Stars including Jean Smart and creator Jen Statsky look back as the comedy takes its final bow.

Behind the scenes of Hacks’ final season: Photos, favorite memories, goat milking, and more (exclusive)

Stars including Jean Smart and creator Jen Statsky look back as the comedy takes its final bow.

By Gerrad Hall

Gerrad Hall

Gerrad Hall is an editorial director at **, overseeing movie, awards, and music coverage. He is also host of The Awardist podcast, and has cohosted EW’s live Oscars, Emmys, SAG, and Grammys red carpet shows. He has appeared on Good Morning America, The Talk, Access Hollywood, Extra!, and other talk shows, delivering the latest news on pop culture and entertainment.

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May 29, 2026 6:44 p.m. ET

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Hannah Einbinder, Cherry Jones, Jean Smart, and Leslie Bibb on the set of 'Hacks'. Credit:

Kenny Laubbacher/HBO Max

- *Hacks* stars including Jean Smart, Carl Clemons-Hopkins, and Kaitlin Olson share their favorite memories from the show.

- Co-creator Jen Statsky explains the time she accidentally trespassed in someone's home while filming on location.

- The team shares what being part of the show has meant to them.

**This article contains spoilers about the series finale of *Hacks*.**

It's the end of an era.

After five seasons, the Emmy-winning comedy *Hacks* wrapped up, with legendary comedian Deborah Vance (Jean Smart) and her writer and friend Ava Daniels (Hannah Eindinder) walking off into the sunset of the Las Vegas strip, laughing together as they work on joke punchlines for Deborah's next comedy special, which will dig into her battle with cancer.

While the series finale started with the exciting opening of her new casino, the Diva, with Marcus (Carl Clemons-Hopkins), it quickly took a turn when she revealed her medical diagnosis and plans to end her life at a right-to-die facility in Switzerland. But after an emotional trip to Paris with Ava, she eventually realizes that she has more jokes to tell, more writing and creating to do with Ava.

The season was full of highlights, including Deborah and her daughter, DJ (Kaitlin Olson), going on a celebrity edition of *The Amazing Race*, Deborah getting stuck in a glass cube of the Las Vegas strip after an electrical blackout, Deborah mounting a show at Madison Square Garden... which turned into a much bigger event in Central Park, Deborah and Ava posing as a couple while spending the weekend with fellow a fellow comedian (Cherry Jones) and her partner (Leslie Bibb), Deborah falling for a young rock star (Christopher Briney), Jimmy (Paul W. Downs) and Kayla (Megan Stalter) going on the road to find a comedian to do a residency at the Diva, and the two losing their agency only to take over the one their fathers started with they discover that Kayla's dad has been committing fraud.

Below, check out exclusive behind-the-scenes season 5 photos, and the cast and co-creator Jen Statsky exclusively share with ** some of their favorite on-set memories and behind-the-scenes stories, and what the show has meant to them.

Favorite on-set memory

**JEAN SMART:** There's *The Amazing Race*. There's Paris and those moments with Hannah. The thing I loved about the season was that, especially on the heels of season 4, where it got kind of dark, season 5 got back to just being silly for a great deal of it, which was so much fun — and having back so many of the guest stars coming back too was really cool. And of course, the Montecito episode, which I call "The M Word," for Montecito. It was just the four of us gals on location for four days, so it felt like we were shooting a little film, and it was just a really fun world to create for a few days. Also, the one where I fall for the young rock star, because we'd never seen that side of Deborah. She was like she was in high school, just that giddy ... And that never goes away. It doesn't matter how old you are. And it was fun to see Deborah like that and then also to share it with Ava in the kitchen, jumping up and down, giggling, and talking about making out with him and then raiding the refrigerator.

**JEN STATSKY: **When we were shooting the finale, that last shot of Ava and Deborah walking down the Vegas Strip, when we transitioned from the Eiffel Tower to Vegas, the Eiffel Tower of Vegas, and then down to them, we knew the song, we had picked it out, we were playing it on set that day. There was a day that was cloudy, and we were like, *no, no, it needs to be the perfect weather for this, because this is about them walking off into the sunset*, *how you will see these characters forever in your mind together. *So we came back the next day, and it was perfect weather. It felt really full circle. We don't take it for granted how rare it is to get to creatively tell the story exactly as you want to tell it, and getting that shot that day was like, *Wow, we did it. We got to do the thing.*

**CHRISTOPHER McDONALD:** Simply too many to choose one, but my mind goes to the flirtatious scene in my wine cellar in Season 1. It was one of my favorites – the script was so funny, and Jean and I got so close and had such a laugh. It was one of the most joyous times.

