Lucia Aniello still isn’t over Hacks. The TV show she wrote and directed alongside her husband Paul W. Downs ended earlier this summer after five, hugely successful seasons. But despite being the one to ultimately call it quits, Aniello finds herself already missing this fictional world she created and all the formidable characters who inhabited it. To help unpack this post-show depression, Aniello reached out to director Amy Heckerling, the woman who made her believe that making high-concept comedies with complicated female protagonists was not only possible, but essential. Together, the pair talk about letting go, the legacy of Clueless, the generosity of Jean Smart, and why Deborah Vance could totally kill someone and get away with it.
FRIDAY 1PM JUNE 12, 2026 PARIS
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AMY HECKERLING: I have so many questions to ask you, I don’t even know where to start. I loved Hacks.
LUCIA ANIELLO: Thank you.
HECKERLING: And my whole family, we used to watch Broad City together, so we love that.
ANIELLO: Oh, really? That’s awesome. It’s such a New York story and you’re such an iconic New Yorker, so that’s really high praise.
HECKERLING: I mean, they were just fun.
ANIELLO: That was such a special time and such a special show because it was my first thing I ever did professionally and we didn’t really know what we were doing, both in the writer’s room and on set. We were figuring it out and made it for, like, a dollar.
HECKERLING: One thing I wanted to ask you about is, anytime I would pitch anything, or even when people read the Clueless script, it was about likability. “We don’t like her,” “She’s too stuck up,” “She’s got money.” And I always felt like, do you have to have a script where on the first page the guy’s dog dies or something?
ANIELLO: [Laughs] Literally Save the Cat!, right? You know that book, Save the Cat!?
HECKERLING: No. What’s that?
ANIELLO: Save the Cat! is a book about how you’re supposed to write a screenplay, and the idea is that in the first 5 or 10 pages, you have to have the guy literally save a cat so the world knows that he is a good guy.
HECKERLING: I mean, come on. Well, you have it in the very beginning of Hacks where a woman deserts the young girl in the middle of the desert. That could kill her, you know?
ANIELLO: You know what’s so funny is that people never had an issue with Deborah Vance. They’ve always been on board with her and, from the very beginning, people didn’t like Ava. They were always having an issue with her because they considered her to be entitled, and bratty, and all these things. We used to say that Deborah Vance could kill somebody and no one would be mad, but Ava Daniels does one thing wrong and then people really jumped down her throat. Luckily, we were able to have five seasons to have both characters grow, but it did mean that they were somewhat harder people to initially love. I feel like in a lot of your work [you have that], whether it’s Fast Times or Clueless.
HECKERLING: Clueless, obviously, I borrowed a lot from Jane Austin, and Emma was a character on the very first page: rich, beautiful, thinks too much of herself—and it’s [Austin’s] best character.
ANIELLO: Right. Totally.
HECKERLING: And Ava, she did something that blew up in her face, which was a joke, but was taken as a whole horrible thing.
ANIELLO: The world in some way is against both [Deborah and Ava], and that forces them together in the pilot. We really didn’t want to have to do a cancellation story, because it’s such a complicated thing, but Ava’s cancellation is just such a contemporary version of what so many women have been dealing with for so long. It seems like there’s so many women who weren’t given the same respect as their male counterparts, even if they were more talented. What do you think of that, Amy Heckerling? [Laughs]
HECKERLING: I am not going to disagree with that at all. It’s always been much harder.
ANIELLO: To be honest, part of the reason I wanted to meet you and use this interview as an excuse to force myself into your inbox is because the story of Deborah and Ava is really about a younger woman in comedy understanding that she only has a career because of the women who came before her and paved that path. I really do believe that you have been that for somebody like me in such a major way.
HECKERLING: Well, it just seems like for my so-called life in film, I was always going in with a, “No. You can’t do that.” Once I had an idea for a script and my agent said to me, “Well, we can’t go to Disney; they’ve already got their female film.”
ANIELLO: Right.
HECKERLING: There’s one allowed from a whole studio. And you weren’t allowed to do the boy movies; you couldn’t do any action stuff, you couldn’t do any war stuff, and relationship things were less budget.
ANIELLO: So you had to figure out what was high-concept, low-budget comedy, which is really hard. I know they say necessity is the mother of ingenuity, but do you wish you didn’t have to think of it? Do you wish you just got the star and didn’t have to do that?
HECKERLING: Yeah, but I didn’t think I would get the star. I wouldn’t, my guy friends would.
ANIELLO: But if you had had that, you probably wouldn’t have come up with that genius concept. And it’s interesting what you were saying earlier about you couldn’t do a war movie. Comedy had been taken up by men for so long that even that feels like a genre women weren’t invited in to.
