‘Hacks’ Star Hannah Einbinder Tells Hoda and Jenna Bush How Nicole Byer Helped Start Her Career: “I Was Really In Hell Before”

By Radhamely De Leon
Published June 13, 2024, 3:03 p.m. ET

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Hacks star Hannah Einbinder visited Today With Hoda & Jenna to promote her brand new HBO comedy special and discuss how she got her start in comedy as a young college student.

Speaking with Hoda Kotb and Jenna Bush Hager, the 29-year-old comedian revealed that she first started doing comedy when she was attending Chapman University as part of the school’s improv group. But a familiar face helped put her on stage for the very first time: Comedian and Nailed It! star, Nicole Byer.

“I did some improv in college and then Nicole Byer, who I know is a friend of you guys, we love her, she came to my school to perform stand up and she asked if any of the kids on the improv team wanted to open for her and I volunteered,” Einbinder recalled. “That was the first time I did stand up, and I just fell in love with it and it became so clear that this was what I wanted to devote myself and my life to.”

When the Today hosts asked if she remembered feeling “scared” or “nervous” at the time, Einbinder confessed, “I was really in hell before. like 23 hours of hell, 10 minutes of ecstasy.” She added that this is “typically” her experience before going on stage.

Speaking to Bustle in 2021, Einbinder claimed this was a major turning point in her life.

That performance “was one of the only a-ha moments of my life, like, OK, this is what I will do,” Einbinder said. “It was instant. It was like my life changed.”

She reportedly struggled with the nature of improv and preferred stand-up comedy and acting. “I had trouble with the on-the-spot nature because the way that my brain was at the time, I was so internal,” she said. “I was smoking weed constantly, and I was taking Adderall every day, which is just like trapping you inside your mind and throwing away the key.”

Einbinder has since forged a budding career in acting and television. She famously stars opposite Jean Smart in the HBO comedy series Hacks, in which she plays the complicated assistant to Smart’s world-famous comedian.

She won a Hollywood Critics Association TV Award in 2021 for her performance on the show, before later earning two Golden Globe Award and Emmy nominations.

Einbinder can be seen in the new season of Hacks, which recently dropped on HBO, as well as in her first comedy special, Everything Must Go, in which the actress explores meditation, her sexuality, and her grandmother’s passing.

Everything Must Go is now streaming on Max.

Today with Hoda & Jenna airs on weekdays at 10/9c on NBC.