**ROSE ABDOO:** One of my very favorite on-set memories was actually my very last day of filming. It was the hotel Olympics in episode 5, sitting in stands in the arena with Carl, Mark [Indelicato], and Jean talking and laughing about how fancy and fun it was to stay at the Fontainebleau in Las Vegas. It was very bittersweet because we all knew it was a series wrap on the three of us that day, and it really felt like a wonderful, cozy way to conclude the five seasons of working for Deborah Vance.

My other favorite memory was when I was at my home cleaning my real fridge and getting called into work on a day I wasn't scheduled. The scene that day was Josefina cleaning the Deborah Vance fridge! I loved it because it was a scene with Hannah. We were reminiscing that in season 1 when we met, I'm listing her beverage choices, and here we were five seasons later, so comfortable tossing all of Ava's all-natural food! There was never enough time for how much I wanted to spend on camera with both Hannah and Jean! I loved telling Paul, Lucia, and Jen that day the lines really blurred between Josefina and me.

**POPPY LIU:** Jesse McCartney performing. The first couple takes, me and Mark were ecstatically clinging to each other, and Lucia had to give us the note to be less Poppy and Mark and more Kiki and Damien, and we were like *right right*. But we were just so in the moment because Jesse McCartney was performing "Beautiful Soul" LIVE IN FRONT OF US!!! Very hard acting in this scene, to appear more chill than how I felt.

**CARL CLEMONS-HOPKINS:** Filming "The Deborah Vance Christmas Spectacular" (season 3, episode 7). It felt like recess. Everyone was there to play and have fun. Even Santa. :)

**ROBBY HOFFMAN:** When they ordered a pizza truck to set up, it was literally the best pizza I've ever had. Forget the name, if anyone reading this who was also on set remembers!

**KAITLIN OLSON: **I don't think I can beat trying to milk a goat [in the *Amazing Race* episode] who couldn't get far enough away from me while Jean was screaming at the top of her lungs for me to get it right. (I did. I milked that goat.)

What the show means to them

**STATSKY:** It's so important to me. The show has changed my life in so many ways, but I think what's nice is that, at the end of the day, the show was born out of Paul, Lucia, and I just loving to laugh together and loving to create together, and it came from an idea the three of us had while we were working on something else. And it ballooned to this thing that involves so many people and was still at its heart about celebrating comedy and celebrating the joy you get when you get to create and laugh with your people. The way it started is what it always was about, all the way through, and it's the way it ends. It's what you see at the end, too; it's Deborah and Ava laughing together, creating together.

**McDONALD:** It has been such a wonderful gift to be a part of this brilliantly written, 'd'amazing' show! I will miss it dearly, and long live HACKS!

**LIU:** For those of us who have been around since season 1, we're talking six years of our life connected to this show. We've seen each other through numerous highs and lows of life: pregnancies and births, strikes and award shows, marriages and breakups. So many life milestones happened during the time I've been on *Hacks*. It's not just a job I had; this show and these people have cemented themselves into the DNA of my life story. Being on *Hacks* is longer than any relationship I've ever been in!

**ABDOO: **It has been so fulfilling to be a part of this extremely thought-provoking, funny, successful show about how different generations relate to each other. I am particularly proud of the fact that I was a part of yet another super show with female leads!

**CLEMONS-HOPKINS:** Being on this show has meant a lot for me. It's been a fiercely impactful creative opportunity, as well as a means to help provide for my family during extremely difficult times. I'm also proud to have been part of such a culturally necessary piece that has both entertained and challenged audiences for the better.

**HOFFMAN:** Changed my life.

**OLSON:** I got to work with a comedy icon and be a part of a show that will be considered one of the greatest comedies of my life.

Behind-the-scenes fun

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**STATSKY:** The funniest behind-the-scenes moment, which is only a moment for me, was the day we were shooting in Altadena at Deborah Vance's mansion, and I was [in] the private bathroom was at a house across the street. I went there and used their bathroom, and then rolled a call in the living room, and then was told a couple hours later that that wasn't the bathroom and I had just trespassed and entered into a man's home while he was in the kitchen making breakfast and used his bathroom. Which, in retrospect, he was incredibly kind about it. I'll always remember that, because, man, really messed that up.

**HOFFMAN:** Had a lot of fun behind the scenes with this flashlight (above)!

Original Article on Source

Source: “EW Comedy”