“God is good all the time,” Hannah Einbinder says with a laugh. She’s just landed from Los Angeles and is curled up barefoot in an armchair. This, she explains, is “a crazy time in life. Starring in Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma while Hacks is ending … it’s definitely an embarrassment of riches.”
Hacks is the HBO comedy that wrapped up earlier this year. In May, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, Jane Schoenbrun’s queer meta-horror, became the breakout hit of this year’s Cannes film festival.
In the film, Einbinder plays Kris, a filmmaker who gets obsessed with Billy Presley, the reclusive star of the original Camp Miasma slasher series—played with hypnotic wit and sensuality by Gillian Anderson. What starts as an attempt to convince Presley to come back for another installment spirals into a wild mix of sex, death, VHS tapes, and junk food. As the story unfolds, the line between reality and fantasy starts to blur.
“When my agent sent me the script, I was blown away,” Einbinder says. “The theme of facing shame, dealing with repression, and dissociation really intrigued me.” (Schoenbrun has said this theme came from their own journey of embracing sexuality after transitioning.)
“We’re not encouraged to talk about these things,” Einbinder says, “but it’s something I know well. I had to ask myself: ‘How true is this for me?’ Like Kris, I had to dig into my own experiences and face things I didn’t want to see.” The film, she adds, helped her “be more open about desire.” It also gave her “a guide for how it should feel, what you should be comfortable doing or saying, and when to say no.”
Dressed in a floor-length black dress and a flowing white silk kimono, Einbinder looks more glamorous than I expected. On screen, her style and comedy often lean toward the quirky; in person, she’s refined, soft-spoken, and carefully measured.
Her willingness to sit with discomfort feels true to who she is as an actor—her performances often hinge on the tension between awkwardness and emotional honesty. Schoenbrun has said they cast her in Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma because they “found her deranged physicality exciting.”
What stands out most is Einbinder’s talent for creating electric chemistry with older female co-stars. In both Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma and Hacks, she spends much of her time opposite another glamorous and formidable woman.
In the long-running series, Einbinder played Ava Daniels, a directionless comedy writer hired to revive the career of Jean Smart’s Las Vegas standup legend, Deborah Vance. It became one of television’s sharpest comedies, but the heart of its emotional impact was the relationship between Ava and Deborah: two women who seem to have little in common at first, but slowly become essential to each other.
Their bond was built on insults, betrayals, and power struggles, but also on a deep creative understanding—Ava pushes Deborah to face what she’s become, while Deborah teaches Ava the discipline and resilience she lacks.
Working on the show meant a lot to her, Einbinder says, tearing up. “I learned so much and I became a person—I became myself. I don’t know how I’d be who I am without it.”
She takes a deep breath. “I started comedy because the only way I could feel good was if I felt like others felt good. When I was 24 and starting the show, I was just a shell. I didn’t stand up for myself. I had no boundaries. I was passive in a lot of ways.”
“I think I was just born without self-esteem. Even feeling neutral felt impossible.”To feel at peace with myself, let alone to truly love myself, seemed impossible. Now I feel incredibly grounded and confident in who I am, in a way I never imagined. I owe a lot of that to my time working on Hacks.
It’s hard not to see a parallel between her journey and that of her character in Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma: a woman pushed to confront the parts of herself she’d rather ignore, emerging stronger, more self-assured, and dedicated to standing up for herself and her beliefs.
Einbinder grew up in Los Angeles in a progressive Jewish family, where comedy was “the main currency.” Her parents—original Saturday Night Live cast member Laraine Newman and actor Chad Einbinder—were always trying to make each other laugh, and she and her siblings quickly joined in. “That’s definitely where my approach to connecting with others was shaped.”
In college, while studying broadcast journalism, she joined an improv troupe and started doing standup at open mic nights. She brought the same discipline to it, she says, that she’d developed as a competitive cheerleader in high school. “I was willing to risk anything, even embarrassing myself, if it meant a moment of satisfaction and approval. Comedy was my way of feeling good—and honestly, most of the time, I didn’t feel good.”
By 2019, she was touring as the opening act for comedian Chelsea Handler, and the next year she made her late-night debut on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert—a performance that helped her land Hacks, even though she had no acting credits. “It was the only thing I had to show for myself,” she says.
The audition, in March 2020, required the character to break down in tears. Einbinder could hear other candidates sobbing through the walls; she’d never learned to cry on demand. “I thought, I can’t do the tears, but I could throw in a joke.” It worked; in fact, the joke was such a hit that it ended up in the show.
