How Many Showrunners Does It Take to Write a Hit Comedy?

In 2009, Lucia Aniello decided it was time to introduce her two comedy crushes. She’d recently started dating Paul W. Downs, now her husband, whom she met in an Upright Citizens Brigade class, and struck up a budding friendship with Jen Statsky, the only other woman in her sketch group. One fortuitous Gramercy Park coffee date and 15 years later, the trio have what appears to be one of the higher-functioning creative partnerships in entertainment — despite making a show about one that couldn’t be more chaotic. “In a way, Hacks and everything we do is an excuse to be together — and, best case, for somebody else to pay for lunch,” Aniello says of their comedy about an aging stand-up (Jean Smart) seeking reinvention and the Gen Z writing partner (Hannah Einbinder) who often serves as her foil. “I think the only thing we love more than the show is each other.”

They haven’t been alone in loving their co-creation. When it premiered in 2021, Hacks became the first true breakout for Max (né HBO Max), earning numerous accolades including a writing Emmy for the threesome and two consecutive best actress trophies for Smart. But the path to the third season, premiering May 2, hasn’t been easy. Production was halted twice, first by a health scare for Smart and then the Hollywood strikes. Sitting on the patio outside their old writers room on the Universal Studios backlot in April, the trio acknowledged that two years off the air can be a lifetime for streaming audiences. But they’re also confident in what they have: one of the few comedies left on TV that’s actually a comedy.

Hacks flirts with being a Hollywood satire without ever going all the way, like Entourage or The Comeback. How conscious are you of that balancing act, because I suspect the writers room has a lot to say about the industry?

PAUL W. DOWNS Yeah, we’ve always said this is a showbiz-adjacent show — in that these two people are outcasts in Las Vegas. You see the ways in which they’ve been maligned by the industry, and we want it to be a peek behind the curtain in a different way than you’d seen before. Because it is fun, and we do that. We satirize things that we experience in the industry but always, hopefully, in a way that services this story of this comedian in her third act.

Lucia just had a very telling laugh.

LUCIA ANIELLO It’s just that it’s really brutal, those telling experiences. Because it’s an interesting time in our industry right now. It’s scary stuff.

JEN STATSKY To even be making a comedy today, we feel really lucky. For some reason, there seem to be fewer and fewer of them. Even anecdotally, a friend told me the other day that some young writers he knew ­— writers who are on staff at comedies — had their agents tell them, “You should really write a drama.” Comedy is not being upheld as the necessary, important thing that it is. And this show, in many ways, is a love letter to making comedy and the bond people share when they laugh together.

Barring some bicoastal work, you all essentially moved from New York to Los Angeles in 2011 — which, in hindsight, were the last days of the old TV model. When did you notice the shift?

DOWNS We all started making [Broad City] on Comedy Central, which is not around now.

ANIELLO Now that is something that needs to be discussed. Comedy Central doesn’t do any more original [scripted] content, but that was the place where a young writer, director, actor and stand-up would get their start.

DOWNS Broad City, Inside Amy Schumer, Workaholics, Detroiters, Key & Peele …

ANIELLO That’s where you got your first paycheck. You figured it out, and then you went off to something else — like Jordan Peele going off to make all these amazing movies. That pipeline being closed is so bad for comedy, especially in New York. It’s like when there’s an abortion ban … 18 years later, there’s a spike in crime. There’s already a lack of young, cutting-edge comedy because Comedy Central doesn’t exist anymore.

DOWNS And it’s hard to be a stand-up when venues are closing.

ANIELLO Just for Laughs doesn’t exist anymore.

STATSKY And when there aren’t comedies being made on TV, there aren’t writers rooms where you can get your first staff job and then work your way up. There’s a real lack of a training ground. Losing that is very short-sighted.

What are the alterative comedy incubators right now?

ANIELLO There are none. It’s front-facing videos only. It’s dark.

STATSKY Front-facing videos are great, and I love TikTok — don’t print that! (Laughs) — but it is siloing everyone. Comedy is about collaboration. The thing we had at UCB was working with others and learning from them. Now, there’s just less of a comedy community.

There’s always the concern that a long break will impact a show’s viewership. What are you doing to make sure you don’t lose the goodwill you’ve already earned?

DOWNS It’s hard. We feel very lucky that [Max] is really supporting the show. But you’re right. How do you turn your audience back on? And attention span seems so short.

STATSKY In this merging of the creative business and tech, there are still so many things to work out. I believe there are great executives, and we have them on the show. They love storytelling and got into this business because they wanted to make good TV. But with the tech industry, there have been tremendous growing pains. So as difficult as it is for creators in this moment, I think it’s really difficult for executives who just want to be helping creatives and be at the whims of the computer.

Three showrunners is a lot. How do you divvy up responsibilities and solve inevitable disagreements?

ANIELLO People assume, “That’s the story person, this person does the jokes and that one handles visuals and casting.” It isn’t that way, and thank God. We have to make a lot of decisions, and we discuss every single one of them together.

STATSKY It makes the show better to have all three brains weighing in — and it wouldn’t be fair to the people who work for us if we were all giving different answers.

DOWNS If two of us feel strongly about something, one way or the other, the third is the tiebreaker.

Paul is also a supporting castmember. What’s your impulse — writing more or less for yourself?

STATSKY He always wants to cut his funniest lines, and we’re like, “You’re crazy.”

ANIELLO The editors have to battle him, too. Our editors are like, “Stop, Paul.”

DOWNS We really try and keep this show lean. We lose our darlings all the time. Often I’m like, “Just cut my thing.” But our editors sometimes have veto power. And as a creator-showrunner, I pitch less for my character.

Some viewers misinterpreted the season two finale as a series finale. How do you approach the lifespan of this show? Is there an ideal number of seasons?

DOWNS We pitched the very last scene in the very last episode when we were pitching the show, and we’ve always had a pretty clear vision of what the tentpoles of each season would be.

ANIELLO It’s five seasons.

DOWNS Five would be ideal.

Is Jean on board? This show has been huge for her, but she’s also had a tumultuous couple of years — losing her husband and having a heart procedure.

STATSKY I think so. She’s also somebody who’s like, “Let’s not dilute what it is. Let’s make sure it stays high-quality.”

DOWNS When we first met with her, we talked about this plan without being too specific. She and Hannah both read the scripts as they are written. They don’t want us to say, “OK, here’s what’s happening this season.”

Jen officiated your wedding, right?

ANIELLO And I wasn’t invited to hers. (Laughs.)

STATSKY That is so misleading! I got married the way DJ [Kaitlin Olson’s character] gets married on the show: in a car in Las Vegas. The only person at my wedding was my husband [comedy writer Travis Helwig].

How did you handle speech edits when the wedding party is made up of your main collaborators?

STATSKY They didn’t read my officiating, Travis did. But I looked over their vows — not to be like, “That’s not funny!”

DOWNS Well, you did say to take the C-word out of mine. (Laughs.) No, she was there to make sure we didn’t tell the same jokes or stories and that we weren’t trying to be funny in the same way.

ANIELLO Because that very easily could have happened.

This story first appeared in the April 24 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.