HECKERLING: Well, there’s that, “Women aren’t funny.”
ANIELLO: Can you imagine?
HECKERLING: That was a big phrase. Also, if you didn’t laugh at something that was derogatory about females, it was like, “Oh, you have no sense of humor.”
ANIELLO: Of course. For so long, so much of what I was watching or consuming as a kid was “boy humor.” So in the rare times where I would find something like Clueless that was so funny but also I could feel the female gaze to it, I was a moth to a flame. It was like an awakening. It wasn’t exactly a sexual awakening, but as close to it as I could possibly get. [Laughs] What year did it come out, ’95?
HECKERLING: ’95, yeah.
ANIELLO: I was 12. And so when I saw that, it helped me get closer to who I wanted to be. Do you ever think back on that as the legacy of your work, or were you like, “I was just making a really good, funny movie?”
HECKERLING: Obviously I was thinking, “Oh, I’ll never do anything good again. How do I stay in the game?” The shit they offered me was just ridiculous. And I’m from the Bronx, we didn’t have money, and I am very insecure about the way I talk, about the way I pronounce things, everything. So, I couldn’t even imagine going to a meeting.
ANIELLO: [Coughs] Sorry for my coughing.
HECKERLING: No!
ANIELLO: It feels very French. Doesn’t it feel very French?
HECKERLING: I’m always coughing because when they’re rehearsing, it’s all smoke and I can’t take it.
ANIELLO: Yeah. Well, I also have a four-year-old, so it’s inevitable to have a cough.
HECKERLING: Oh. Boy or girl or—
ANIELLO: A four-year-old boy. I had him our last week of shooting season two of Hacks. I went into labor early and I had been directing, so it was pretty stressful. I was actually watching the QTAKE. I had the monitor on my phone, and I was kind of directing between contractions because I had like 40 seconds every minute that were free. 20 seconds I could not pay attention, but 40 seconds…What was I doing?!
HECKERLING: [Laughs] Oh my god!
ANIELLO: Helped take my mind off things, you know? But I feel so lucky I get to be making stuff.
HECKERLING: It’s more than luck because if that was it, a lot of people would be able to do what you do. I also just wanted to say how you ended the whole show was such an uplifting thing because whenever you’re feeling really crummy, or “what’s the point,” but you think of something you want to work on, it’s that that keeps you alive.
ANIELLO: Mm-hmm.
HECKERLING: And that is the reason you’ll get nauseous from chemo or whatever the hell you have to go through, because you’re thinking of that joke, or you’re thinking of that story, and it’s a gift.
ANIELLO: It really is. Just the mere act of having something to put my brain on is a joy, and even more so, the idea of doing that process with people you love and make you better as a person and comedian and writer—that’s it for me. What else is there? I can’t think of anything better.
HECKERLING: Laughing with your friends at a movie or at a show.
ANIELLO: Well, I’m Italian, so I’m going to go food, but yeah. [Both laugh] But, I mean, that’s really it, whether it’s good or not doesn’t even matter. Not to get on my darn soapbox—because this is what I’ve been talking about in the press so much I’m sick of myself—but it’s the opposite of AI. The idea that we want to now hand over our thinking to a computer so we don’t even have to think. The thinking’s the good part! It’s the fun part. And the idea that people would be willing to hand that process over, it makes me sick to my stomach.
HECKERLING: It is pretty repulsive. It’s the reason for living, you know?
ANIELLO: Exactly. It’s killing part of yourself. I’m glad you liked the end of the series because we always wanted that to be the end. The idea of putting Deborah through that situation was not done without careful consideration. But I think it was only done to make that very point that you’re talking about, which is wanting to have that little idea, that spark, that joke to bounce off your soulmate or best friend or whoever.
HECKERLING: It’s the life force.
ANIELLO: What gets you excited now? Is it just that little kernel?
HECKERLING: I’ve been off doing a show on the West End [Clueless, The Musical], so it was nice to say, “I’m old, but I did a new thing.” But I fucking love movies, you know?
ANIELLO: And you’re pretty good at them.
HECKERLING: But it’s not always an easy shot to make.
ANIELLO: Do you relate to [Deborah Vance] in any way?
HECKERLING: I don’t relate to her because I don’t feel like I deserve to be the top person in Vegas.
ANIELLO: I wondered if there was some part of having to work twice as hard for the same opportunities that would feel somewhat relatable.
HECKERLING: Yeah, and the anger of how you’re treated.
ANIELLO: Yeah. Maybe I could be your Ava.
HECKERLING: Come on. Here’s one more thing: The writing with your husband [Paul W. Downs]. That’s a miracle to me.
