Christopher Briney is going from Cousins to Hollywood!
On Thursday, HBO Max announced that The Summer I Turned Pretty star has joined the fifth season of its acclaimed comedy series, Hacks. The actor will join returning cast members Jean Smart, Hannah Einbinder, Paul W. Downs, Megan Stalter, Carl Clemons-Hopkins, Mark Indelicato, and Rose Abdoo for the season currently in production.
Although details on Briney’s role are still being kept under wraps, the network shared a first look at the star alongside series lead Jean Smart that could definitely get fans’ minds churning with ideas.
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A bearded Briney and Smart are captured mid-laugh in the photo, with the former dressed in a loose blue and gold shirt left brazenly unbuttoned to show off a series of fake tattoos, including a bird perched on a branch, and very tight leather pants. Smart is similarly dressed in a black and gold blouse and black pants. The two keep close in the photo, with Briney holding Smart to his side with an arm around her waist. Are we looking at a young beau for Smart’s comic legend and late-night host Deborah Vance?!
Kenny Laubbacher/HBO Max
Christopher Briney and Jean Smart on season 5 of ‘Hacks’
Fans will have to wait to find out exactly what’s going down when Hacks’ highly anticipated fifth season premieres in 2026.
From Paul W. Downs, Lucia Aniello, and Jen Statsky, the Emmy-winning Hacks centers on the dark mentorship between Deborah (Smart) and young comedy writer Ava Daniels (Einbinder).
The series recently completed its fourth season on HBO Max, with a season finale that featured TMZ falsely reporting that Deborah retired — “the r-word!” she laments — to Singapore, where she died. And it seemed like she might’ve been heading that direction — after quitting her late-night show rather than firing her head writer, Ava — partying and drinking away her days and nights while living and working at Resorts World in Singapore instead of focusing on writing new material (which she performed via a translator, her loophole to get around an 18-month no-compete clause in her late-night contract).
“I’m crying,” Einbinder admitted to Entertainment Weekly of her initial reaction when getting to that page of the episode 10 script. “When I’m reading the script, I am not going, like, well, of course, this could never happen. I’m in Ava’s reality. I’m not [thinking], ‘They’re certainly not going to kill off Deborah.’ So I was very upset and scared, basically all of the things that Ava ultimately feels.”
“The thing we get to see from Ava that we haven’t seen before is that she’s really worried about her friend, because Deborah is acting in a way she hasn’t acted ever before,” series creator Paul W. Downs explained. “Even though Deborah lashes out, it’s interesting, Ava doesn’t clap back. She doesn’t get as emotional or reactive as we may have seen her in the past because she’s really concerned for a friend, and I think she also has a really evolved understanding of who this person is. So it’s a moment of, I think, disappointment for her more than it is being deeply wounded. She’s just desperately wants to wake Deborah up, wants her…”
“To fight,” co-creator Jen Statsky added.
But killing Deborah wasn’t the point — it’s about the comedy legend’s reaction to the news…specifically, the obituary, which attributes her quitting her late-night show as the “demise of the entire franchise,” she reads to Ava in a rage. “That is not how I’m going to be remembered. That will not be my legacy. I’m. No. Quitter. We have some re-writing to do.”
Max
Jean Smart on ‘Hacks’
The series garnered five 2025 Emmy nominations, including wins for Smart (her fourth win for Hacks) and Einbinder’s performances.
“I was just really committed to the personal narrative that I had that it was actually cooler to continue to lose,” Einbinder joked on stage during last month’s Emmy ceremony before thanking her Hacks costars, including Smart, who won an Emmy earlier in the night. The star had won the award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy for her role on the HBO Max dramedy — her first Emmy win after playing the role of Ava Daniels on the series for four-going-on-five seasons. “I was pretty committed to that… This is cool, too! This is also punk rock.”
Hacks season 4 is streaming on HBO Max.
Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly
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