Christopher McDonald knows his Vegas casino owner Marty on Hacks could have easily been a buffoon in the hands of a lesser creative team. But he credits the show’s masterminds — Jen Statsky, Paul W. Downs, and Lucia Aniello — with elevating all the material.
“I love the surprises that they put in. ‘Let’s try that or do this.’ They listen, they write to the character, they write to the person,” says the veteran actor, who is contending for an Emmy for his guest role on the show’s swan-song season.
One of the surprises that the showrunners slipped in was an homage to arguably McDonald’s best-known role: Shooter McGavin in the Adam Sandler golfing farce Happy Gilmore.
The trio approached McDonald and asked if he would be up for a golf scene in Hacks.
“Oh, I was game,” McDonald recalls. “We had just so much fun doing it.”
At the heart of Marty’s journey, however, was his unpredictable, yet electric rapport with Jean Smart‘s Deborah Vance. “We had this roller-coaster relationship,” McDonald says of their dynamic. “Jean’s such an absolute gem to work with, she’s got one of those eidetic memories. She can remember everything. She’s super quick and super funny.”
In the final season, Marty’s fifth marriage implodes when his bride-to-be gets arrested during the wedding. “It was a beautiful day and a little bit windy for my kilt,” he jokes about filming the wedding scene. But he says it was the scene after the wedding when he’s alone with Smart’s Deborah Vance that proved to he the most heartwarming. “I’m in the room like, ‘I’m a loser. I cannot believe this is happening.’ And she talks me down and says, ‘No, you got this, you’ve got that. You got all your hair. You’ve still got stuff going on.’ And we just played looking at each other’s eyes and you could see there was a real connection there.”
Looking back, McDonald says his Hacks gig will be hard to beat. “There were so many great memories. It’ll be one of my favorite things I’ve probably ever done in my long career,” he tells us. “It was like a real gift, the whole five seasons were just something that you would just be so grateful for because it’s such good writing.
“I’ve done other things that I’m really happy with, but there’s something magical about Hacks. People have stopped me on the street many times just talking about the show.”
As for what’s next on his personal wishlist? “I would like to do something fun and exciting over in Italy. That Italian air!”
