Hacks stars Jean Smart and Kaitlin Olson break down that season 3 'aha moment' and DJ's roast triumph

Jean Smart just can't bring herself to say the words.

"If I pretend I'm British, it's okay," the Hacks star says, playfully acquiescing as she mumbles her TV daughter Kaitlin Olson's catchphrase from the season 3 episode, "The Roast of Deborah Vance": "What a c---."

The laughs are plenty when these two joined The Awardist podcast for a virtual chat (Olson was on a lunch break during production on her new ABC comedy High Potential), looking back on their combatively comedic and toxic mother-daughter relationship, which also delivered some drama in season 3.

"She's definitely [seeing the consequences of her past actions] this season, a lot of painful truths and painful surprises, which will ultimately I think be good for her," says Smart of her character, comedy legend Deborah Vance, a role that has landed her two Emmys and a third nomination this year. "But she can't fight her obsession, her desire. Her ambition is just so huge. She's like Richard III — she's going to step over everybody to get to the crown, and she thinks that that's okay and justifiable, especially when she has moments with her daughter where she knows now that that part of her life will never be what it should be, what could have been. To face those kind of truths has to be devastating, but then that gives her room then to say, 'Well, screw it, I'm just going to go for what I've always wanted.'"

Now five years sober — as seen prior to the roast in episode 3, when Deborah attends DJ's recovery meeting with her and steals the spotlight when she earns some laughs from the group, much to DJ's disdain — DJ is pregnant and doing her best, despite her mom's insults. Popping in as a guest star each season, which has now earned Olson her second Emmy nomination, she steals her scenes with her complicatedly comedic take on the character.

"From the pilot episode, it's written into the show that it's both funny, it's emotional, it's raw, it's loud, it's quiet," Olson says of Hacks, praising series creators and showrunners Lucia Aniello, Paul W. Downs, and Jen Statsky for integrating all of those elements. "They did such a good job that it now allows for these characters to be very well-rounded — my character's not just the bratty, teenage 40-year-old. It keeps being another layer that I get to do because it was written in from the beginning."

Below, the two recall Emmy nomination morning and Smart's text blooper, figuring out the different ways to say DJ's roast catchphrase (which Smart just can't bring herself to say), the implications of DJ earning those big laughs, and more. And be sure to check out clips above and below highlighting their big episode 3 moments.

THE AWARDIST: Congratulations on all of those Emmy nominations. Is there a Hacks group text? Was everyone messaging each other, calls, FaceTimes that morning?

KAITLIN OLSON: Oh, yes. Jean was being Mama Jean and was so cute and excited for everyone. She called me personally and she...I will say, Jean is the glue that holds this family together, off camera as well. She is always initiating group texts and congratulating people and filling people in. She's just a dream.

JEAN SMART: Aw, honey. It was funny because I texted her and she said, "Oh, I didn't even know they were announcing them today," and I did a voice-to-text and it said, "Congratulations on your immunization." Mom's been drinking again.

OLSON: I had just completed a night shoot, so I only slept for a few hours and woke up and got that text, congratulating me on my immunization. I had no idea what was going on. I was like, I don't know what Jean's doing, but thank you. Thank you so much!

It's all so well deserved. Every season has been good, but season 3 is just incredible. And I've seen a lot of people saying that on social media and my friends have said, "Oh my God, in this episode... that episode... this moment." So people are talking about it for sure.

SMART: I thought people were going to hate me this year. [Laughs]

OLSON: Really?

SMART: Because I was so unpleasant.

OLSON: Oh no, I love an unpleasant character. Are you kidding me? I'm doing a new TV show now, so I had at the time kind of a new crew, and the amount of people who had seen me just on Hacks and not Sunny and who were like, "Oh, we love Hacks! You're so good! And we just watched this episode!" Yeah, it's definitely beloved for sure, and I hear that everywhere I go. When I travel and people want to come and say hi, they always mention Hacks.

SMART: I was so blown away by what Kaitlin did this season in particular. I mean, she's been incredible since the second she stormed into my room [in the pilot] when I was confiscating her stuff in her purse. But that roast episode was...I hope you had as much fun as it looked like because you were so flipping funny. On paper, the line, "What a..." I couldn't imagine how she was going to deliver those lines, and it was just brilliant. It was It had me on the floor. But to watch you sort of getting off on the laughs and getting more and more confident, it was incredible.

