Paul W. Downs and Lucia Aniello on Comedy Partnership
This Week on the Talk Easy Podcast with Sam Fragoso
Illustration by Krishna Bala Shenoi.
Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso is a weekly series of intimate conversations with artists, authors, and politicians. It’s a podcast where people sound like people. New episodes air every Sunday, distributed by Pushkin Industries.
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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, how they chronicled the evolving state of comedy in Hacks, and Jerry Seinfeld’s recent comments about the medium. Then, we walk through Paul and Lucia’s origin stories, their meeting in an improv class at UCB, and the New York comedy pipeline they fell into with Broad City.
On the back-half, we talk about the making of their feature film debut Rough Night, the road trip where they first imagined the premise for Hacks, their guiding principle while creating the show, and their journey into parenthood. To close, a piece of advice on art-making today.
Subscribe and download the episode, wherever you get your podcasts!
From the episode:
Sam Fragoso: You mentioned Seinfeld earlier, speaking of a big comedy star, he recently appeared on The New Yorker Radio Hour where–
Paul W. Downs: We’re talking Jerry?
SF: We’re talking Jerry.
Lucia Aniello: (laughs) Hi, Jerry.
SF: –where he was asked about the state of the industry and where he sees comedy in this moment. Should we take a listen?
[Jerry Seinfeld]
SF: Paul, Lucia?
PWD: Here’s the upside of what he said, or what I think is correct, which is— there is no monoculture, there is no “must-see TV,” there’s no thing that we’re all watching because it’s the only thing. But, in a way, that isn’t because of the P.C. police, or the left, whatever he’s talking about…
SF: Quote, “the extreme left and P.C. crap.”
PWD: The extreme left and P.C. crap. That’s not why there are less comedies.
LA: I’m like, have you seen an episode of “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia”? Have you seen, sorry, “Hacks”?
PWD: To answer him, “Where is the comedy?” It is on Max and it is “Hacks”. So, he can stream it at any time. The great thing is, “Where am I going to see it after work?” Well, you could see it after work or before work. But I also don’t think that there’s this thing about, “Oh, you can’t make comedy because you’re going to be policed and you can’t say things.”
LA: Absolutely. I mean, we’ve never once gotten a note about something’s going to offend anybody. Of course we’ve had conversations in the room about, like, “Is this going to make somebody feel bad?” And I think his point is that somebody is probably thinking that someone with dyed hair and a nose ring is going to say, “this makes me feel bad,” but I’m like… well, no. I just don’t feel like there’s an oversensitivity on the extreme left. If anything, there’s an oversensitivity on extreme anything.
PWD: That’s the thing. On either side, you can have criticism. And the fact is—and we say this in our show—you can be rich and famous and make money because you’re a comedian, and people can have their reactions, and that’s ok. And the fact is, they’re entitled to those reactions. And you should also shift the way in which you are making comedy based on where culture is, because quite frankly, there are a lot of things in history that we did, whether as a people or as a country, that no longer works.
SF: Can you rank them for us?
LA: 1492.
PWD: Oh my gosh.
