Audiences old and new have fallen in love with Jean Smart thanks to her Emmy-winning role on Max's Hacks. But before Deborah Vance —and her SNL hosting debut coming up on the season 50 premiere on Saturday night, Sept. 28 —Smart was bringing audiences to both happy and sad tears through a wide variety of roles that have earned her endless Emmy, Golden Globe, Tony and even Grammy nominations.
Before Smart, 73, takes the stage in Studio 8H — alongside musical guest Jelly Roll —take a look back on just some of her career highlights prior to this latest moment in the spotlight.
Smart's credited work started with the 1979 TV movie Before and After, and quickly led to the short-lived comedy Teachers Only, on which she starred as an educator named Shari alongside Lynn Redgrave and Norman Fell.
On the beloved '80s series Designing Women, Smart starred as Charlene Frazier-Stillfield.
"It was so much fun," she recalled of the job on a 2024 episode of The Drew Barrymore Show.
It holds a particularly special place in her heart, too, after a very special guest star had a run on set.
"I met my late husband on the show," she shared of actor Richard Gilliland, who died in 2021. "I thought he was really cute. And I'd watch him kissing costar Annie Potts on screen and I'd go, 'Oh ... okay.' At one point I asked him into my trailer to help me with my crossword puzzle and he invited me to see a play he was doing. We were flirting like mad with each other."
Smart won two Emmys for her 2000-2001 guest role as Lana Gardner on Frasier, an on-again, off-again love interest of Kelsey Grammer's Frasier Crane.
"She could be really sweet and charming but she had anger issues," Smart recalled to Drew Barrymore of the character. "My agent said, 'I know you don't want to do guest spots right now but you have to read this one.' I read it and said, 'I have to do this.' The cast is just remarkable. Kelsey and costar David Hyde Pierce and the girls were just amazing. I had so much fun with that character because she could just say and do anything."
"24, I think, is really when people looked at me a little bit differently," Smart said in a 2023 Vanity Fair interview. Playing the president's wife, Martha Logan, "was just wild because you're supposed to believe this entire season took place in 24 hours. Somehow I found a way to change costumes five times within that 24 hours. I figure she's the first lady, she's allowed."
Smart received back-to-back Emmy nominations for her work.
For 35 episodes from 2007-2009, Smart played Christina Applegate's character Samantha's mom, Regina Newly, on Samantha Who?, winning an Emmy in the process.
"I think sometimes people that are self-absorbed who don’t realize it can kind of be funny characters to play and watch," Smart told the Seattle Times in 2009. "But I think also they have written in a strong core of how much I love my daughter, even if I don’t always like her."
"That was an exceptional experience," Smart told Vanity Fair of her Emmy-nominated time on Fargo as family matriarch Floyd Gerhardt in 2015. "That was the first time, I think, I'd been on a show where every element of that show, everybody was on their A-game, craft service to every crew member to every writer, producer, cast member, costumer, everybody. I thought the show was just brilliant and mesmerizing and the style of the show was so unique. Fargo became not just the name of a city anymore, Fargo was sort of a state of mind."
Smart joined the star-studded cast of the 2019 dystopian limited HBO Max series Watchmen, earning a Critics Choice Award and Emmy nomination for her part as investigator Laurie Blake. Regina King, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Jeremy Irons and Louis Gossett Jr. also starred.
The story in part highlighted the 1921 Tulsa race massacre, setting itself in 1980s Tulsa, Okla., following the dynamics of law enforcement and vigilantes.
"It’s astonishing to think how prophetic the show was in a way, because first with the coronavirus and the idea that something happened that gave the entire world a common enemy and that that would help bring peace if we had something big to fight together," Smart said in a 2020 interview with the Los Angeles Times. "But then it was set against a historical event of unbelievable brutality against the Black community. It’s just incredible that creator Damon Lindelof wrote that right before the COVID-19 pandemic happened, right before."
Smart earned Emmy and Screen Actors Guild nominations for playing Kate Winslet's mom, Helen Fahey, in the 2021 limited series Mare of Easttown.
"Kate Winslet, what a doll, what a dream," Smart told Drew Barrymore.
And that bond translated to off-screen, too. In fact, when Smart took an unexpectedly intense tumble on set, Winslet was at her side when the paramedics arrived.
"Kate was so sweet ... my back hurt so bad I thought I'd broken it. She said, 'It's all right Mummy, they're coming Mummy.' "
When the paramedics had Smart secured, one noted, " 'Boy your daughter was sure worried about you,' " Smart recalled. "I went, 'What? Who? Oh no, that was an actress, she was playing my daughter, she just calls me mummy. Didn't you recognize her?' "
Once the EMT realized who he'd seen, "He went, 'I missed Kate Winslet?!' " Smart remembered with a laugh. "I'm going, 'Could you get back to the job at hand please?' "
Smart has been on a roll playing comedian Deborah Vance on Hacks, winning three Emmys and two Screen Actors Guild Awards for the part to date.
“When I read the script, I said, ‘This is everything I could possibly want for my next job,’ ” Smart toldThe Hollywood Reporterin June of 2024. “But I needed to be sure that real stand-ups could believe I was a comic."
"I had never been a comedian, so they were the real litmus test. And I passed, I think!” she added.
In addition to her extensive on-screen work, Smart has done voice work over the years, including as Dr. Ann Possible, Kim's mom on Disney's Kim Possible and its associated TV movies from 2002-2007.
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