If the role of Deborah Vance requires a living legend, Jean Smart fits the messy, dominating comedy queen like a glove. She's won a whopping seven total Emmy Awards, including four for playing Deborah, and is also a Tony Award nominee for The Man Who Came to Dinner.

Previously, the 1981 play Piaf marked her Broadway debut as Marlene Dietrich, and she most recently starred as an aspiring Louisiana writer in the 2025 solo play Call Me Izzy.

Deborah’s second-in-command is the busybody Marcus, played by Emmy nominee Carl Clemons-Hopkins. In spring 2026, they make their Broadway debut as an HOA member in the new comedy The Balusters.

Their most recent stage role was in the 2022 Off-Broadway play Lessons in Survival: 1971 as James Baldwin, and they previously starred in Hamilton in Chicago as George Washington and Aaron Burr.

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Laurie Metcalf won an Emmy Award for playing Deborah’s eccentric tour manager Weed in Hacks. a character that snagged Metcalf an Emmy Award. For her Broadway work, she's a two-time Tony Award winner (for A Doll's House, Part 2 and Three Tall Women) and one of only two performers to be nominated four years in a row.

In fall 2025, she played a headstrong aunt in Little Bear Ridge Road, and she's right back on Broadway in 2026 as Linda Loman in Death of a Salesman.

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Meg Stalter's Kayla may be ditzy, but she’s not without her own mettle in the agent business. Sketch comedy performer Stalter headlined her own show, An Evening of Mayhem with Megan Stalter, at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, and she's said she wants to don the bratty curls of Mary Todd Lincoln in Oh, Mary! Maybe her Broadway era is imminent.

EGOT winner and The View co-host Whoopi Goldberg appears as herself on Hacks. The star of the movie Sister Act as Deloris Van Cartier, she played the Mother Superior in the 2010 London staging of the musical adaptation. On Broadway, she played Pseudolus in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum and Ma in Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, in addition to hosting the 2008 Tony Awards and producing the musical Thoroughly Modern Millie — which bagged her the Tony that cemented her EGOT status.

In 1984, she premiered her one-woman show Whoopi Goldberg on Broadway, and in 2026, she's behind The Whoopi Monologues, in which Kerry Washington, Kara Young, and more recreate some of Goldberg's best comedy bits.

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The View cameo in Hacks also included co-host Joy Behar, who's appeared off Broadway in Comedy Tonight; The Vagina Monologues; The Yellow Brick Road Not Taken,; Me, My Mouth and I; and 2025's My First Ex-Husband, which she also wrote.

The host of The Rosie O'Donnell Show played herself on Hacks, and she is a champion of Broadway, famously driving ticket sales of Titanic: The Musical in 1997.

She debuted on Broadway as Rizzo in the 1994 Grease revival and went on to play the Cat in the Hat in Seussical and Golde in Fiddler on the Roof on Broadway, as well as Mrs. Paroo in a 2019 Kennedy Center production of The Music Man.

In season 1, Jefferson Mays plays persnickety antique dealer T.L. Gurley, who really doesn’t want to sell Deborah a pepper shaker. In I Am My Own Wife and A Gentlemen’s Guide to Love and Murder on Broadway, Mays won Tony Awards for nimbly playing numerous characters. His numerous other Broadway credits include The Music Man, Bella, Belle of Byelorussia, Quills, I Am My Own Wife, Journey's End, Pygmalion, The Best Man, Blood and Gifts, Measure for Measure, and A Christmas Carol.

Deborah’s estranged sister Kathy, who first attempts a reconciliation in season 1, is played by Happy Days and Matlock star Linda Purl. Purl has regularly performed in the internationally touring Seven Deadly Sins Four Deadly Sinners, and she played Amanda in Tennessee Williams’s The Glass Menagerie in Cleveland, Ohio.

In season 3, Hacks recast Kathy with J. Smith-Cameron, a Broadway and Off-Broadway veteran. The Succession star debuted on Broadway in the 1982 play Crimes of the Heart, and she was nominated for a Tony Award for Our Country's Good. Her many stage credits in the U.S. and U.K. include Night Must Fall, Tartuffe, Love Letters, After the Night and the Music, and Juno and the Paycock.

Tony Goldwyn plays the villainous Bob Lipka, an executive with a grip on Deborah’s new talk show. The Law & Order actor has commanded the stage numerous times, with four Broadway credits including Holiday, Network, The Inheritance, and Promises, Promises.

