A Love Letter to Comedy with Paul W. Downs and Lucia Aniello (‘Hacks’)

Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso

Lemonada Media

Society & Culture, Film Interviews, Tv & Film

4.8 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 19 May 2024

⏱️ 78 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Hacks co-creators Paul W. Downs and Lucia Aniello, who are also husband and wife, have been performing and writing together for over a decade. Today, we discuss the road to season three of their hit HBO series.

At the top, they unpack the makings of their creative partnership (8:20), how they chronicled the evolving state of comedy in Hacks (14:38), and Jerry Seinfeld’s recent comments about the medium (20:05). Then, we walk through Paul and Lucia’s origin stories (33:45), their meeting in an improv class at UCB (38:00), and the New York comedy pipeline they fell into with Broad City (46:59).

On the back-half, we talk about the making of their feature film debut Rough Night (49:35), the road trip where they first imagined the premise for Hacks (53:25), their guiding principle while creating the show (59:10), and their journey into parenthood (1:05:48). To close, a piece of advice on art-making today (1:11:30).

For questions, comments, or to join our mailing list, reach me at [email protected]. This conversation was recorded at Spotify Studios. Clips courtesy of HBO.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Smart journalism, fascinating topics.
0:03.0	Words that describe CNN's podcast, The Assignment with Audie Cornish.
0:07.0	Last year, the Army missed its recruitment goal.
0:10.0	It had 65,000 spots to fill and came up 10,000 short of that target.
0:16.0	Why is it so hard to recruit?
0:18.0	How's the Pentagon responding?
0:19.0	And how are the voices of service members on social media shifting the balance?
0:24.7	Listen to the assignment with Audie Cornish wherever you get your podcasts. Pushkin. The This is talk easy. I'm San Francisco filmmakers Lucia and Yellow and Paul W Downs.
1:17.0	Together they are the co-creators of Hacks, the Emmy Award winning program that has recently returned for its third season.
1:25.0	For those unfamiliar, the show is centered around an unlikely mentorship between Deborah Vance,
1:30.0	a legendary Las Vegas comedian, and Ava Daniels, a Gen Z comedy writer with all the expected
1:37.8	trappings of being 25 years old.
1:40.5	They're reunited again in this season, this time with the express purpose of landing Deborah her own late night talk show.
1:47.0	Here's a little bit from the trailer of season 3 of Hacks. Max. Yes.
2:08.0	Deborah's here. You're here?
2:09.0	She hired new writers.
2:11.0	You know what?
2:12.0	She hired two, which is actually a compliment, isn't it? She had to replace you with two people.
2:17.0	Wow.
2:18.0	I'm not ready to see her. I was perfectly content being a gorgeous Vegas comic and then you come along and you make me want more for myself.
2:25.0	So you're mad at me for pushing you to be better?
2:27.0	Yes! That was a clip from the new season of hacks. Two new episodes drop every
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Lemonada Media, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Lemonada Media and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.