ways deal with sexism, with gender dynamics, with sort of gender tropes. What about what you have seen and experienced in Hollywood and in the industry sort of feeds into the way that's shown, the way that's portrayed to the audience? Well, you know, one of the things that is really central to the show is that these are two women who were cast aside from the industry. You know, Debra had to carve her own path and get a residency in Vegas after a very public divorce and sort of a media shaming. And, you know, I think that we really wanted to explore what it means to be a woman in comedy in particular, because so many women in comedy didn't have the same opportunities that their male counterparts had. One example being hosting a late night show, which becomes a central part of our series. And, you know, I think it also comes out at a time when luckily we're having a reckoning with the narratives around gender and around women in particular. You know, when we were pitching the show, it was around the time that the Britney Spears documentary was coming out or, you know, whether it's Monica Lewinsky or Paris Hilton or, you know, any number of women who we got wrong. I think that was another thing that sort of was a lens through which we wrote the show was, you know, about just women's stories being either untold or misconstrued because they weren't the ones who were getting to author them. In terms of sort of your backgrounds in show business and your experience in the industry, how much of that informed creating the series, creating the supporting characters? and sort of delving into what you do in seasons one through five? Like how much of it is pulled from or inspired by real life? You know, not a ton very directly, just because, you know, we came up from making Broad City. That was like kind of our first big break. So we worked on all five seasons of that. We had also done a little bit of work on the web series before it was a television show. And then we went on to work on some other projects. For example, I worked on a show called Aquafina's Nora from Queens. And the day one of going into that writer's room, there were women in that room that were literally emotional because it was the first time they were in a writer's room where they weren't only one of two women. It was predominantly women. And I was like, oh, babe, this is my life. This is what my life is like. I only work on shows like this. For the record, I only work with women. I haven't worked with men. Don't know if I will. I really spend myself by cool women. Yeah. And so, I mean, if anything, we've had such an opposite experience of what Debra Vance had. We had that, that if anything, we're just like, this is the way that we see the world, which is definitely more of an Ava experience. I don't think Ava has necessarily had the experience of her being a woman getting in the way of her career. I think she's the person who's gotten in the way of her own career. Yeah, yes. But, you know, again, and I directed one movie. It was called Rough Night that Paul and I wrote. But I was the first woman in 20 years to direct an R-rated comedy. So that's crazy. That is crazy. That's crazy. Yeah, that was in 2017. And so if anything, we've been so blessed and lucky to have such a different experience than Debra had. But I think we appreciate and understand the kind of path that women like her had to forge for us to have these lucky experiences. And so we are so grateful. And I think in a way, the show is an homage to the kinds of women who had to deal with so much sexism and not having the opportunities that their male counterparts had. And so this is our way of saying thank you. Oh, I love that. I think in some ways it is very pulled from our own life, though. There's a lot of meta in the show just in terms of, you know, we were doing sketch and improv comedy at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater and this other theater called the Magnet Theater in New York. And there was a sense of like what cool comedy was, what progressive alternative cool comedy was. So we were interested in the idea of like cool comedy versus someone who maybe had aged out a little bit. and also because the show ultimately is about these two women and their creative collaboration the fact that Jen, Lucia and I have found each other we found our comedy people like in that way maybe not really in terms of like our experience of gender in the industry but in the way in which the story is I think backbone is their the love language that they share in terms of their creative collaboration that is very much pulled from our life. I want to talk a little bit about some of the themes that you have tackled whether intentionally or not throughout the series. I want to start with media censorship, which is very salient for us at Wired. It's something we think about a lot. It's something we cover a lot right now, unfortunately. And at the end of season four, Debra has this huge moment, right? She's finally hosting her own late night show. It's been her dream. And she gives an impassioned speech supporting Ava. She blasts the network. She quits the show. It's a very dramatic way to end. Yes, there are some finger gestures being made at me on screen right now. No, it's exactly that. You can't see it. But it's a huge moment for her. And I remember when that happened. I think it came out a couple months before Colbert was canceled. Right. That was the timing. That's right. And you were seen as prescient, right? Psychic that you sort of saw this coming. This episode of, you know, what was ostensibly about cost cutting, but appeared too many to be