Ava had a fleeting, then tragic, romance with Jeff Ward's George. An actor with theatre origins, Ward made his stage directorial debut with 2023's Danny and the Deep Blue Sea off Broadway, starring Aubrey Plaza and Christopher Abbott, and he understudied Abbott as the latter recovered from surgery.

On her talk show, Deborah invites Grammy Award winner Melissa Etheridge to roast her, and humorously, the singer refuses. Famous for songs like “I’m the Only One,” “Come to My Window,” and “I Want to Come Over,” Etheridge debuted on Broadway for a limited 2011 run as St. Jimmy in Green Day's musical American Idiot, and she later performed the solo show Melissa Etheridge: My Window in 2023.

The Summer I Turned Pretty heartthrob Christopher Briney is slated to appear in the final season of Hacks. Briney starred as Aaron Samuels in the 2024 Mean Girls movie musical, and he made his Off-Broadway debut in the 2025 play Dilaria.

In Hacks, Deborah tries to poach Kristen Bell from Jimmy Kimmel Live! Besides voicing Anna in Disney's Frozen, Bell debuted on Broadway in the 2001 play The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and starred in The Crucible the next year. But one of Bell's most well-known musical roles was in Reefer Madness: The Movie Musical, reprising the role she played in the 2001 Off-Broadway musical spoof on the 1936 exploitation film.

Carol Burnett appears in Hacks to thaw Deborah’s cold feet about hosting. The legendary comedian’s prolific credits include Broadway, starting in 1959, when she originated the roel of Princess Winnifred in Once Upon A Mattress. In 2014, she played Melissa in Love Letters on Broadway, a role she reprised from the 1990 Los Angeles production. Theatre fans also know her as Miss Hannigan in the 1982 film adaptation of Annie.

The Academy Award and four-time Emmy winner Helen Hunt surfaces as the pickleball-loving Winnie Landell, a network executive who butts heads with Deborah. Hunt’s first Broadway credit was in a production of Our Town in 1988, the same year she starred as Viola in Twelfth Night. She returned to Broadway in 2003 in Life (x)3, and she made her West End debut in Eureka Day in 2022.

Deborah’s agent Jimmy finds a rival in Ming-Na Wen’s character, Janet Stone. In 1998, she voiced the title heroine of Disney’s Mulan and also appeared in David Henry Hwang’s Tony-nominated play Golden Child on Broadway.

Luke Macfarlane has a fleeting but memorable part as Brad, an interviewee who bench-presses Deborah on TV. The Canadian actor began his theatre career with Juvenilia at Playwrights Horizons in 2002, followed by Where Do We Live? and The Busy World is Hushed. He debuted on Broadway as Craig Donner/Grady in the Tony-winning 2011 play The Normal Heart and reprised his role in the national tour the following year.

Musician Randy Newman contributed songs to films like Pixar’s Toy Story and Disney’s Princess and the Frog, and the 1982 Off-Broadway revue Maybe I’m Doing It Wrong centered on his music. In 2014, Newman played the Devil in a staging of his Faust: The Concert at New York City Center. For his prolific work in entertainment, he’s only one Tony away from EGOT status.

Harriet Sansom Harris got an Emmy nomination for her guest appearance as Deborah's college frenemy Susan Essig. The Frasier and Desperate Housewives star won a Tony Award for playing Mrs. Meers in Thoroughly Modern Millie, and her Broadway resume includes seven other shows since her 1992 debut in Four Baboons Adoring the Sun.

Harris is also a Drama Desk Award nominee for Bella, Belle of Byelorussia and Jeffrey off Broadway, and in 2024, she played Queen Aggravain in New York City Center's Encores! revival of Once Upon a Mattress.

In Hacks, Hal Linden’s role as retired network executive Biff is a meaningful one, as he gives Deborah some hard advice about luck and industry publicity. Linden is a legend himself: His Broadway career began in the 1958 production of Bells Are Ringing, and he's performed in over a dozen more shows since. He won the 1971 Best Actor Tony Award for The Rothschilds.

Comedian Mario Cantone, who appears in season 3 of Hacks, made his Broadway debut in the Tony Award–winning play Love! Valour! Compassion!, replacing Nathan Lane as Buzz in 1995. Later, in 2004, he played would-be killer Samuel Byck in Stephen Sondheim’s Assassins and also performed his Tony-nominated one-man show, Laugh Whore, the first Broadway production to air as a Showtime comedy special.