But the scene that just got me — and this is typical Kaitlin 'cause she's amazing — the next time we meet, she says, "No, mom, mom, it's okay. It's okay. I get it now. I get it. You're an addict like me." That was such a knife through Deborah's heart. It was like, oh, I really have lost her. That she did it so offhandedly was what was so devastating.

With that line delivery, Kaitlin, were you behind the scenes rehearsing all the different ways you could say it? Because each one hits in such a different way, each delivery of that.

OLSON: I'm a big fan of not boring myself when I have to say the same thing over and over. Especially if you make someone laugh the first time you say it, it's not going to land the same way if they hear it the second time, so you have to kind of say it differently. So it definitely was a goal to try and figure out different ways to say it, but it made it more fun with DJ doing it because I felt like she was playing around with what would land better, where to put the [emphasis]. Obviously, you put it on the word c---. [Laughs] But the whole thing was just so fun, and I just have to credit Paul and Lucia and Jen — when they pitched me the episode, I was excited; when I read the episode, I was even more excited. It was so well-written and this character is so well-rounded. I loved that I got to be funny and I also got to work with Jean and have emotional scenes. Having a scene partner like Jean, it's just night and day. I think that sounds like it goes without saying, but I have to say not only does it make your job easier, it elevates you so much when you're looking into the eyes of someone who's giving you a hundred percent back.

SMART: It's so true.

OLSON: Yeah. So I always love having those scenes with Jean. I feel really connected with her, and it allows us to just relax and explore different things. It's just such a gift to act with someone like Jean. It definitely elevates me.

Jean, with the roast, and after attending her recovery meeting, when she tells you, "You're an addict," had you ever looked at Deborah as having an addiction or was that also a reveal and an aha moment for you?

SMART: It was definitely an aha moment for Deborah. I think anybody who's a standup comic is probably addicted to laughter, addicted to making people laugh, which is why I think you always hear that a lot of standup comics are rather depressed people, depressive personalities. Maybe it's because they're constantly craving that and not getting quite enough...always wanting more, like a drug. But it was, again, the writing — it was the worst thing she could have said to her mom. Not that she called her an addict, but the fact that it was sort of like, you're just like me. No big deal.

I had the really lovely and memorable fortune of having a very tiny role in this season's premiere, and what was so incredible about that was having a front-row seat, Jean, to watching you work and to see how Lucia and Paul and Jen work, how this crew works. At that red carpet scene at the Time 100, we ran our lines, we ad-libbed a little bit, we workshop the answer to one of those questions — "What's next? The Nobel Peace Prize? ... No, it's an ugly trophy." But what I really gathered from being there those several hours was that it feels like such a lovely environment to play and create truly funny and memorable moments. But with a single-camera series like this, without an audience to give you that instant gratification of a joke, how do you all know what is and isn't working?

SMART: I was doing a movie one time and the director asked me to not leave so much air between these two lines, and I said, "Well, I'm holding for the laugh." And he laughed and I said, "I'm kind of serious." Because — and it's a real delicate balance — sometimes when you're watching movies, especially if they're comedies and they never hold for a laugh, you miss 30 percent of what everybody is saying. I don't know what the answer is to that except that you need a really brilliant director and great actors to try to sense where your audience might laugh. But yeah, it's a completely different animal [with single-camera comedy versus multi-camera sitcom]. It's like comparing theater to doing a movie — it's almost like it's two different jobs. Doing a multi-camera show with a live audience is sort of like doing a little play; you're doing a little one-act play except that the audience can see you waiting to make your entrance. It's very weird. And they bring in a standup comic to warm up the audience — that I never could get over. That blew me away when I found that out. I guess we're not going to be funny enough! Okay.