more about censorship and sort of getting a merger through the Trump administration. before you were seen as prescient, like before you knew that that was going to happen, what were you trying to say in that moment at the end of season four? Was it purely sort of a plot decision and a creative decision, or was there a bigger message that you intended to be conveying there? We really wanted to explore in the season the intersection, the complicated intersection of art and commerce, because as Debra says in that episode, she knows it's not regional theater. It's a business. You know, what she's doing is a business. but ultimately what the show keeps returning to is the sanctity of their work you know the fact that comedy is sacred for her and so the one thing that she can't abide is censoring herself and also firing her voice which is the thing that makes the show good you know she admits and she acknowledges that she a capitalist pig herself and that she loves to make money but she cares more about comedy than making shareholders happy And so we wanted to talk about this thing, which is we're experiencing this disruption in our industry of what was a very lucrative industry for a century and has become something different because tech has disrupted it. And because whether it's tech or not, you know, more and more under capitalism, it's about growth. It's not just about profit. It's not enough to be profitable for the creatives and the executives. It has to be grown. The profit has to grow. And the only way to do that is to exploit. And so we did want to explore that, even though we had no idea. You know, we knew that there was a decline in late night in terms of the viewership. But the fact that then Colbert experienced censorship, and rather than being able to say, well, I'm going to quit, they told him it was over. It was really weird. It was really crazy. It was really crazy. And we're still in crazy world. I mean, we're now looking at beyond Colbert. You have the FCC investigating, you know, ABC affiliates over diversity. But really, it's because and my fact checkers are going to be upset at me here. But but really, it's because Jimmy Kimmel made a joke that the president didn't like about his wife potentially becoming a widow. I mean, how do you feel sort of sitting where you sit and overseeing the show that you oversee and watching that stuff play out, especially as sort of, you know, comedians yourselves and people with careers in this industry? How do you watch this and what do you have to say about it? I think part of the reason that it in some ways was prescient that that happened is because, you know, we are spreading authoritarian regime here. You know, we have concentration camps in our backyards. You know, this AI is becoming something that's being forced upon us in so many ways and whatever. and as these looming nobody can afford health care nobody has can pay their rent whatever gas crazy whatever my point is it's becoming increasingly unlivable to live in this country and as a result people are really frustrated and this government is clamping down further and further and then who's on the front lines of saying hey this is really bad most often comedians are the people speaking truth to power yeah it's of course the first people they're clamping down on are the people who are saying, hey, this is really bad. This administration is not great. People can't live. This is really bad. And because people can take those messages or more likely to absorb those messages when it's done in a humorous way, it's the way that you're able to spread this truth telling, which is, hey, society right now is unlivable. And because comedians are able to get that message across the most effectively, naturally, that's the first group of people that they're going after in terms of free speech. And journalists. And journalists. And journalists. And journalists. We have eyes, which is why I'm a member, and I love my Wired subscription. Subscribe now. We are so grateful, and thank you so much. I'm going to have you record that as a separate ad. I absolutely will. I will. I will sing it, and I can't even sing. Wow. Thank you. I'm sure audiences will love that. Yeah, if you want subscribers, don't do that. Don't do that. The consolidation piece in the media industry and the entertainment industry is really interesting to me. And it's something that the show absolutely touches on and comes back to in a few different ways. I think one of the ways that stood out to me in season five, without giving too much away, is Deborah having this very startling realization that she pissed off the wrong boss, right? She pissed off a guy who had the ability to take a lot of her work out of her hands and ensure that audiences would not be able to access it. And I'm wondering how you see sort of that parallel with what's happening in your industry now in terms of fewer and fewer players at the top having that kind of control over so many different networks, so many different streaming platforms. What does that mean for you in the real world outside of the show Hacks? Well, it's really terrifying because that was something that has happened. Things are removed from streamers and then you can't find them. You know, in an era where physical media is becoming less and less common, it's really scary. Even for, you know, we feel very, very lucky that we've been able to make this show. We've been able to say what we want on the show. We've been very supported by HBO and HBO Max. So we don't have complaints there. But it is scary that even in our position, it's still something where you're like, well, it