In season 4, Jake Shane plays Deborah’s savvy social media manager. On Late Night with Seth Meyers, the actor fondly recalled his sixth-grade audition for Thoroughly Modern Millie and his former e-mail signature: “It's Jake (Soon To Be A Broadway Star).” Sure enough, the comedian debuted on Broadway in All Out: Comedy About Ambition in 2026.

Beloved as Doc Brown in Back to the Future, Christopher Lloyd plays Larry Arbuckle, the grandson of the comedian Fatty Arbuckle, in Hacks. An apprentice at summer theatres as a young adult, he made his theatre debut in a 1961 production of And They Put Handcuffs on the Flowers. The short-lived 1969 revue Red, White and Maddox marked Lloyd's Broadway debut, after which he graced Off-Broadway and Broadway stages numerous times, including in a 2002 Morning’s at Seven revival opposite Stephen Tobolowsky.

Deborah co-hosts the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade with Mario Lopez, the actor famous for playing A.C. Slater on Saved By The Bell. He starred in the 2008 Chorus Line revival as director Zach and reprised the role in a 2016 Hollywood Bowl production.

Much to Deborah's chagrin in season 2, comedian Magaret Cho, playing herself, informs Deborah that she's performing not for a gay cruise, but a lesbian one. Cho was named the 2024-2025 Vanguard Artist-in-Residence at The Public Theater's cabaret venue Joe's Pub, where she curated programming and hosted the comedy Margaret's Children in 2025.

The Queer Eye star and chef Antoni Porowski, playing himself in season 4 of Hacks, performed for one night only in Celebrity Autobiography at Broadway's Marquis Theatre in 2018.

It felt inevitable for American journalist Katie Couric to surface on Hacks. Her children's book was adapted into a family-friendly musical, Katie Couric's The Brand New Kid, which premiered at the Kennedy Center in 2006.

Louis Herthum, the actor/stuntman who plays Ava’s father in season 1, has said, “Once I got on stage, my fate was sealed.” While he is best known as Andy Broom on Murder, She Wrote and Peter Abernathy in Westworld, he has over 40 stage productions on his resume, including The Rainmaker, Oklahoma!, and Grease in his hometown of Baton Rouge.

Herthum told 225, “If I couldn’t find the courage to read for [The Rainmaker] part, how could I find the courage to jump off of a six-story building when I made it to Hollywood and became a stuntman?”

Appearing in season 2 of Hacks as Deborah's friend and psychic Diana, Polly Draper has Broadway credits in The Stitch in Time, Crazy He Calls Me, Closer, and Brooklyn Boy.

Stephen Tobolowsky appears as a comedian and poker buddy of Deborah, and he disappoints her in the boy’s-club nature of the business. The Glee and The Groundhog Dog star played Leon Darnell in The Wake of Jamey Foster on Broadway in 1982 and earned a Tony nomination for playing Homer Bolton in Morning’s at Seven in 2002.

Sexton plays Michael, Kayla's doting father and boss of Deborah's agent, on Hacks. Sexton spent over four years playing Officer Krupke and Detective Schrank in West Side Story on tour across the U.S. and Europe.

In Hacks, Chris Geere plays a job interviewer who puts Ava’s devotion to Deborah to the test. He acted opposite Dame Judi Dench in the Royal Shakespeare Company's All's Well That Ends Well in 2004.

Anna Maria Horsford plays one of Deborah’s fellow comedians. In 1995, she performed as Neptune in Dancing on Moonlight at The Public Theater.

The comedian Susie Essman plays Deborah’s old friend and director. Essman appeared in Joy Behar’s 2025 play My First Ex-Husband and the 1998 Off-Broadway production of The Vagina Monologues.

Luke Cook plays a younger comedian competing with Deborah for the late-night host job. Best known as Lucifer in the Netflix series Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, he acted on stage opposite Al Pacino in God Looked Away at California's Pasadena Playhouse in 2017.

In season 1, Marcus falls deeply for water inspector Wilson, played by Johnny Sibilly, who appeared in Vertigo Theater Company’s world-premiere 2016 production of Street Children at the New Ohio Theatre.

Legendary comedian Luenell plays Marcus’s aunt. A self-proclaimed “Original Bad Girl of Comedy,” Luenell lived her Broadway dream as a one-night special guest in Chicago in 2024.