OLSON: The beauty of this show and why I love it so much — and it's also why I love It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia so much — is the creators are wise enough, smart enough, creative enough to know that you hire talent that you believe in, and ultimately you're in charge but it is somewhat collaborative, right? So because they believe in Jean, if Jean's like, "I want to say it this way," they're like, "Great, say it that way." They know it's going to come out of her mouth better — not that she's rewriting anything — [because] she's taking an incredible script and she's elevating it just a little bit because she's tweaking it and making it come out of her mouth in a more organic way. And when you work with people that you trust — and like you said, it is a very warm, loving, safe space to play around — then that's when magic happens because you're starting to listen to each other and trust each other. I have to forget what the audience thinks about my performance. I have to make myself laugh. And if I'm making my people that I care about that are in my vicinity laugh and we are agreeing that it's funny, then I'm good. I can go home. I don't care what people say when they see it. I have to let it go at that point because I'm proud of it.

I'm certainly not calling Deborah a villain, but generally speaking, villains, antagonists, baddies, they don't look at themselves that way. So what has been the trick that you have found in playing someone who isn't the nicest but the audience keeps rooting for her?

SMART: Well, first of all, because she's funny, you can forgive a lot if it's funny, even if it's an insult. But also, there are enough moments where we've seen behind the facade and the pain and the insecurity, and it was very brilliant and wise for the showrunners to wait for season 3 to do these kinds of stories with Kaitlin, and with Jimmy (Paul W. Downs) and Kayla (Megan Stalter) — everybody was elevated this season and more three-dimensional. It was very smart because if they'd done that season 1 or season 2, it might've backfired, but they had two years of the audience investing in these characters and caring about them, and so you could kind of take 'em wherever you wanted 'em to go...hopefully.

Kaitlin, when we first meet DJ, she's already been working on herself, and in season 3, we see her hit the five-year sober mark. What do you think that lent to the dynamic, already being in recovery versus if we had met her in the midst of being a big ol' mess?

OLSON: Oh, I think you probably still would've loved her. [Laughs]

SMART: How could you not? look at that face.

OLSON: I think that you just root for her a little bit more when you know that she cares about bettering herself. It's one of the reasons I really love this episode because I feel like when she's standing up there and she's doing her standup and it's working, yes, she loves that people are laughing, but the joy and the relief is way more about: I didn't fail. I believed in myself. I didn't take Ava's suggestions. I didn't take my mom's suggestions. Nobody believed in me. I stuck to my guns, stuck with "What a c---" and it landed. I think there's something so wonderful about that, that she gives herself. Maybe I'm not a piece of s---. I think that in the back of her mind, for the rest of her life, she's going to feel like, I'm a piece of s--- because my mom didn't care about me as much as she cared about herself and her career. So that'll always be there. But the fact that she's still fighting and now she's pregnant and she has a reason even more to keep fighting to feel like she's good enough, that's what I really loved about that.

Both of you are moms to sons, both of you are from the Pacific Northwest. I feel like there really is a deep level, kindred spirit here between the two of you.

OLSON: I absolutely agree. I'm not kidding when I say I fell in love with Jean the second that I met her. She's so incredibly talented, but also so welcoming. I've told this story before, but I remember my first scene, I think it was Lucia — it was either Jen or Lucia — who came and told me, just because they knew it would be such a compliment, they were like, "The second that Jean leaves the scene, she runs around to the monitors to keep watching you, and she's got the biggest smile on her face." And I was like, first of all, what a lovely thing for them to relay to me because that feels really good, but that was so sweet. She was just so wonderful and so kind and welcoming. Acting with her, looking into Jean's eyes when she's working, it's just magical. It puts you right where you're supposed to be, and it's fun and easy.

SMART: I feel the same way about Kaitlin that I do about Hannah: The two of them are just — and these are overused acting terms a little bit — but they're in the moment, meaning literally the next moment doesn't matter because it hasn't happened yet. Just like in real life, they're right there precisely and organically reacting to whatever's going on. You can see it in their face and their eyes, and it's so much fun because you don't always see that. You don't always get that back.

Jean, have we put any thought into what Deborah wants to be called as a grandma? Because we're going to get there at some point.

SMART: [fakes choking/falling out of her chair] I'll get back to you on that! [Laughs]

OLSON: [Laughs] Glam-ma?

SMART: I kind of like that. It might have to come out of the child's mouth, not the mother's mouth... there could be a scene where the baby says that for the first time.

Listen to Smart and Olson's full interview on The Awardist podcast, below.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.