could be deleted. Yeah, yeah. It could be deleted and go away. And you hear stories of people's personal vendettas against other people being the reason why their show's down. And those rumors are chilling because it is like, oh yeah, one person can just be like, oh, all of your work can just be deleted and then no one can ever see it. And it's like, you know, of course this is a career and it's a livelihood, but it's an expression of oneself. And for those things to be taken down is really scary. I want to be thoughtful about your careers and your livelihoods, but you have overall deals with Warner Brothers, right? So you're getting a new dad. You're getting a new big dad at some point in the next few months. And I have a lot of friends in the news industry who are affected by that acquisition as well of Paramount Skydance taking on Warner Brothers and everything that that encompasses. How are you thinking about that right now? Does that worry you? We just don't know what it will look like. So, of course, anything new is scary. But I mean, Warner Brothers has been so amazing, obviously, as HBO Max and have the support that we have there, but also in our overall deal. Like you said, Channing Dunne is just like an incredible boss. If you look over at the TV side, you know, Mike DeLuca and Pam Abdi have made hit after hit after hit for that company. It's been a generational run, just like nonstop huge hits. And so you look at these people who are running, you know, the departments and you're just thinking these are people who obviously are so good. And so for us, we just would love to continue to work with these people who have been nothing but supportive, so fabulous to the creative process and have been just the best. So for us, all we can do is say we love working with these people. We want to continue to work with these people. And that's all we can say or know. You know, it's just like kind of the unknowable, of course, is scary, but like, I just hope that they keep those people around because they're the best. We're going to take a quick break and we'll be right back. Comprehensive. Witty. Speculative. Critical. Insightful. Profound. Wide-ranging. Hopefully doesn't take itself too, too seriously. I'm David Remnick, and each week on the New Yorker Radio Hour, my colleagues and I try to make sense of what's happening in this chaotic world. I hope you'll join us for the New Yorker Radio Hour wherever you listen to podcasts. Thoughtful. Exquisite. Just, you know, real. I have to ask you sort of like a reality check question that fills in a blank spot for me in terms of what I do and don't know about how contracts work. So Debra's contract becomes a major plot point at the end of season four going into season five. She has this on screen, on air sort of outburst, this impassioned speech. She quits the show, which it turns out, as per her contract, means she cannot perform for 18 months after she leaves the show. For the non-entertainment industry among us, have you seen non-competes like this? Like, is that pretty standard protocol? How does that typically play out? This was a big topic for us in the writer's room, and luckily Guy Branham, who's a great stand-up, wonderful comedian, and very funny comedy writer, is also a lawyer. So went to law school, is a lawyer, and he helped us really make sure that we threaded the needle in the right way because non-competes are very hard to uphold, apparently. In California. In our world, Debra was paid out through her exclusivity clause, which was also under Florida law, which notoriously has not been the most friendly to employees. So because Florida law governed and because of this thing, we were able to say, okay, there can be a restraining order put in place so that if she were to perform or to break that restraining order, then legal action could be taken. You were really rigorous with how you skewed to reality on that one. Okay. We really kicked the tires because we were painting our character into a corner, which gave us a lot to explore. Yeah. But we also wanted to make it justifiable and have people not say, well, that could never happen. And, you know, the fact is that truth is so much stranger than fiction. Things that are happening with late night hosts and in the world. Don't we know it. Yeah. I'm like, that could happen. It feels absolutely within the realm of reality. Yeah, I mean, I was sort of like, you know, who fucked up there? Like, why didn't Jimmy read the contract more closely? Great question. And make sure that this woman was not, like, signing a deal with the devil. So, Paul. I think Jimmy did know. I thought, not to defend my man, but Jimmy knew the contract. And I think Debra knew the contract, too. She just never, ever could have imagined a world where she would have left the show. Because she was living the dream, so why would she ever? She's like, I might get fired, fine, then they have to pay me out. I'm not going to leave. You know, that seemed so far-fetched to her. But as she says in the show, she didn't realize it, but her dream changed. You know, the landscape changed, and so did she. Good reminder for everyone. Read the fine print and then negotiate a better contract. I want to talk to you about AI, too, which is obviously a huge and very fraught topic for us, for our audience. You know, it's been top of mind for me recently. We just closed our next print issue and package, which is all about AI and work. And one of the pieces, truth stranger than fiction applies very well here. It's from an underemployed. I hope she doesn't mind me saying that she describes herself as underemployed and underemployed