“There isn’t light without dark, there isn’t comedy without tragedy,” Jean Smart says, sitting back in her pink paisley print chair. She’s talking about the vast variety of roles on her resume. Lately, in Hacks, she’s Deborah Vance – A Joan Rivers-esque Vegas stand-up comic with a hosting sideline on QVC, and in Mare of Easttown, another HBO show, she’s Helen Fahey, the feisty, big-hearted mom to Kate Winslet’s beleaguered blue collar cop.
But Hacks is where she really gets to showcase her ability to balance the comedic with the tragic; belly laughs with perfectly-pitched pathos; wise-cracking warmth with wounded loneliness. As Deborah, Smart walks that line so elegantly, so subtly, we never notice her making the switch.
“Someone asked me recently, ‘How do you switch from comedy to drama sometimes in the same character in the same show?’” she says. “And I guess...
But Hacks is where she really gets to showcase her ability to balance the comedic with the tragic; belly laughs with perfectly-pitched pathos; wise-cracking warmth with wounded loneliness. As Deborah, Smart walks that line so elegantly, so subtly, we never notice her making the switch.
“Someone asked me recently, ‘How do you switch from comedy to drama sometimes in the same character in the same show?’” she says. “And I guess...
- 6/3/2021
- by Antonia Blyth
- Deadline Film + TV
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