Jean Smart on ‘Hacks’ Season 4 on HBO: ‘Just gets better and better’

Jean Smart has already won three Emmys for her leading role in comedy series “Hacks.” Now, the former Seattleite will get another crack at an Emmy nomination, this time for Season 4, which premieres April 10 on HBO (and streaming on Max).

Smart stars in “Hacks” as Deborah Vance, a stand-up comic who at the end of Season 3 finally achieved her long-sought goal of hosting a late-night talk show — only to have that success complicated when Deborah’s Gen Z writer, Ava (Hannah Einbinder), blackmailed her to get the head writer gig by threatening to tell the world Deborah slept with the head of the network (Tony Goldwyn).

Although Deborah evinced a glint of respect when she realized Ava was playing by Deborah’s self-serving rules, Season 4 begins with the pair at odds and Deborah desperate to make her show a success.

“The pressure gets to her. Definitely,” Smart said during a recent HBO virtual news conference for the series. Deborah starts seeing a coyote repeatedly, a manifestation of her anxiety. “All of her fears have been turned into this creature who keeps popping up. Living in California, they’re always this specter out in your yard, so I thought it was really a clever idea to have that be symbolic.”

A 1969 Ballard High School grad, Smart got into acting her senior year of high school and continued that career pursuit at the University of Washington. She trained in stage classics (Shakespeare, Ibsen, O’Neill) and thought of herself as a dramatic actor, but Smart’s breakthrough role was on the 1986-’93 CBS sitcom “Designing Women,” where a convincing Southern accent hid her Pacific Northwest roots.

A career resurgence in her 70s wasn’t a given considering how Hollywood traditionally discards veteran actresses.

“I get a little uncomfortable when the subject comes up, because I don’t want to be the poster child for older actresses,” the 1974 UW grad said, “but certainly it’s nice to be able to play a character where you show that people have the same kinds of hopes and dreams and desires and everything that they do when they’re 30. It’s not something we used to see in film and television. But why not? … If our show has helped with that a little bit, then bravo.”

“Hacks” executive producer Jen Statsky said the show’s theme this season is particularly relevant to the topic of aging.

“We do a great disservice to us all as human beings when we put media out there that says that you can only go after your dreams to a certain age,” Statsky said. “That’s so sad. We should reflect a world where you don’t have to stop trying. You don’t have to stop going after that until you’re in the mausoleum, as Deborah Vance will be.”

Executive producer Paul W. Downs, who also plays Deborah’s agent, Jimmy, said “Hacks” offers a perspective that’s about more than age.

“There are so many stories about the hero, the straight white man, and I feel like it is an exercise in empathy — which I think we all need more of, especially today — to be able to see characters that are unlike you,” he said. “(When we started talking about the show, it was the idea that) female comedians and female standups didn’t have the same accolades or the same opportunities that all of their male counterparts had — many of (whom) got late-night shows. That’s true also of not just older people, but also women and queer people. We want to center stories that haven’t been told. That is central to what the show is about and hopefully why it resonates with people.”

For this new season, producers found a fresh take on the Deborah-Ava relationship by putting them together in a conventional workplace at “Late Night With Deborah Vance.”

“It was a fun, fresh challenge to be able to write the two of them in an office setting … because that’s a scenario we all (know),” said executive producer Lucia Aniello. “They’ve always worked together, but now it feels like they are co-workers, which weirdly feels different because HR is involved. … What is it like for Deborah and Ava to then have employees of their own, and how do they approach those relationships as well as with each other?”

Finding new approaches is especially important on a show like “Hacks” where the premise — two women from different generations who see the world differently and initially don’t get along — could grow stale as the pair come to appreciate one another.

“It continually amazes me that they are able to find more and more for us and keep this dynamic going,” Smart said. “That was my biggest fear after the first season: Now that they’re kind of friendly and working together, is that going to be as much fun for the audience? It’s amazing to me that it continues in the same vein and just gets better and better … and meaner and nastier.”

How much longer “Hacks” will continue is unclear. Season 4 ends with another reset that suggests there’s more to come.

“We originally conceived the show to be five seasons in our dreams,” Aniello said. “To be able to even make four seasons of a comedy is so rare. To be able to make five would be the dream, and that’s how we would love to go out.”