Hollywood writer who's now making ends meet by doing gig work, training LLMs. And it's like her and a bunch of her friends. And they're just like running from slack to slack, trying to like get gigs, training LLMs. It's very, very bleak. It's a very bleak story about not only artificial intelligence and how it's made, how it's trained, how these models come to be, but also about the entertainment industry and sort of what is going on with employment prospects for people. I'm curious about how you're seeing AI affect your world right now. You know we are hearing about it and talking about it so much but we personally do not use it in any way shape or form We personally won work with people who use it We are completely anti in the creative process in any possible way I think it's been completely forced upon the creative world as a way to minimize our talent, minimize our ability to have employment. And it's frankly insulting. and I feel badly for this woman because yes there should be a more sustainable industry that doesn't force her to be in this position so I'm not necessarily frustrated at her but the system that is forcing her to be in this position but you know for us and this is something that we do explore in an episode the creative process we got that we do not need AI coming in disrupting the thing that is about humanity. The last thing we need in the expression of humanity is robots coming in and telling us how it should feel and how it should look. And, you know, it's just, it's like so deeply offensive to me on every level. Even if it comes down to, and I know that people feel differently about this, even if it's like, oh, I don't want to write that email, I'll have AI write that email for me. Just the fact that you're not willing to, you don't want to think. You simply don't want to think. The repercussions of people not wanting to think is so disturbing to me because really they don't want to think because it doesn't feel good. They're literally trying to avoid feelings. And the more that we take feelings out of being human, what, and we do that over and over in every different way of our lives, where does that leave us? Not to mention the fact that people aren't reading as much because of AI. And so reading comprehension is plummeting. I mean, it's so disturbing to me on so many levels. I really, I have to stop talking. I'm getting damn pissed off. It's okay. It's okay. I hear you and I understand. And, you know, I think what's been interesting for me when I have sort of tried using chat GBT, I can feel the atrophy of my own mental cognitive abilities happen so quickly that it's scary and I have to stop. Like, I don't like it because I became a journalist to write, like to be a writer. And if I no longer write and I become complacent and I let it I let AI write for me, then the idea of writing feels so much harder. Like writing is already hard. It can be very hard. But the process is the point. Like the process is how you get to that end product and you have that feeling of satisfaction and your brain is tired and it was hard and it sucked, but it was satisfying. And I think the idea of all of us losing that and just becoming these little like blob bots, these little like blobby blobs hanging out in our blob world, like with our agents doing all of our work for us is really strange. And I'm the editor of Wired and I think it's really, I'm sorry, like I get, I get a lot of criticism from some of our former fans who don't understand why we're not all in on AI and we're not. And for a very good reason. So I totally understand what you're saying. Yeah, I think you're right. The argument being it makes life easier is exactly what you're saying. It takes out the grist, the thing that's hard. You know, it takes out the thinking. And I think, therefore, I am. If you're not thinking, you're not existing. And I do think it's, especially when it comes to the creative process and comedy in particular, you're a comedian because you've tried a joke a million times and it fails. And you get up and you do it again and it bombs and you try it a different way. And then you find your voice and you figure out who you are. And I think trying to take the work and the struggle and the friction out of the creative process makes it not art. And I think even beyond that, when people say, well, really helped me do a rendering of my backyard. Now I know where I want to put my rose bushes. I'm like, that's great. But think about the cost. Think about the cost of training an LLM and how much easier it will be for a studio to say, I'm going to hire one writer and I'm going to have an LLM write all the episodes and one writer can do the rewrite. You know, like it is taking jobs away. And when there's an argument around feminism, around gender equality, we have to understand it. Well, you can understand it, but know that the thing that it's benefiting, especially in production, film production, is the top 1%. It is the people that stand to benefit the most and profit the most. It is the shareholders who get to say, we don't need a VFX house. We can just do it with this. We don't need to hire any of those people. Okay, I have one more complaint. Please. I know you're like, we're going to edit all this out. It's too long. I mean, I understand if you want to, but the other thing that is so interesting to me is if you have nothing new to say, if you're using AI to write, all it's doing is scraping everybody else's thoughts and mixing it up and maybe shifting it into your style, but it's not really saying anything new. So all you're making is just, you're reheating literally everybody