Richardson Cisneros-Jones plays Randall, a gay man disgruntled by Deborah missing a Pride signing, on Hacks. The actor/comedian was also in the 2025 musical parody Exorcistic: The Rock Musical, and he returned off Broadway in 2026 in The Amazing Sex Life of Rabbits at SoHo Playhouse.

Dylan Gelula joined the season 3 cast as one of Deborah’s new writers, and she previously appeared in Ethan Coen’s Let's Love off Broadway with Atlantic Theater Company.

Before appearing in season 2 of Hacks as an auctioneer, Mark Capri appeared in Broadway revivals of Private Lives Blithe Spirit in the early aughts.

The Las Vegas casino owner Marty Ghilain, played by Emmy nominee Christopher McDonald, has a will-they-won't-they chemistry with Deborah. On Broadway, he starred as Billy Flynn in Chicago and performed in Lucky Guy and The Front Page.

One of Deborah’s besties is the mayor of Las Vegas, Jo Pezzimenti, played by comedian Lauren Weedman. Weedman premiered her solo play Homecoming off Broadway in 2001 and has also appeared in numerous productions in Seattle.

As Ava’s self-absorbed mother, Nina, Jane Adams got two Emmy nominations. Back in 1994, Adams also received a Tony Award nomination for An Inspector Calls on Broadway. Adams had her Broadway debut in I Hate Hamlet, and she's also performed in The Crucible, Enchanted April, and Match.

Christina Hendricks laps up her ironic Hacks role as a gay Republican who’s into fracking. Most acclaimed for her Mad Men TV role as Joan Holloway, Hendricks played flight attendant April in the 2011 New York Philharmonic concert production of Company starring Neil Patrick Harris.

Saturday Night Live veteran Michaela Watkins appears as an HR representative in season 4. Watkins has origins in improv and regional theatre, appearing in productions of Hamlet, Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead, and Angels in America.

Julianne Nicholson dances her way to hearts as TikTok sensation Dance Mom, who joins Deborah’s talk show. Nicholson has graced the Off-Broadway scene in Stranger at Vineyard Theatre, This at Playwrights Horizons, and Heartless at Signature Theatre.

Anna Khaja was on Hacks as a lesbian fan of Deborah, and she played an attorney in the Off-Broadway play Fatherland.

A original ensemble member of Broadway's Legally Blonde, Beth Curry shows up in the season 3 opening of Hacks. She also performed in other Broadway productions like Good Vibrations, Young Frankenstein, and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels.

Rora Brodwin appeared in season 3 as Coolio Caroline among a university improv group. They had Off-Broadway roles in The Fez, A Modest Proposal, and in 2026, Ethan Slater and Marshall Pailet's play Marcel on the Train.

Along with Brodwin’s Coolio Caroline, actor Roni Akurati was Raunchy Rain among the university improv group. Akurati is an alum of Chicago's Goodman Theatre as Tiny Tim in A Christmas Carol and Mowgli in The Jungle Book.

The Off-Broadway performer Dolly Wells surfaces in an Alcoholics Anonymous group in Hacks. She appeared off Broadway The New Group's The Whirligig in 2017 and Playwrights Horizons’s Log Cabin in 2018.

Iris Bahr plays Perla, a spa employee with a complicated history with Deborah, in season 1 of Hacks. Bahr has stage and writing credits for Off-Broadway shows Dai (enough) and I Lost You There. Her one woman-show Stories from the Brink: My Festive Near Death Adventures ran at NYC's SoHo Playhouse in spring 2026.

In season 4 of Hacks, Jack Berman appears as Arnold, who lands in the unlucky position of handing Kayla her triple hazelnut macchiato. He is known for playing Theo in the national tour of Pippin.

Colm Fitzmaurice is credited as a stagehand in Hacks. The actor has been in Encores! productions of the musicals On a Clear Day You Can See Forever, Wonderful Town, and The New Moon.

Timothy Hugh Bagley plays Reggie, a original Deborah fan who never lost his faith in her. Bagley has been prolific on television and film, playing well-known roles in Will & Grace, Hope & Gloria, Strip Mall, According to Jim, The King of Queens, and Monk — but he began his career writing and performing for the Los Angeles-based Main Stage Company.

Gregg Daniel plays Cliff on season 3 of Hacks. Alongside his TV roles on True Blood and Insecure, Daniels has an impressive stage acting and directing resume, including a NAACP Theater Award-winning production of August Wilson's Fences at International City Theater.