Paul was saying that a lot of times people tell him, like, “Oh, this is the show I can watch with my mom, and she loves it, too.” Comedy is so subjective, but any sort of art that’s not including, or alienating a huge group of people-I just would rather not. I love “Hacks” because I feel like there’s something for everyone in the show. I like to hope that people of all ages can be on the inside of the joke. A sort of one-woman show in the eighties, like an older woman doing a Vegas-style one-woman show, is kind of my inspiration. I feel like I draw a lot from older comedians, anyway. My hope is always that my stuff can be understood by people of all ages. I’m curious if you see your own work in those terms-if you feel like you’re on one side or the other of that divide. “Hacks” is very much about this generational divide in comedy, with Deborah Vance representing the old-school, punchline-heavy Joan Rivers school of comedy, and then Ava is the less crowd-pleasing, more jagged millennial slash Gen Z kind of comedy. She’s what the Internet would now call a “ nepo baby.” I think she sees them as co-workers, and she lives in her own world and doesn’t even realize how privileged she is. She sees Jimmy as-they’re like equals, even though Jimmy is her boss. She’s kind of a party fashionista slash silly rich girl whose dad owns the company, so she has this privilege and power.
Can you describe who Kayla is?Īva has this manager, and Kayla is the manager’s assistant, and she’s a bad assistant. You play Kayla, who is an essential part of the show. “Hacks” centers on this old-school Vegas headliner comedian named Deborah Vance, played by the truly amazing Jean Smart, who hires a twentysomething comedian named Ava, played by Hannah Einbinder, to punch up her act and be her assistant. Then, suddenly, Stalter jumped from the Internet to television, playing the worst assistant in the world on the hit HBO show “ Hacks.” She recently spoke with The New Yorker Radio Hour about her early online successes, including her viral “ Hi, gay” video landing her “Hacks” role and playing Helen Keller’s mother in “The Miracle Worker.” The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Her characters embody the full spectrum of the socially awkward and clueless. Stalter shot on her phone, and the props and costumes were whatever she could find around the house. On social media, she became known as the queen of quarantine.
With everybody at home and on the Internet, she started to find a big audience, racking up millions of views. Stalter began producing them at a rapid clip, as very short character sketches. When the pandemic hit, those videos became her only outlet. Meg Stalter plays “a bad assistant” on HBO Max’s “Hacks.” Photograph by Barry King / Alamyīefore the pandemic, Megan Stalter was an unknown comedian performing wherever she could, trying to break into acting and posting occasional videos on Twitter and TikTok.