[This story contains spoilers from The Studio‘s penultimate episode, “CinemaCon,” and the finale of Agatha All Along.]

Kathryn Hahn was in desperate need of a good laugh. After reprising her role as the perfidious, power-hungry witch Agatha Harkness in her own eponymous Disney+ series Agatha All Along, Hahn, who has carved out a niche in recent years for playing messy antiheroines, was looking to return to the kind of ensemble comedies which had defined the first two decades of her career.

The Studio, Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg’s latest Apple TV+ series about the raucous misadventures of the executives working at a legacy Hollywood movie studio, was just what the doctor ordered. Although they had initially conceived of Hahn’s marketing maverick Maya Mason as more of an antagonist to the group of hapless executives at Continental Studios, Rogen and Goldberg decided to retool the role after extended discussions with Hahn, who based her frenetic,...