By Hope Sloop

It’s a good thing that Hacks Season 5 guest star Jesse McCartney doesn’t want just another pretty face, because that is not what Hannah Einbinder gave him. In fact, there were a lot of tears on her part.

**Spoiler alert for Hacks Season 5, Episode 2, now streaming on HBO Max**

In the latest episode of the Emmy-winning comedy series, after spending her birthday at a fan convention to help Deborah (Jean Smart) a date for a Madison Square Garden show, Ava (Einbinder) is shocked to return home and find a surprise party with her closest friends waiting for her, including goodies from her hometown of Boston, her mom, and McCartney, who Deborah enlisted for a private concert.

Like her character on the screen, Einbinder could barely keep her composure as her childhood crush sat feet away and sang “Beautiful Soul” directly to her. It was so obvious that her co-stars couldn’t help but notice.

“She was in hog heaven,” Smart told DECIDER of her co-star’s reaction to the “Leavin'” singer appearing in the episode.

“I was in tears,” Einbinder shared, adding that it wasn’t even something she had ever registered as a remote possibility at the start of the show. “I never could have even had the audacity to dream it up. It was so amazing. And I cried every single take.”

According to the actress and comedian, her tears were so real and constant that there were very few takes in which she wasn’t blubbering. Toss in the fact that she did her best not to fangirl over the 2000s heartthrob, and you have a recipe for a hilarious set experience for McCartney.

“I was so moved they had to like use one [take] where I wasn’t crying, but I was so moved by him because I actually was obsessed with him when I was younger and had his poster all over my wall,” Einbinder explained. “It was one of the best days.”

To that, Smart chimed in, “Well, he must have been thrilled to be able to do that, knowing that.”

“He does, he knows I love him so much, and he certainly was only minorly freaked out at the amount I was crying,” she said as she and Smart burst into laughter, “He’s like, ‘Okay.'”

According to McCartney, who also spoke with DECIDER for his guest-starring role in the final season, it was an equally exciting moment for him, as he has been a huge fan of Hacks since the very beginning. Even better, it was a poster used by the production designers in an earlier season that kicked off the whole series of events that led to him making a cameo on the show.

“We binged the first season, and then somebody had to tell me, like, you need to go back and watch. There’s an episode that your poster is on Ava’s bedroom wall, so I went back and looked and there I am — this is like a tiger beat photo of me at 16 — on Ava’s wall,” he said, adding that he then took to Instagram to DM Einbinder, who told him producers had asked who would have been on her wall as a teen, and she had responded that it would be him. “I told her, ‘Listen, if there’s anything we could work on together, let me know, I think you’re super talented.’ And then here we are, five years later, and the producers reached out.”

He added, “It was such a full circle moment, I think, for both of us. And as you can tell by Hannah’s reaction during the ‘Beautiful Soul’ performance, I think there was a little bit of acting, but I think some of that was actually genuine.”

The first two episodes of Hacks Season 5 are now streaming on HBO Max. New episodes premiere Thursdays at 9 p.m. ET.

If you’re new to HBO Max, you can sign up for as low as $10.99/month with ads, but an ad-free subscription will cost $18.49/month.

If you want to stream even more and save a few bucks a month while you’re at it, we recommend subscribing to one of the discounted Disney+ Bundles with Hulu and HBO Max. With ads, the bundle costs $19.99/month and without ads, $32.99/month.