[Editor’s note: This article contains spoilers for Season 5 of “Hacks.”]
One of the great pleasures of “Hacks” is in how deftly it interweaves the history of women in entertainment and comedy with the trials and tribulations of its fictional comedy trailblazer Deborah Vance (Jean Smart) and her benighted millennial writer Ava Daniels (Hannah Einbinder). Deborah shares the screen with both real and fictional celebrities, from lightly stalking Kristen Bell, running into Rosie O’Donnell, getting Katya Zamolodchikova to promote a show as “Drag Queen Deborah,” and even asking a bit of advice from the great Carol Burnett in a doctor’s office.
In Episode 7 of the final season of the series, Deborah and Ava even go to great lengths to get a real jumpsuit of Burnett’s for Deborah to wear as part of her Madison Square Garden show. But actually creating the Burnett piece posed an interesting challenge for costume designer Kathleen Felix-Hager to overcome.
Fortunately, unlike Deborah’s scheme to use Ava and pose as a lesbian couple to trick Burnett’s white jumpsuit off an old comedy rival (Cherry Jones), the problem wasn’t one of ownership, but of size. Jean Smart is quite a bit taller than Carol Burnett, so the costume designer knew that if “Hacks” wanted to recreate a real piece that Carol Burnett wore, it would require quite a bit of research to find something that could still look correct but also be sized correctly for Smart.
Felix-Hager had a willing, welcome accomplice, too: Legendary designer Bob Mackie himself.
“[The writers] had written a different, specific dress into the scripts. It just wasn’t going to work for Jean to wear that particular dress. So I was able to acquire things from Mr. Mackie, from his archives, and the backstory of where Carol Burnett wore those things,” Felix-Hager told IndieWire. “And I was able to present that to the writers so they were able to choose from what I could provide that would work for Jean.”
Once the team landed on the white jumpsuit, Felix-Hager still had to carefully recreate it, going “bead by bead,” according to the costume designer. “Mr. Mackie hand-delivered the original Carol Burnett jumpsuit to me,” Felix-Hager said. “I’m really proud of that recreation. I wanted to be respectful of his original design, and I was so honored to meet him and work with him. That’s kind of a special moment for me, too. And then he was unbelievable in the little cameo we see of him in the show!”
Mackie — aka “Call Bob M!” — is, of course, the first person Deborah calls to track down the white jumpsuit and is among an impressive list of Season 5 cameos (“Hacks” is truly leaving everything on the field for its finale). Few things look more final than the sun-drenched shot of Deborah in the jumpsuit, standing before record crowds in Central Park.
But, with one more episode left, it remains to be seen what last looks Deborah (and Felix-Hager) will have waiting in her closet.
“Hacks” Season 5 is airing on HBO Max.
