For the Cut’s In Her Shoes podcast, editor-in-chief Lindsay Peoples speaks with Hacks co-creator and showrunner jenstatsky about her writing process, creating authentic female characters, and the Me Too movement’s impact on bringing better stories to TV
Photo-Illustration: by The Cut; Photo: Andrew Law On this episode of the Cut’s In Her Shoes podcast, editor-in-chief Lindsay Peoples speaks with Hacks co-creator and showrunner Jen Statsky. A comedian and TV writer-producer, Statsky is also known for her work on The Good Place, Parks and Recreation, and Broad City. She talks about working in television, dealing with imposter syndrome, and getting discovered on Twitter back before it was what it is today .
Jen: Yeah, I think that growing up, I didn’t know really that comedy writing was the thing I wanted to do. I didn’t even really know that was a job, but looking back now, I realize that I did know at a very young age. I watched a lot of TV growing up and I became obsessed with the old sitcoms, like watching Nick at Nite, The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, is a massive influence on me. I loved shows like that.
But yeah, so Twitter was a really big part of how I got that job and, honestly, how I got my next job because Mike Schur, creator of, of course, Parks and Recreation and The Good Place, he also had followed me on Twitter and saw just jokes I was writing and I guess thought I was funny and he kept me in mind for Parks and Rec. So that then happened a little while later that way too.
Jen: Iit was tough. I mean, tough, not in that anyone specifically went out of their way to make it tough, which I’m lucky, because that is many people’s stories. I don’t think that happened, but when I joined the staff of Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, this is 2011, and it was still kind of the time when, I think I was one of two female writers in a staff of 17. Specifically I was a monologue writer so that was my team. And that’s, I think, five or six writers and I was the only woman on that.
Jen: I think what has been helpful and what continues to be the challenge of it is not having a little bit of separation from the work, not saying I am only my job. I am only this work, which is really hard because especially now. I co-created a show that’s incredibly personal and is very much so exactly the show I want to make along with Paul Downs and Lucia Aniello. I have this fantasy sometimes of a job that I don’t feel is so tied to my personal self worth.
So by the time 2020 rolled around—2019 is when we pitched it—we were supposed to shoot a pilot and then HBO Max very, very helpfully said, “Hey, we don’t know what the world is right now. We don’t know when we’ll be able to go back in a production, but one thing you guys can do from home is write the show. And so we’re going to pick you up and pick up the series and have you write the show, write the whole first season,” which was amazing.
Lindsay: Out of the roles that you’ve had in transitioning from writer to producer to showrunner, what role have you felt strongest or most confident in, or just enjoyed the most or the least? Lindsay: I’m curious, as far as writing goes though, how do you draw the line of personal experiences that you do want to share or get inspiration from, or is there a specific moment from Hacks that personally aligns with you that you’re like, “This actually feels like it was me,” in a sort of way.
Jen: I think we just try to make it feel real. I don’t know, make it feel true to life. Make it feel connected to something real that resonates for us and then hopefully we know it resonates for other people.
Jen: Yeah, for sure. I mean, it was very much baked into the DNA of the show that when they meet, they have very different views on comedy, but also just the world in general. And that part of the engine of the show was how do they come together and how do they bond over these things and how do they clash over these things and butt heads. And then as they butt heads, these cracks form and then each other seeps into the other.
Jen: Yeah. The most crazy example to me will always be Breaking Bad with Skyler. The hate that she got was just kind of crazy. I don’t know. It’s an interesting phenomenon. I think that was really something we tried to put into the Deborah Vance character and something that Jean Smart plays so beautifully is this Teflon nature that they had to build up. And you kind of said, why couldn’t they tell these stories? No one wanted to hear them. You either fit into a box and you did the comedy, you were “allowed” to, or you had to go away. That’s very much Deborah’s story.