Michael Schneider Variety Editor at Large When Emmy-nominated “Hacks” star Hannah Einbinder first read the Season 2 finale of her hit HBO Max comedy, she was concerned. After a season of plenty of animosity between aging comedy legend Deborah Vance (played by Jean Smart), and Einbinder’s character, the young writer Ava, it seemed like the season ended with everything wrapped up neatly. A little too neatly, at first, for Einbinder. “I was very scared. I thought that I was going to be fired,” she tells Variety’s Awards Circuit podcast. “I was going through all of the panicky fear things. It’s kind of insane in retrospect, but I think I was a little too close to the case. Like, it really, really, really upset me. I was crying for a couple hours.”