The Contending sits down with Emmy nominee Rob Tokarz to chat about HBO MAX’s Hacks production design, including Deborah Vance’s late show set.
Rob Tokarz received an Emmy nomination last year for his HBO MAX’s Hacks production design on season three. He returns with season four to carry Deborah Vance (Emmy winner Jean Smart) into her long-coveted late show debut. To create the set, Tokarz looked to Deborah’s two main sources of artistic inspiration. Las Vegas and Los Angeles locales allowed Tokarz to fashion a late show set that blended elements of both worlds.
The late show set also provides subtle nodes to a vast history of late show greats.
“We wanted to do a really nice organic blend that makes it Deborah Vance. Meaning, we wanted to bring in some elements of Vegas, but we wanted to reference a lot of the monumentalism of Los Angeles. I was looking a lot at the Eastern Building that was downtown, and it has some really interesting, really geometric [shapes],” Tokarz explained. “When I was walking down Fremont Street and we were shooting that first week in Vegas, we just kind of landed on this is what it has to feel like — old 60s Vegas. The header above that though, the concentric arches that we have was a nod to Johnny Carson’s sets. That was a really great place for us to blend a number of different elements together to really make it feel like her.”
Season four follows the creation of Deborah Vance’s show. So, the Hacks production design needed to evolve similarly to stay in line with the shooting schedule. Tokarz recalled a scene where they actually needed to remove elements they’d included ahead of schedule. That allowed the design to feel more “in progress” than it actually was.
Tokarz fondly recalled another set that he and his team created. Deborah memorably uses a crab restaurant in a vicious prank to embarrass Ava (Hannah Einbinder). Many viewers believed the location to be an actual Los Angeles crab restaurant, but not so. It was created on a sound stage by Tokarz.
“One of the things that we do at Hacks is we like to base everything in reality. We don’t do a lot of broad sets, comedy-wise, but every so often we get that kind of character set. We couldn’t get the location right, didn’t match with the schedule, so we built a 2-wall set, not even three. We just built that little corner, and I got to have some fun with textures. We did a custom wallpaper for it. It’s really exciting when we get to do something like that. It’s all fun to design, but when we get to do kind of a broad half-hour set, it’s really fun.”
Here, in an interview with The Contending, Tokarz goes into further detail about his Hacks production design. He talks about finding locations to represent the strip club characters visit within the season and what Hollywood staple provided the strip club’s Champagne Room. He also talks about filming on the Universal lot, leveraging famed backlot sets, and creating Deborah and Ava’s office spaces that reflect their personal aesthetics. Finally, Tokarz talks about the challenges that the horrific Los Angeles-area fire posed to the Hacks production team and how they creatively pivoted to ensure the season would finish on time.
Listen here, through the podcast widget below, or on our Contending at the Water Cooler podcast feed for the full interview!
Hacks streams exclusively on HBO Max. The season four finale drops tonight.
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Photos Provided by Rob Tokarz Publicity
