Mild spoilers below for anyone who hasn’t caught up with Hacks‘ latest episodes airing on HBO or streaming with a Max subscription.
When you’re talking about a show with a cast as stacked as Hacks‘, it’s not so easy to stick out amongt the A+ guest stars and recurring greats, much less those at the top of the call sheet. But Casual co-creator and The Unicorn vet Michaela Watkins rather effortlessly earned laughs with every line and movement on display throughout Season 4, making each and every second count. (She also set up arguably the best pratfall I’ve seen from anything on the 2025 TV schedule.)
Watkins spoke with CinemaBlend about her season-long arc on one of Max’s best original series, sharing that there were times when she wasn’t necessarily scheduled to film as her Human Resources rep Stacy, but would get called in simply to sit in the background and mess with Stacy’s oversized bag. Such is the power of a comedian who can do so much with so little.
She also made me quite jealous over working with the magnificent Emmy-sweeping star Jean Smart, as well as her belief that kismet factors into how she lands certain acting roles, which we’ll dig into below.
Michaela Watkins Rains Praise On ‘Dame’ Jean Smart
I asked Michaela Watkins about being cast as someone essentially meant to be an animosity-depleting boundary between Jean Smart’s Deborah and Hannah Einbinder’s Ava, and she told me she was pitched the role with two basic ideas: Stacy works in HR, and Stacy is annoying as hell, at least to the characters if not viewers.
Considering the majority of her scenes also featured Jean Smart, I had to hear about what it was like working opposite the Emmy winner, whom I’ve adored since her days as Designing Women‘s Charlene. And predictably, Michaela Watkins had nothing but good things to say:
You know, every once in a while you work with somebody, and you’re like, ‘I don’t get it, but whatever.’ Jean is the opposite. Jean, you’re just like, ‘Are you human? You’re a dame. They don’t make them like you at all.’ She is the most captivating, elegant, hilarious, yet grounded and cool woman I’ve come across. To have that much elegance and polish and and spontaneity and spark, God…
As if I couldn’t have already been more jealous! I told the SNL alum that her assessment was spot-on, and that Smart did indeed deserve the title of Dame in some way.
Watkins said she was so starstruck, in fact, that she made a point of voicing it to Smart herself, even if she alluded to it not have coming across as intelligently as she might have hoped. In her words:
I also got very, like, uncool around her. I think I said stupid things all the time, you know, trying to just sound like a normal person. And I think I even went up to her, and she was in the cart going back to base camp, but I think I went up and I’m like, ‘I’m so sorry. I have no chill around you at all. I’m gonna really work on being not a total weirdo when I’m around you. Okay?’
To be expected, Jean Smart handled it with poise and pizazz. At least one would assume so. According to Watkins:
And she just put her hand on my hand, like, ‘Oh, you and everyone else. I’m weirdly captivating and intimidating.’ No, she didn’t say that at all. But she just exudes almost like Old Hollywood star energy, you know what I mean?
Considering Smart landed the big awards for Hacks‘ first three seasons, I can only imagine that she’ll be adding to her collection this year after the rises and falls that her character has faced in Season 4, including Deborah’s back-and-forth tension with Ava.
How Law & Order’s Tony Goldwyn And Kismet Played Into Michaela Watkins Joining Hacks
A few years before making HR look like an amusing job on Hacks, Michaela Watkins was also pitch-perfect as prosecutor Polly in the dark comedy Search Party. And she told me that she had just binged the first two seasons of the show across a three-day stretch, and was so impressed with how well it was made.
As luck would have it, on the day she finished her binge, Watkins received an email from the equally hilarious Michael Showalter with the offer to portray Polly. Which the actress used to segue into a story about her offer to play Stacy, and how it involved fellow Hacks recurrer Tony Goldwyn.
The same thing happened with Hacks, where I went to go do a Law & Order, and [Tony Goldwyn], the head of the studio that that Jean’s character sleeps with, I was doing this show with him, and I was like, ‘You’re great on this show Hacks. I just watched five episodes on the airplane coming over here to New York to do Law & Order.’ And he’s like, ‘Yeah? You liked that? They’re so brilliant.’ And he was going on and on about it.
That already seems like a fun enough coincidence for Watkins just to be sharing the screen with someone whose work she’d just enjoyed while flying to the L&O gig. But while that was indeed fun for her, that wasn’t the end of it, as she revealed:
And then a day later, it came across my email — this show, this part, Stacy — and I was like, ‘Wow, so wild. I just watched this.’
So that should be a note to any and all TV creators out there. Find out what Michaela Watkins is watching, and if it happens to be one of your shows, cast her!
Despite giving fans a two-episode treat for Eps. 7 and 8, Hacks will be back to its one-a-week schedule for the final two installments of the season, which drop on Max Thursdays at 9:00 p.m. ET.