ANIELLO: [Laughs] Totally.
HECKERLING: But you had a relationship before you were doing these shows, so you already had your language and your admiration for what the other one was doing. But I can’t imagine being married to somebody I’m working with and not wanting to kill them.
ANIELLO: Well, we met doing comedy first, so I knew that I already thought he was really smart and funny. But, yeah, is it perfect 100% of the time? No. We also, I think, care about the work so much that we try to put away any ego. It can get a little bit more complicated at times when one of us is directing. I tend to direct the majority of the show, but Paul directs the second-most. So that’s a little bit more complicated, but we really try not to sit around arguing and just do it from a place of what makes the best show.
HECKERLING: Has Jean [Smart] always been exactly on board with what you want or has she had any input like, “No, I see it this way”?
ANIELLO: She comes from theater, so she’s really committed to text. She’s somebody who very much believes the written word is gospel. She’s obviously a star, and she’s such an icon at this point—she’s Deborah Vance. Sorry, humbly, in my opinion, one of the greatest characters of all time, and so much of that is Jean’s inhabitation of Deborah. She’s a fabulous number one on the call sheet because she is so prepared, and she brings the best out of everybody, and she has a lot of respect for her fellow actors. But she also is somebody who takes direction well, in a way that is confident but egoless.
HECKERLING: Wow. She’s just perfect.
ANIELLO: She’s really great. Do you know her at all?
HECKERLING: No. I’ve seen her on Broadway, but I’ve never met her.
ANIELLO: She really is what you think she’s going to be, and she’s also a sweet person. She treats so much of our crew with so much love. We really feel like she’s family at this point.
HECKERLING: Aw, that must be so sad when it all breaks up.
ANIELLO: I can’t tell you how depressed I am. I’m devastated, and that’s why I’m back in Paris, just to try to alleviate my devastation. But the truth is, we’re all really going through an intense grief about it.
HECKERLING: Oh, I feel you. When Clueless the TV show was going on, I would walk on to the lot and I’d see all these pastel colors in a corner somewhere and go, “That’s my set over there. They’re doing my thing.” It was a world that I missed, you know? Those people and that happy, non-existent world.
ANIELLO: But it feels so real. It feels real when you’re writing it, it feels real when you’re shooting it, it feels real in the edit. And when other people talk about it and how much it means to them, I’m looking them right back in the eye and going, “Same here, doll.” I feel like I’m one of the biggest fans of the show out there, and so for it to be over feels like a really, really unwanted breakup, even though we are the ones who called it.
HECKERLING: Well, but it wasn’t real. It was like the school we shot in. I painted any place that we were going to shoot, I changed the shape of the windows, and put flowers everywhere. The kids would come by and they would look in and go, “Oh. We didn’t know our classrooms could look nice.”
ANIELLO: Yeah.
HECKERLING: There had been a shooting there weeks before, and that’s why the school needed money from location fees. So, I mean, the contrast between what things really are in a school in The Valley and what it looks like on film—it ain’t real.
ANIELLO: [Laughs] It doesn’t feel real, but when you’re sitting in a movie theater, doesn’t it feel real?
HECKERLING: Well, it feels like a place I would like to live in. But the house had earthquake damage, so that’s why we got to use that. They needed money for repairs, and the mall also had earthquake damage.
ANIELLO: So thank god for those earthquakes, I guess. We shot all five seasons in L.A. We were there during the fire. Deborah Vance’s Los Angeles mansion burned down.
HECKERLING: Holy shit!
ANIELLO: Yeah. We shot in Altadena and so much of it burned down, so many locations that we shot in. Like when she’s doing the showdown with the coyote in the middle of the road?
HECKERLING: Uh-huh.
ANIELLO: That whole street is gone, all those houses. It’s really tragic.
HECKERLING: You miss what you created in your head that came alive, but isn’t real.
ANIELLO: Yeah, I can still miss it. Famously, you’ve cast so many incredible actors in their first things—Sean Penn, Jennifer Jason Lee, Phoebe Cates, Alicia Silverstone, Paul Rudd, Forest Whitaker. Is that something that you really love doing? Because it sure seems like it.
HECKERLING: Oh, god, yeah. Forest Whitaker came in to read the part and it was just one line, “Don’t fuck with it.” And I said, “Do you have any monologues you want to do?” He did one that was amazing, right? And I went, “Okay, great. You got the part.” Then I saw him out the window going down the stairway to the parking lot, and he was skipping. And he’s a big guy to be skipping. I went, “This is the best job a person could ever have.”
ANIELLO: Truly, that is my favorite part, is getting to see people be so happy at the work that they do.
HECKERLING: That’s one of the best things you could do in life.