else's nachos as, as it were. You're just, you're not saying anything fresh and new. And if you're not doing that, then a little bit like, why are you even saying anything as a creative in Hollywood? Why do you even want to put your name on something that some LLM has generated? Like Paul's saying, of course, if you're a boss and you don't want to hire writers, then you don't care either way. But from a creative, and I've heard about creatives who I previously really respected using AI to generate their outlines in the style of me. And I just feel, honestly, I feel sad for them because they're just not interested in even stretching their minds forward. They're okay with just doing an average of the past. I mean, we have seen Hollywood types embrace AI very publicly, right? I feel like there's a new one every week. There was this bizarre, like, mini scandal involving Reese Witherspoon a few weeks ago where I was like, why is Reese Witherspoon all over my Instagram talking about AI? You know, you have Matthew McConaughey investing in 11 labs. You've got really prominent sort of A-list celebrities out there talking about embracing the technology. Does the industry need a more united front here? I mean, what has to happen to sort of safeguard the creative process in Hollywood? And do you feel like that's even possible? Do you feel like you're sort of screaming into the void or do you feel like there are there is enough concern and sort of enough will that there is a path forward here? I mean I want to be hopeful I know that the screen actors guild you know I think the unions do need to flex whatever muscle they have to help make guardrails happen because we can do that at least in terms of contracts with the studio when there are negotiations but it's really hard when it's not on a federal level when it's you know I think it's it does feel sometimes like screaming into the void even if you are doing protections against like well you can't use my face in a movie if I don't give you permission like sure that's that's helpful But I think that the ramifications are so far beyond that that I don't know how you put guardrails in place. I don't know. I also think it's garbage. I think it's a bubble that will pop because it's useless. I mean, and I'm not saying that all AI is useless. I do think, of course, in like medical fields and in science, there's certainly computational abilities of AI that are beyond human ability. I'm talking specifically in the writing, in writing, especially what comedy or whatever. I just think it's not good. It's not good. And it's never going to be good. So come at me, zeros and ones. I think you suck. Let me move on to something a little more fun. Let's end with a little bit of levity. I want to talk about fandom for a minute. So on the show, Debra has her little Debbies. We love them. I mean, we love most of them. They're terrifying. And this season, Jimmy also meets one of his idols in a very embarrassing and adorable scene. But you sort of, you nod to fans and this idea of fandom and sort of how wonderful, but how insane they can be. But you also, I mean, Hax has a fandom. You've experienced the world of fandom. I was in your Reddit earlier just checking out what people had to say. How would you describe the Hacks fan base? I mean, what are the fans like? Well, I only know the fans that approach me mostly or things that I don't seek it out. I don't read the Reddit. Yeah, I was going to say, do you read the comments? Like, are you one of those? No. I mean, I'll see comments on my Instagram. You know, I will see those comments. So I do see some of them, and some of them you can't avoid because there'll be like a reposting of a tweet that did really well about the show. And so you do see, I do get a sense of it, but I don't seek it out. I'm not somebody who's reading everything. Jen and I have a more complicated relationship with it where that we both ebb and flow with our intake of the, like, I didn't, for example, this season, I read one review, and that was it. One review, like, from mainstream press, like, from the media? Yes, yes, yes. Wow. Yes. That is very, that is a very limited intake. Maybe a second one that somebody sent me. But originally, like, I'm very, very sensitive about the show being seen. We put so much love and care. It really is our baby. So it's like, you're writing about my child, you know? And as for the Reddit, like, I ebb and flow on going to it and seeing it and not reading it at all. It really depends on, like, my emotional state. In general, I believe the fandom of Hax is very lovely. Really just mostly people who love the show, who like watch every episode five times or just like continue to rewatch and then go back to the beginning and rewatch again and like are so loving and sweet. That is, I think, how the Hax fandom is. There's, of course, like the subsect of it of the Ava shippers who want them to be together romantically. Oh my God, is there Hax fanfic? I didn't even think. Oh. Oh. Yeah. Oh my God. I can't believe I didn't look for this. I am aware of that. You are both aware of the fanfic and I'm late to this. So there's my Monday evening reading. I've never read it. Honestly, I haven't read it. I'll read it for you. I read one once and as soon as it kind of like graphic or something, I was like, I shouldn't be seeing. I'm sure it's graphic. I think that's the point. I shouldn't be seeing this. I think they're probably all having sex. Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of Ava fanfic and there's a lot of like edits, like, you know, video edits of stuff. Fan cam edit. Yeah, I've seen those two. Fan cam edit. I guess I have made its way to me. Yeah, for someone who doesn't read the comments, I mean, people do send it to us a lot often. Yes. And sometimes it's so fun. And part of the comments that I always get are make them kiss, make them a couple. Yes. I mean, I get those comments every day. I mean, I scream that at the TV when I'm watching you and Kayla. Oh, thank you. Yeah. There are a lot of people watching me and Kayla together. Meg included. Yeah, that is so interesting. Meg included. And you know, Kola Skolov of O'Mary fame was a consultant on season one, and that was kind of their first pitch was Jimmy and Kayla get married. Well after they saw season one they texted okay they get married Totally They get married in the end Thank God I totally understand I love that The Hacks and Estas are amazing The Hacks and Estas I will say this Like the Hacks fans have allowed us to have the show Yeah. You know, allowed us to do five seasons. Because the fact that they have been so rabid about it and told friends to watch and gotten groups together to watch and engage online about it. You know, all of those things nowadays when people are making business decisions about whether or not a show will have another season. Engagement, online mentions, all of those things are factored in. And so to be honest, as much as I like don't read because I can be sensitive, I also worship our fans. I like appreciate our fans and their engagement so much. Oh, that's going to end up in fanfic. Oh, okay, cool. Yeah, well, it will. And then I'm curious, lastly, about sort of how you've promoted the show. And this might just be my algorithm. I watch the show. I follow you on social media. And so you are everywhere on my Instagram and TikTok. Like, I know what you think the best bread in L.A. is. I've seen you tell two truths and a lie. You all have done a lot of promotion and it's very heavy on social media. And I'm wondering from sort of the earlier days of your career or sort of the first season of the show, obviously the show is a success, right? So more people want to talk to you, et cetera, et cetera. But have you seen the way television or a project is promoted change over five seasons, right? Like where everything is a social clip, like what stands out to you about the kind of promotion that you were doing three, four or five years ago compared to what you're doing now, where you're recommending bread, you're telling true truths and a lie, like you're participating in many formats, right? You're doing a lot of different, a lot of different brands have formats that they make for social and you're in all of them. How has that changed? It's wild how social clips travel and how people see them and then know about the show. You know, it used to be that like, God, could you imagine getting on The Tonight Show? And I still, well, I've never been on The Tonight Show, would love to do it. But doing subway takes, I got probably as many views, you know, doing that. Oh, I'm sure. Or more. Yeah. Yeah, it's really, it is kind of wild. And it's also the way that things get to me, because I don't, you know, I don't see the Today Show every morning. And I don't see an interview on the Today Show. But if there's a clip from it, that's really funny, that ends up finding its way to me. In the same way that even late night clips, I see Colbert, I watch Colbert, but then if I've missed an episode, it's aggregated to me. The thing that, you know, the thing that it wants me to see, I do end up seeing. So it is interesting that that, it's kind of a whole new world of promoting a show. Things that you might have been like, two truths and a lie, is that really something that you want me to do? And the network's like, absolutely. And it's like, oh, yeah, because it's, people see it. People do see it, yeah. It was very funny. I think part of what the reason that the hacks ones do tend to be aggregated and spread a lot is because Gene and Hannah and Paul and Meg and Rose and Carl and Mark, like they're like, we all really genuinely like love each other and love hanging out and love chatting. And so I think that like sometimes it's almost like parasocial. It's like, I love just watching them because personally I do. I like watching them because I'm like, it feels like they're my friends. I mean, they are my friends, but I just do feel like there's like a casual ease to the relationships that all these people have that makes it fun to watch. And so I think sometimes when it's like a movie and it's like these people knew each other for 45 days and now they're promoting a movie and they have to pretend that they're in a relationship or something. With this group of people, we've become family over the course of six years. So really, I think that there is something underneath that that is so authentic and real. And these are real relationships that does make it a little bit more fun to watch. All right, another quick break here and we'll be back with our favorite game. The Internet can be strange, absurd, terrifying, even surprisingly human. Each week on Close All Tabs from KQED, we cover how the digital world is reshaping how we live and who we are. People just assume that the American internet is this like free and vast frontier. And then when I started asking that question, it was impossible to unring that bell. People were asking chatbots to tell them if God exists. Listen to Close All Tots wherever you get your podcasts. I'm going to end with a very quick game, if you'll indulge me. Yes. Okay. The game is called Control-Alt-Delete. We made it up ourselves. And you can take turns or you can each do your own, but