‘Hacks’ may have taken its final bow, but there are still plenty of stories left to tell about how Deborah Vance’s world was brought to life.
In the latest episode of Geektown Talks To…, I’m joined once again by production designer Rob Tokarz, who returns to the podcast almost exactly a year after our previous chat.
Back then, Rob was just a couple of weeks away from beginning prep on the fifth season of ‘Hacks’. The writers had yet to reveal exactly what they had planned, so neither of us knew quite how much work was about to land on his desk.
Now we do.
The final season took ‘Hacks’ into some wonderfully ambitious territory, sending the production team across a huge variety of locations and creating an extraordinary number of different environments along the way. Some are enormous. Some appear deceptively simple. And quite a few are not remotely what they seem when you see the finished episode.
Rob takes us behind the scenes of that process, from the early research and design work through to the strange practical problems that come with trying to make television look effortlessly real.
We also talk about returning to familiar corners of Deborah Vance’s world while expanding areas we had never properly seen before, the often invisible collaboration between production design and visual effects, and the obsessive little details that may barely register with viewers but help make the whole thing believable.
And, with the series now complete, Rob reflects on his journey from joining ‘Hacks’ as an art director to eventually taking charge of its production design, what the show taught him, the sets he will remember most, and what he would like to tackle next.
There may even be a tiny glimmer of hope for anyone unwilling to accept that we have necessarily seen the last of every part of the ‘Hacks’ universe…
You can hear the full conversation with Rob Tokarz in the latest episode of Geektown Talks To…, available now below, or wherever you get your podcasts.
You can subscribe to all our interview podcasts on the Geektown Talks To… feed here. And if you’re searching for the latest TV reviews, UK air dates, and streaming news, don’t forget to subscribe to the Geektown Radio podcast! You can click here to subscribe to Geektown Radio on iTunes or click here for the RSS feed. If you want to support the show, you can now do that here via the Acast supporter’s link, and find us on Acast here.
Login to Geektown