‘Hacks’ Wins Golden Globe for Best Comedy Series, Co-Creator Paul W. Downs Urges Partygoers to “Not Give” Jean Smart a Shot: “Give Her Water”
Hacks took home the award for best comedy series at the 2025 Golden Globes on Sunday night.
“We’re honored to be in this room with all of these storytellers,” said Paul W. Downs, one of the show’s creators, while accepting the award. “Thank you to our amazing cast, our incredible crew and of course, our brilliant writers.
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“We do have to shoot tomorrow and we have a call time of 6 a.m. so if Jean Smart asks you for a shot, please do not give it to her,” he said, before joking, “Kate Winslet, I’m looking at you. Wherever you are, give her water.”
Hacks beat out The Bear, which won the trophy last year and led this year’s TV nominations, earning a total of five nods. The other shows nominated in this category include The Gentlemen, Nobody Wants This, Only Murders in the Building and Abbott Elementary. Hacks star Jean Smart also won the award for best actress in a comedy series.
Hacks centers around Smart’s esteemed Vegas-based stand-up comedian Deborah Vance and her young writer, Hannah Einbinder’s Ava.
In a joint interview with The Hollywood Reporter published in August, Jen Statsky, Downs and Lucia Aniello, the trio of creators behind Hacks, opened up about season three’s challenges. According to Downs, Smart said the season’s finale, titled “Bulletproof,” was the best episode they’ve ever done. “She felt like it had the highest highs and the lowest lows and the most amount of emotion we’ve ever done. I think it was such a juicy episode for the actors, and as we were shooting, we could feel how special it was.”
Downs also defended the twist at the end of the season: “I’ll speak just for me. We love the twist at the end, and we felt like it was the right thing to do for the characters, but I have to say that I had a lot of anxiety around how people would feel about that. Disharmony between Deborah and Ava can sometimes not be people’s favorite thing. It was always the right thing for the story and the characters, and we’ve been building to it for a long time, but you just never know if everyone’s going to be like, ‘No, be friends.’ But then the amount of people who are lit up by it has been really exciting. People were so stoked on Ava making that move, and it felt really good.”
Hacks season three was released in May 2024, and currently sits at a 98 percent freshness rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Season four is set to premiere sometime this year.
Nikki Glaser hosted the 82nd annual Golden Globes. See all the stars who hit the red carpet here.
Golden Globes producer Dick Clark Productions is owned by Penske Media Eldridge, a joint venture between Penske Media Corporation and Eldridge that also owns The Hollywood Reporter.
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