I want to know, what piece of technology would you love to control? What piece would you love to alt, so alter or change? And what would you love to delete, vanquish from the earth? With a caveat, a disclaimer, so many people have said AI, that my producers are now forcing me to get more specific. You need to say specifically what about AI or what specific type of AI because it can't be all AI. God, that's the only rule. Okay. Okay. I'm just going to start with alt, which is internet. I got to alt internet because on one hand, like, it's the reason I feel I have a career. Like I said, we started out on YouTube. I literally learned how to edit using YouTube. And like the internet, especially in that kind of right after I graduated late aughts, early tens, like really made my career possible. So I can't totally hate on internet. But it just feels like especially in, sorry to say it, this like AI slop culture where it's like I just don't know what's real and what's not. It's getting so scary. It's getting crazy that you cannot believe what you see. And so I do feel that like any anything that isn't real should not be allowed to be uploaded. So I'd like to control the Internet for accuracy, an accurate Internet for accuracy, for accuracy. I believe if everything was just like it was forced to be completely true, then I'm like, let's go Internet. Otherwise, it's not for me anymore. It's very ambitious. I like that. Control government. Can we do control government? You can control government. Medicaid for all. Here's my hot platform. You ready for it? I'm ready. I believe that if you get a certain college GPA, whatever it is, let's say 3.5, and a certain MCAT score, whatever a good MCAT score is, that you should be allowed to go to medical school as a doctor or a nurse for free and the government should pay for it. Because I think if you are intelligent enough and you want to be a doctor and help people, that there should be no financial roadblock to doing so. And I think that everybody should be able to be a doctor and we could solve so many issues if healthcare was more accessible to people in this country, including mental health. Okay, there we go for that. That's my government hotline. Lovely. Wonderful. Canadian, so I agree with you. Dual citizen, but I lean into the Canadian thing now because… That's so cool. Who wouldn't? Yeah. I know why. I have an Italian passport, so you know me. I'm one foot on the damn plane. Yeah, I can imagine. And what do you delete? Do you have a delete, Paul? Yeah, do you have a delete? Yeah. Do we do all of them? Whatever. Choose your own adventure. You do delete. Okay, so I would control, I guess I would control social media so I'm not tagged in unflattering photos. But the photos are allowed to exist on the internet. You just don't want to be tagged in them. I can take them off. No, no. I want to be able to control that. Oh, you want to remove the photo. I see. Yeah. Alt. I guess I would do an alt version of Bluetooth. And actually, speaking of subway takes, this was Zoe Kravitz had this hot take, which I agree with. She's like, Bluetooth does not work. That was a really good one. It doesn't work. We need Bluetooth to work. My alt is, I want Bluetooth. I think that would be good, but it never connects. I need it to work. So let's alt that. Let's figure it out. And then delete. Even though I said I want to control social media, I think I might delete social media. I control it by deleting it. Look, I think that there's so much joy and discovery that I have. You know what I mean? I do enjoy keeping up with things or people or seeing that Colbert clip that I missed or whatever. But I think I am so sad for a generation of people that don't have what I had, which was not having it. It's so scary. I'm like, I don't want people looking at their phones so much. I just want that to go away. How would you promote the show, though? I think if we deleted social media, I think there would be so much more interest and appreciation of journalism. I think people would have to go back and read the art section. How dare you ask that question, actually? How dare you? We're going to get more subscribers. I think that's how it would change. If there's no social media, where are you going to get your entertainment and see a really beautiful couch? it's going to be coverage in traditional media. You know, it's not going to be in your explore page. You're going to Architectural Digest. Yes, you are. Another fabulous Condé Nast brand. Thank you for that reference. That's right. You're reading Talk of the Town of the New Yorker. You're getting on Wired. You're looking at Architectural Digest in print. You know what I mean? I'm like, you're helping Condé Nast in any way you can. And that's really what this is all about, isn't it? It's what you get up in the morning to do. I know that. Thank you both so much. This was so much fun. The series finale of Hacks will be out Thursday, May 28th on HBO. Thank you both. The Big Interview is a production of Wired and Kaleidoscope content. This episode was produced by our showrunner Anne-Marie Fertoli. Kate Osborne is our executive producer. Music and mixing by Pran Bandy. This episode was fact-checked by Matt Giles. And I am, of course, your host, Katie Drummond, Wired's Global Editorial Director. Check back here on Thursday for the latest episode of Uncanny Valley, where Wired's writers and editors add you to their Slack channel. to help you understand how the economy takes shape in the real world. You'll be smarter every time you listen. And these days, that's priceless. Listen to Marketplace on your favorite podcast app.