Jean Smart Teased Her ‘Hacks’ Love Scene Partner Devon Sawa About His ‘90s Heartthrob Status

Deborah Vance (Jean Smart) finally gets laid in Hacks Season 2 this week and we are all the better for it.

Hacks Season 2 Episode 6 “The Click” follows Deborah as she gets her groove back after a one night stand with a handsome younger man played by none other than ’90s and early ’00s heartthrob Devon Sawa. Deborah meets this man at a random bar that she, Ava (Hannah Einbinder), Kiki (Poppy Liu), and Ava’s party-crashing mom (Jane Adams) hit up after a disappointing show. To Deborah’s surprise, Sawa’s character isn’t just into her, but totally down for a no strings attached night of sex. After which, Deborah’s new act finally clicks into place.

Hacks was co-created and is co-showrun by Lucia Aniello, Jen Statsky, and Paul W. Downs. While Aniello typically is the one in the trio who finds themselves in the director’s chair, Downs helmed “The Click.” He shared with Decider that the episode when through an interesting “evolution.”

“We knew that Jane Adams was coming back, Ava’s mom. But Deborah’s storyline had a lot of different iterations and when we stumbled upon this idea, we were like, ‘Oh, this is really fun.” It really just kind of wrote itself,” Downs said.

“In terms of the casting, we saw a lot of great actors but because it was obviously an intimate scene, we wanted to include Jean in that process and she watched a couple of the auditions and was really taken by this actor who was clearly really experienced. And it’s so funny that we were like, ‘That’s actually someone who’s been working for a long time. You honed in on the person that’s been acting professionally in film and television for years and years.'”

Jen Statsky said, “It was like a real ‘game recognizes game’ situation. She like zeroed in on him and picked it up.”

Devon Sawa started his career as a child actor, appearing in films like Little Giants and Casper. By the time he appeared in Idle Hands and Final Destination, he had firmed up a reputation for himself as one of the key, formative early crushes for older millennials.

Jean Smart said of Sawa, “He was just a sweetheart. I wasn’t really aware of his heartthrob status and so I started researching him and I really embarrassed him one day sitting at this house where we shot in between scenes and I said, ‘So, I understand that I’m living the fantasy of every American woman under the age of 40.’ And he just turned bright red and he sort of explained to me the genesis of that whole thing which was adorable.”

Downs said, “They also had really natural chemistry and directing that scene was actually really great because it was a quiet, vulnerable scene with two really experienced actors who were excited to be working together. So it was really a pleasure for everybody to do that.”

“We were both nervous,” Smart said. “It’s nerve -racking to do something like that and I felt self-conscious, of course, because I could be his mother.”

“But [Devon] was absolutely adorable and very sweet and very professional and very charming. It wasn’t my worst day at work, I’ll put it that way.”