Thursdays are great for many reasons: they herald the coming weekend, they own Thanksgiving, and they’ve become an appointment-TV viewing night thanks to the Season 4 return of Lucia Aniello, Paul W. Downs, and Jen Statsky’s laugh-out-loud funny—and increasingly psychologically complex—Max series Hacks.
If you’re a proper Hacks fan, you likely need no introduction to the show’s central duo of glamorously aging comedy diva Deborah Vance (Jean Smart) and her beleaguered millennial bisexual writer and frenemy, Ava Daniels (Hannah Einbinder), but there’s a whole new crop of cast members in the Hacks-verse this season—from Michaela Watkins as an overbearing HR rep to Robby Hoffman as…herself, basically. Below, find everything you need to know about the characters who make up the world of Hacks Season 4.
Team Deborah
Deborah’s personal assistant (whose claim to fame was once nabbing Deborah her beloved Verdure tapestries on eBay) is doing his best to become an “LA gay” after making the move from Las Vegas for Deborah’s new gig. Naturally, that includes getting drunk with his boss at a fancy restaurant and luring her into a crowded gay bar.
Josefina is Deborah’s estate manager, but she’s also the closest thing Deborah’s increasingly wild world has to a den mother. In LA, we see her attend the taping of the first episode of Deborah’s talk show, with Abdoo telling Us Weekly of her role: “This season, you can see how worried Josefina is for Deborah because Deborah has a ton of pressure and is trying to be very controlling. And Josefina is also controlling.”
I’m devastated to say that Deborah’s longtime advisor and COO isn’t around as much this season, given that he’s taking Deborah’s promotion to late night to focus on his own career—but I get it! (Even if Deborah doesn’t entirely.)
Deborah’s psychic, who has been brought onto Late Night with Deborah Vance as a consulting producer, because…of course.
Kiki—Deborah’s former personal blackjack dealer—now works at a casino in Vegas, which means she’s not around much during the show’s Season 4 foray to LA, but at least we got to spend some time with her in Episode 3. Still the best person on this or any show, though!
Is it sad that Deborah’s daughter is listed last here? Kind of, but it also suits the two women’s strained relationship. DJ is an up-and-coming jewelry designer (depending on who you ask), the wife of an MMA fighter, and an expecting mom, and although we haven’t seen her so far in Season 4, here’s hoping that will change!
The Agents
Often teased for straying from the macho-douchebag Hollywood-agent archetype, eternally sweet Jimmy has a long history with Deborah—his late father was her agent before he was—yet he is no less available to his younger client, Ava. Watching him genuinely bond with his onetime assistant Kayla as they go into business for themselves is also one of this season’s sweetest arcs.
Oh, sweet Kayla, how could I possibly describe thee? Kayla is a Hollywood nepo baby extraordinaire, with all the deranged confidence and frowned-upon-by-HR eccentricity to prove it. (Though they were “around each other as kids” because of their influential parents, Jimmy went out of his way to clarify in a previous season that he never changed her diapers.) Still, Kayla’s girlbossing hard this season, finding Ava an apartment (at the mall, but still) and getting shows picked up via text.
When you’re Kayla Schaefer, it makes perfect sense to hire someone as random as Randi to be your assistant. A brand-new Angeleno who, in her own words, has “never been nowhere. Last week I was a Hasidic Lubavitch Jew living in Crown Heights, New York. Now I’m in LA, I’m gay and probably an atheist,” the part was written specifically for Hoffman. Here’s hoping that her real-life wife, Gabby Windey, makes a cameo later in the season.
The Late Night with Deborah Vance Staff
I’m so sorry, but until the show delineates the various personalities of the writers a little bit more, I’m going to lump them all in together. So far, all we know is that they love to party in Vegas, they’re kind of snitches (I mean, good to be honest with HR, but still!), they’re wiped from working long hours in the runup to the premiere of Late Night with Deborah Vance, and they do not want to party with Ava at Bar Lubitsch. Fair enough!
Rob is the executive producer of Late Night with Deborah Vance, and in the unfortunate position of being stuck in the middle of Deborah and Ava’s feud. He also has a husband, if the photo of them getting married in his office can be believed (although, as he puts it coldly, “You don’t know who that man is”).
Talk about being stuck between Deborah and Ava! That’s literally Stacey’s whole role as the HR representative assigned to mediate any and all interactions between the two embattled coworkers—and I can’t imagine an actor better suited to the part than Watkins.
The Network Brass
This network executive responsible for Late Night with Deborah Vance’s success is jovial yet mean in the way that only a woman who’s worked in Hollywood for too long and has seen way too much can be. We know that she has a really nice house, a kid who likes gummy worms, that she may or may not have had an affair with Jimmy’s dad, and that she’s putting a lot of pressure on the show to be a success.
This media-conglomerate CEO was pivotal in getting Deborah the late-night job, and he also…slept with her at the end of Season 3, despite being married, which Ava is using as blackmail. Never change, powerful men of Hollywood!
Everyone Else
This legend of laughs has established her place within the Hacks-verse as a friend of Marcus’s mother’s, and praise be to any available God, we get to see her again (in a strip club, no less! Commenting on Deborah’s ample bosom!) in Season 4.
Oh, Hacks writers, you are definitely seeing heaven for bringing the categorically insane, gun-toting, news-ignoring mayor of Las Vegas back in Season 4, even if it’s only for a brief cameo to get Deborah out of a DUI charge.
Deborah runs into the barrier-breaking comedian at a fancy Beverly Hills cardiologist in Episode 4 (likely place for her to be, at 91 years of age!), and watching the famously buttoned-up Deborah fangirl over one of her comedy icons makes for an extremely lovely moment on a show that seldom shows its tough-as-nails protagonist’s soft side.
It stands to reason that Deborah would want to hire some time-tested writers full of institutional comedy knowledge for her writer’s room, which explains the presence of real-life Late Night with David Letterman head writer and three-time Emmy winner Markoe (when she’s not busy in France, of course).
Of course this TikTok star and internet comedian wants a picture with Deborah. Know your place, buddy!
Given the onscreen tribute to wildfire victims, survivors, and first responders that the show closed Episode 4 with, seeing Newman play the piano at the end of Deborah’s first late-night show was particularly touching. We really do love LA!
