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Meg stalter crank yankers4/24/2023 “We try to be conscientious about tropes,” Downs said. Downs imbues Jimmy with a fundamental goodness, as well as a sincere desire to do right by his clients. The same goes for Jimmy, who’s far from the unscrupulous Hollywood manager we’ve seen in countless stories. It’s the uber-specificity of the character that allows Kayla to transcend stereotypes, making for someone truly sharp, strange, and sublime. She’s not afraid to be herself, even if being herself is being bad at her job.”īad assistants are a familiar trope in film and television, but Kayla breaks the mold, bringing a unique cluelessness to her ineptitude: Kayla is at once hilariously bad at her job and hilariously unaware of it. “She’ll come into work with dirty hair or just throw it up in a scrunchie. “Kayla is just very much herself,” Stalter said. Stalter even did her own eyeliner so that Kayla’s look wouldn’t be too perfect.ĭowns and Stalter as Buffy and Giles from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Stalter and the Hacks wardrobe department have calibrated Kayla down to the very last neon scrunchie, attiring her in signature animal prints, one-shoulder tops, and baby blue eyeshadow. The day after the series premiere, director Judd Apatow led the charge by tweeting, “I hope there is a five episode arc deeply exploring this character.” Kayla’s ascendence to cult status is the result of both thespian magic and careful calculation. In Stalter’s capable hands, Kayla has become a scene-stealing fan favorite, with Hacks viewers on Twitter crying out for Kayla to get her own spin-off. But the way Meg has elevated the character and made it even more fun is beyond our wildest dreams.” When you write towards somebody that you admire and find really funny, it pays off as a writer, because then when the person gets to set, it's so fun. “Because there’s overlap in our comedic sensibilities, we make each other laugh and laugh so much on set. ![]() “When we met, we gravitated toward each other instantly,” Downs said. Behind the scenes, they can scarcely get through filming without making one another laugh, or without Aniello admonishing them from the director’s chair, “Okay guys, let’s do it again, but without you laughing.” Owing perhaps to a shared knack for improvising and a mutual coming-of-age in the Chicago improv scene, Downs and Stalter have a crackling and playful on-screen chemistry. So began a fast friendship and a dynamite comedy partnership. ![]() “When Meg came in, we thought, ‘Why are we even having an audition?’” Downs said.ĭowns and Stalter as Pam and Jim from The Office. Despite auditioning from a dark room in her Ohio home, with just one lamp to light the scene (“It was very The Ring,” Downs joked), Stalter nailed it. Stalter auditioned with an unforgettable scene from the season finale: an uproarious will-they-or-won’t-they sequence between Jimmy and Kayla set in a Las Vegas honeymoon suite, where both boss and subordinate whiplash between being uncertain of and appalled by each other’s motives. This was one of the first times I auditioned for a part and thought, ‘I can see myself in this, and I have to get it.’” “A lot of times, you’ll audition for something, and even if it’s funny, you can’t always see yourself in it. I’ll do anything for this part,’” Stalter said, Zooming from her living room. Stalter was starstruck by Downs on that fateful night at Little Joy, having long admired his Broad City performance as the relentlessly enthusiastic trainer Trey Pucker. ![]() ![]() Theirs is a fraught but kinetic partnership masterminded by Jimmy (Downs), their beleaguered shared manager, who encourages their collaboration via Bluetooth headset while suffering Kayla’s daily litany of botched coffee orders and dropped calls. Co-created by Downs, Lucia Aniello, and Jen Statsky, Hacks is the story of Deborah Vance (Jean Smart), a legendary grand dame of stand-up comedy whose long-running Las Vegas residency is threatened by a new vanguard of live performers, and Ava (Hannah Einbinder), a twenty-something television writer whose only hope of surviving cancellation is a gig modernizing Deborah’s material. What Kayla lacks in professionalism, she more than makes up for in flamboyant enthusiasm, making well-meaning but inappropriate outbursts to clients like, “Bitch, you got this, bitch!” Kayla vacillates between overconfident and nervously eager to please, knowing all the while that her employment is bulletproof, as her father owns the firm. The role was Kayla, a buoyantly inept assistant at a Hollywood talent management firm. Downs and Stalter as Walter White and Jesse Pinkman from Breaking Bad.
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