Hannah Reid Rubinek – Hunters

By: Jamie Steinberg

Q) What are the recent projects that you are working on?

A) I also write and produce in addition to acting. So, it’s about to be pilot season in LA. Hopefully, I’ll be busy auditioning for that. I’m also developing a television series with Sharon Horgan’s production company Merman. I’m co-creating it with my dad. We work together on many different projects so we’re spending time working on that.

Q) Was the new series “Hunters” an audition for you?

A) It was an audition. You’d think that I was born to play it. [chuckles] I put myself on tape for Amazon and the showrunners. I think they had also seen a short film that I had done with my dad.

Q) How was your character Amy Markowitz originally described to you?

A) The character is described as a daughter to her parents and she is getting married. So, it’s about tall of the emotions that it brings up – the hope, trepidation. Amy is a sweet character and it’s a happy time, but she’s also no fool.

Q) Was there something you found challenging about this particular character?

A) No. Really, I felt like it was easy to step into that place because, obviously, I had the great gift of having my actual father there. So, that emotion and that dynamic just completely filled every moment. Also, the great and wonderful gift of having Carol Kane play my mom, who I so respect and was just so excited to work with…She is one of the most present human beings that I’ve ever worked with or even had the pleasure of seeing work. So, everything felt really accessible because of those two things.

Q) What was something you added to Amy that wasn’t in her initial breakdown?

A) it was really well written and I think they actually began to add a little bit once…Because David Weil is really good at responding to the actor in front of them All the writers and producers are! So, I think they began to write a little bit to me as they got to know me. I did add something. My Bubby has a Star of David necklace that I showed to our producers and the costume department. They let me wear it, so I’m wearing it in every scene – even if it is not visible. It was something personal I brought to the character as a kind of secret wink and honor to that.

Q) What did it mean to you to have your real father, Saul Rubinek, play your on-screen father in the series?

A) It was really emotional. It was really an extraordinary gift of an experience, partly just to act with my real dad, but also to act in this context. The subject matter is also close to our family history. My grandparents are Holocaust survivors and my dad was born in a refugee camp and is a second generation and I’m third generation. So, I’ve just basically moved that dynamic one generation up, but it is very much resonating with my own experience. That was really extraordinary. It was really funny because I’m not married. I’m single. So, that part was really the most imagining that I was doing. [chuckles]

Q) What were some of your favorite scenes to film for “Hunters?”

A) One of my favorite scenes was the wedding scene I shot. I appear in my dress as I’m showing my parents myself in this costume and it was so mirroring of showing my dad my first scene. In that moment it was really emotional and joyous. That was really special – that first big thing. The horrah scene was also very fun and very challenging. Shoutout to every extra who was in hilarious incredible 70’s garb during a very hot New York July day dancing. That was quite the highlight.

Q) How did you shake off a long day of filming the show?

A) That is a very good question. With food. [chuckles] There was a lot of amazing New York food that I was excited to be in town to eat. We actually had a fantastic ice cream truck that came to the lot and handed out their artisan amazing ice cream to the crew. That was a great antidote. It’s an emotional thing too because it brings up a lot of stuff. This coinciding of not only my family being Holocaust survivors and portraying that on screen, but also the intersection of encountering history where you don’t expect it. The way the hunters encounter Nazis in the wild before they decide to team up and do something about it…When I was younger my parents were planning on figuring out how to tell me about my family’s history and the Holocaust and the concept of genocide and that history in general. They then realized through having that type of conversation with my best friend’s mom at the time…I was in middle school. They realized my best friend’s great grandfather was an SS officer. We were just kids in LA together and it seemed a million miles away from World War 2 and all of that. Yet, here we are as best friends with these two very different and coinciding histories. That was a really profound experience and a really healing one for both of us to learn about our families while holding hands. I think it was really inspiring to see that things can change really dramatically. The world feels really divided now. It feels really polarized and really impossible to bridge those divides. But that moment and that experience gives me hope. Hope that it won’t necessarily take generations…We can find common ground and common humanity and see each other.

Q) What do you hope viewers take away from watching “Hunters?”

A) I hope people take away that really fun and interesting thing where David and the show does a really great job of giving you the fantasy revenge story. You’re along this ride and then slowly it starts to transform and you’re forced to examine what you’ve been rooting for, which is revenge and violence – what does that really mean and what does that do to you. In fighting evil, do you become the thing you’re fighting? How far along do you go? What do you say is okay because they are evil? I hope that transformation and that questioning of the show will come to the viewer as well.

Q) Your father has also written a play about your personal family history. What did it mean to you that he asked you to portray this version of yourself?

A) It’s actually way weird for me than to play a fictional version of father and daughter. [giggles] To play a version of yourself with things that really happened to you, but also written by your dad and not yourself is kind of a mind trip. I’m very excited about it. I think it will be emotional and a challenge because I’m there to tell his story and, of course, I’m contributing to some of the reality of it. But it’s also necessarily dramatized and transformed slightly in order to go from real life event into the art version and the scripted dramatic version. I think it is going to be a real challenge, but I’m also really excited. Also, the play is written with a lot of characters over several different time periods, so the character is double cast. So, I also get to play this great communist Polish translator who is assigned to my dad who had taken his parents back to Poland to see the people that hid them. That’s what his documentary is about so that is part of the play. So, I play a kind of communist spy on the documentary crew masquerading as a translator. There is a lot of very funny, dry stuff. I’m going to learn some Polish for it. That’s an exciting challenge separately.

Q) Early on with the play creation did your father ask for any input from you and for your perspective?

A) He definitely did. He asked me for my memories. It’s interesting what you do and don’t remember. He decided to share his book with me and his documentary with me and kind of tell me the full story of our family when I turned thirteen. That’s when my parents and my teachers agreed that was a good developmental time to bring that. So, I talked about what specifically jumped out at me, what I specifically remembered from that experience. It wasn’t always what he thought would have been the most memorable. So, that definitely helped shape his play. I think he added a scene through that conversation.

Q) What advice would you give to up and coming actors and actresses?

A) My advice would be not to give up and look at creating your own work. Or look at partnering with someone who is interested in creating work because if somebody has a camera and someone else has a pen you will always be doing something. I think art is always valuable and work really begets work and leads to new things. If you’re growing and working as an artist that will always be valuable. Then, even if your family…I’m very lucky that my father is directly an actor and a filmmaker. So, I have direct access to opportunities through that. But if your family doesn’t, your family will still have stories. And your experiences are fodder for art. You can transform them and use them and I think you’ll really have the opportunity to grow both as a person and artist if you start looking.