How do you follow up an awards run in which you exceeded nearly everyone’s expectations? Clearly, if you’re the team behind Hacks, you aim even higher.
Season four of the reigning best comedy series Emmy champ ends tonight, and with a fifth season recently announced, audiences can rest assured that the cliffhangers we’re left with for Jean Smart’s Deborah Vance and Hannah Einbinder’s Ava Daniels will be resolved before too long.
The real question is whether Hacks can repeat its Emmy feat from last year, winning its category’s top prize, another lead actress trophy for Smart (her fourth for the role) and a second writing trophy for series creators Paul W. Downs, Lucia Aniello, and Jen Statsky. We can start, at least, by knowing where the show is competing. Ahead of nominations voting, which kicks off on June 12, HBO has shared its 30 Hacks Emmy submissions in 20 different categories exclusively with The Ankler — let's break it all down below.
ON A ROLL Jean Smart, coming for her fourth Emmy for Hacks. (Jake Giles Netter/Max)
You can probably already guess several of these. Hacks is being submitted for outstanding comedy series once again, with a lead actress submission for Smart, and the season’s ninth episode, “A Slippery Slope,” submitted in both the writing and directing categories (Downs, Aniello, and Statsky wrote this penultimate episode, with Aniello as director). Einbinder, Megan Stalter, Downsand Carl Clemons-Hopkins are all being submitted in the supporting categories, even though Clemons-Hopkins’ character, Marcus, had a less substantial role this year.
Though several actors have shown up as themselves on Hacks this season — including Emmy winners like Carol Burnett and Jimmy Kimmel — HBO is only submitting actors who played fictional characters. Kaitlin Olson, who will also be contending for a lead actress in a drama nomination for her series High Potential, is aiming for her third guest actress nomination as Deborah’s daughter, DJ, with past Hacks nominees Jane Adams and Christopher McDonald also contending again for their recurring parts. Other guest stars on the ballot for the show include Robby Hoffmann, a real breakout this season as Kayla and Jimmy’s oddball assistant, and Tony Goldwyn, who joined Hacks last season as network head Bob Lipka. Goldwyn, wildly enough, has never been nominated for an Emmy, and this seems like a prime opportunity to fix that.
However, the guest nomination I’m rooting for the hardest is Julianne Nicholson as the unpredictable Dance Mom (“Mary Alice, what did you do?”) — a viral hit brought in as a people-pleasing recurring segment on Deborah’s show — who takes on a whole complicated life of her own. Nicholson is also in the running in the drama supporting actress category for her role as a steely billionaire on Paradise, a character a million miles away from unhinged Dance Mom. How fun would it be to see her get nominated for both?
Dance Mom’s choreographer, Corey Baker, is among the many below-the-line submissions for Hacks and will contend in the relatively new category of outstanding choreography for scripted programming. (The Emmys divided the choreography category in two — one for scripted and one for variety or unscripted programming — before the 2019 ceremony.) I couldn’t even tell you who Baker’s main competition is — last year, the category was the sole nomination and win for HBO’s otherwise reviled The Idol — so maybe that will be an easy Hacks victory.
Hacks will be submitted in 11 additional below-the-line categories, most of them from three specific episodes this season: “I Love LA,” chronicling the first episode of Deborah’s late-night show and ending with a moving tribute to the victims of L.A.’s January wildfires; “A Slippery Slope”; and, intriguingly, tonight’s season finale, “Heaven,” which, without spoiling anything, is a real departure from the usual style and tone of Hacks. Four episodes are being submitted in the picture editing category, with editors Susan Vaill, Joseph Ettinger, Jon Philpot, and Rob Paglia all in contention. The rest of the contenders are listed below.
Casting:Linda Lowy, Morgan Smith
Cinematography for a Series (Half-Hour): Adam Bricker, “I Love LA”
Production Design for a Narrative Program (Half-Hour): Rob Tokarz, Jeanine Ringer, Jennifer Lukehart, “A Slippery Slope”
Contemporary Hairstyling: Aubrey Marie, Jennifer Bell, Becca Weber, Marva Stokes, Sade Stafford, “I Love LA”
Contemporary Makeup, Non-Prosthetic: Debra Schrey, Erin Good Rosenmann, Rachel Galey, Denise DellaValle, Keith Sayer, “I Love LA”
Music Composition for a Series (Original Dramatic Score): Carlos Rafael Rivera, David Stal, “A Slippery Slope”
Music Supervision: Matt Biffa, “I Love LA”
Sound Editing for a Comedy or Drama Series and Animation: Brett Hinton, Daniel Coleman, Ben Rauscher, Owen Granich-Young, Jordan Aldinger, Sam Munoz, Noel Vought, Adam DeCoster, Ben Zales, Brendan Leong: “I Love LA”
Sound Mixing for a Comedy or Drama Series and Animation: John W. Cook II, James Parnell, Jim Lakin
How many of these nominations is Hacks likely to secure? The show earned 16 last season, and with the halo of its comedy series win behind it, I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see more categories added to its total. Last year, The Bear set the record for nominations for a comedy series with 23. Might this be an opportunity for Hacks to surpass it?
FRENCH TWIST Aubry Dullin and Zoey Deutch in Richard Linklater’s Nouvelle Vague.(Goodfellas/Netflix)
WhenChris Feil and I recorded our Cannes chat earlier this week, we had a hunch that the likeliest buyer for Richard Linklater’s Cannes contender, Nouvelle Vague, would be Netflix, which was on the ground in France but had yet to make a major pickup. Not long after we recorded, the news was confirmed — Netflix acquired the U.S. rights to the film for $4 million, an apparent record for a French-language film but a small amount compared to, say, the $24 million Mubi paid for the rights to the Jennifer Lawrence-starring Die, My Love just a few days earlier. The price even substantially lower than what Netflix itself paid to pick up the lyrical indie Train Dreams at Sundance earlier this year.
There’s not always a correlation between how much a film costs and how much a studio cares about it, particularly when it comes to pickups from Sundance, an arena notorious for overpaying and eventual disappointment. Netflix may have gotten a deal on the well-reviewed, crowd-pleasing Nouvelle Vague because competitors like Mubi and Neon had already picked up so much, or possibly because of the streamer’s relationship with Linklater, thanks to Hit Man and Apollo 10 1/2. Netflix didn’t get back to me with more information about the Nouvelle Vague acquisition, so we can only guess.
Based on the warm buzz from Cannes, though, I’ll remain hopeful that Nouvelle Vague, about the making of Jean-Luc Godard’s seminal 1960 French New Wave classic Breathless, will follow the awards season path of Mank and Maestro, the two previous black-and-white Netflix movies about famous real-world artists. Notices were particularly strong for Zoey Deutch, the cast’s sole American, who plays Godard’s indelible star Jean Seberg. Breathless was a star-is-born moment for Seberg, while Deutch has been bubbling up with well-received performances for around a decade now (including in the beloved Netflix romcom Set It Up, opposite none other than Hit Man’s Glen Powell). All the same, Nouvelle Vague could be a significant breakthrough moment for the 30-year-old star.
🎧 Palme Today, Oscar Tomorrow?Katey Rich breaks down post-Cannes Film Fest buzz with Chris Feil. Plus, Severance star Britt Lower & creator Dan Erickson take Katey inside the dystopian drama
