Niki Cruz
Before her big break co-starring on HBO Max’s Hacks, comedian Hannah Einbinder got her start in stand-up comedy, opening for Nicole Byer, appearing in the renowned Canadian festival Just For Laughs, and later on, making her television debut on Late Night with Stephen Colbert. This past summer, Einbinder took center stage for her first televised stand-up special, Hannah Einbinder: Everything Must Go.
It’s a special exquisitely mapped out, bouncing around with musings on everything from climate change to growing up with ADHD, her Judaism, and even a stellar Mona Lisa Vito (My Cousin Vinny) impression. Hannah Einbinder’s crisp, matter-of-fact, yet sincere, straight-to-camera delivery feels different from her contemporaries.
The brutally honest and innately personal special immediately grabs your attention from the very beginning. With excellent lighting and music cues throughout, the comedian starts by talking about being the daughter of an older working mother (SNL’s Laraine Newman) and ends with reflecting on her grandmother’s death while singing a Hebrew prayer.
Einbinder recounted how she constructed the attention-grabbing special, “I wanted a certain level of disjointed non sequitur to exist in the special because I think that’s how my mind works. Because I have ADHD, I really designed the hour with people like me in mind, people whose attention needs to be really earned and really maintained. That’s a big reason why I wanted to do lighting cues and have the settings change and look directly into the camera. I think in trying to figure out how to translate the special from live to film, it felt like I had to create these tactics to engage people.”
Hannah Einbinder and I sat down over Zoom to talk about Everything Must Go, her comedic inspirations, and what moves her to create.
You can stream Hannah Einbinder: Everything Must Go on HBO Max.
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