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Kathryn Hahn is back in the Emmys hunt this year, nominated for her supporting turn as an overly on-trend marketing executive in Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg’s comedy The Studio. It’s the kind of loud, big-swing comic performance that Hahn honed in the Adam McKay comedies of the 2000s, like Anchorman and Step Brothers—and then, as new opportunities cropped up, started moving away from. When she first stepped onto the set of The Studio, she quickly realized what she’d been missing: “This feeling is the best.”
It’s Hahn’s fourth Emmy nomination in 10 years. In that time, she’s emerged as an unlikely Hollywood lead, getting critical recognition and a certain degree of fame for deeply vulnerable, intimate work. She’s toplined such indie gems as Private Life and Afternoon Delight, tenderly led lyrical literary adaptations including Tiny Beautiful Things and Mrs. Fletcher. She’s also a new, unexpected Marvel favorite: Her star turn on Agatha All Along, reprising the witchy role from WandaVision that netted her an Emmy nod, is among the most wildly creative of her career.
That Disney+ show, which received a handful of below-the-line Emmy nominations, remains in limbo for a potential season two, but The Studio will soon make its way back to Apple TV+. Indeed, Hahn is plenty busy. As we chat, she’s in production on an as yet unannounced project, and she recently finished filming on Madden, David O. Russell’s already controversial new biopic starring Nicolas Cage. There was a lot to catch up on.
Vanity Fair: Of all your recent Emmy nominations—for Transparent, WandaVision, and Tiny Beautiful Things—I’d argue The Studio is the outlier of the group, as a broader comedy. Does it feel that way to you?
Kathryn Hahn: One hundred percent, yeah, you’re right. I hadn’t really done anything of this size, with this much gas on the pedal, so I was very excited to jump when I read it. She was so clear on the page. It looked so fun. There was an ease to it, which is always a good sign with the comedy; it didn’t feel like it was going to have to be too muscled or too sweaty. There was a flow already to her.
I had just done Agatha. I had a year basically off where I was with my family, and I don’t think I’d worked since. This came, it was shot in LA, it was really close by, and also I knew it was such a fun part.
It made me think of those big ensemble comedy movies you used to do. You’ve talked about not knowing how you would fit into those environments when you first started doing them. What was it like to return to the genre here?
Weirdly like a full circle. I love that feeling of the circus. There is something about an ensemble—that the whole thing would fall apart if one person is not carrying their weight. Especially in a farce like this, keeping those balls in the air, no pun intended. I was so much younger when I did those [movies], and I was so in my head about it. I wasn’t in improv. My training was in theater. I never thought I’d find myself in comedies like that. So a lot of those early ones with [Adam] McKay or with [Will] Ferrell, I was definitely in survival mode.
When did you realize you were a) really funny, and b) able to keep up with those guys?
During Anchorman, watching how Adam worked with those actors and watching those guys do their thing, was such a lesson. It felt anarchic. Everything that I had been told not to do, we were encouraged to do. That kind of reckless, fearless, throwing yourself into it—it all opened for me. I felt I had the same freedom going into the next parts. It just felt more and more comfortable, and less and less prescribed.
The Studio did unbelievably well in the Emmy nominations, so it’s clearly beloved in the industry. It’s also so brutal and bleak toward the industry. What do you make of that combination?
There is such a nostalgia baked into this show—there’s clearly respect and awe. I can only imagine Seth and Evan growing up as these Canadian boys thinking of Hollywood. So that makes the specificity of what actually goes down a) that much funnier, and b) that much less cynical or mean. It’s under this layer of people that love film. If it was just solely a mean takedown, it would not be as appealing. That’s my two-cents working theory.
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David Canfield
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