One of Hacks’ main storylines follows Deborah’s fight to break into late-night TV. That’s also where Einbinder got her big break. I ask what she thinks about the current state of American comedy.
“Colbert is gone,” she says, referring to Stephen Colbert’s exit from The Late Show. “CBS has been very clear about their directives. [Jimmy] Kimmel was suspended. There’s no doubt these are political choices.” But what’s scary, she adds, is that these figures represent fairly mainstream voices, not the radical fringe critics often accuse them of being.
“To me, those aren’t strongholds of true leftist thought. They’re Democrat-with-a-capital-D guys who are, yes, making fun of the right. But they’re rich white men being cut for pretty centrist and mild speech. So if that’s being censored, that’s a huge problem.”
In recent years, Einbinder has built a reputation as one of Hollywood’s most outspoken actors. She’s used awards speeches and social media to speak out on the climate crisis, immigration, ICE, and the war in Gaza. At the Emmy awards last September, after winning outstanding supporting actress in a comedy series for Hacks, she closed her acceptance speech with a line that became one of the night’s most talked-about moments: “Go Birds, fuck ICE, and free Palestine!”
She traces that confidence back to college, when Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign became “a political awakening.” By far the hardest part of her political journey, she says, was “unlearning” the Zionism she was raised with.”Once I understood reality for what it truly was, I couldn’t stand the thought of not speaking out, anytime and anywhere, about how wrong and violent it is. How deeply it disrespects our people and what our religion is meant to stand for.”
The humanitarian crisis in Gaza “haunts” her, she adds. “I’m just doing what I believe is, frankly, the Jewish thing to do—to value human life and try to help heal the world.”
She continues: “I’m incredibly privileged, because accusations of being an anti-Semite don’t stick to me. I’m such a proud Jew. But I’m sure there are community members who hate me for this, many of them in my industry, and they won’t work with me and want nothing to do with me.”
Instead of feeling angry, she says she feels sadness and loss. “I feel sad for them. They’re trapped in an ideological prison that stops them from seeing other people’s humanity. They’re trapped because of the massive propaganda campaign waged against them from the moment they could understand language.” Her views have also cost her family relationships. “I don’t know if they’ll ever be repaired, but I’ve found a new family in the rich anti-Zionist Jewish community.”
For Einbinder, politics is inseparable from lived experience. She is bisexual, has two transgender siblings, and talks about identity not as an abstract debate but as something woven into everyday life. “Everything is personal. Politics is the most personal thing. It’s not theoretical.”
That refusal to separate the personal from the public is, in its own way, what led her to Camp Miasma in the first place. It was her first real chance to step away from the creative family that had shaped her on Hacks and discover what she could do without them. “I was both excited and intimidated,” she says. “I was just like: ‘Damn, can I do this? Can I do something outside the safe environment that raised me, with people who know exactly how to shape and mold me?'” Watching her talk, it’s clear she already has her answer. Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma is released in the UK on 21 August.
Frequently Asked Questions
Here is a list of FAQs based on the article title and its themes covering her career her comedy her activism and her personal journey
General Career FAQs
Q Who is Hannah Einbinder
A Shes a standup comedian and actress best known for playing Ava Daniels on the HBO Max series Hacks Shes also the daughter of comedy legend Laraine Newman
Q What is Hacks about and who does she play
A Hacks is a comedydrama about a legendary Las Vegas comedian Deborah Vance who teams up with a young cynical writer Ava to update her act Hannah plays Ava the sharptongued writer who clashes with and eventually bonds with Deborah
Q What is her buzzy queer horror project
A The article refers to her role in the upcoming horror film The Parenting Its described as a queer horrorcomedy which is a genre shes excited to explore
Q Is she actually Hollywoods most outspoken star or is that just a headline
A Its a catchy headline but it points to her real reputation Shes very vocal about progressive politics workers rights and mental health awareness often using her red carpets and social media to speak her mind without filtering herself
On SelfEsteem Comedy
Q What does she mean by I was born without selfesteem
A Shes being hyperbolic and funny but it gets at a real truth Despite being the daughter of a famous comedian and having natural talent she says she never had a natural baseline of confidence She had to actively learn and build selfesteem rather than it coming naturally to her
Q How does low selfesteem affect her comedy
A She says it makes her hyperselfcritical She constantly worries about bombing and she overanalyzes her performances However she also thinks this anxiety makes her work harder and pay more attention to the details of her craft
Q Did growing up with a famous mom help or hurt her confidence
