Smart Choice: Giving sitcoms another tryThe script for Style & Substance and Touchstone Television's floral powers of persuasion have brought the former Designing Women actress back to television two years after she swore off series.
By: Janet Weeks
She's a crafts-making, food-baking, home-decorating savant who commands an empire built on good taste and things that taste good. She's also a controlling, fault-finding weirdo who has a warmer relationship with her stove than with the people she employs. If you think that's Martha Stewart, think again. It's Chelsea Stevens, Jean Smart's character in CBS' Syle & Substance, a mid-season replacement premiering tonight. A biting comedy that both spoofs and exalts the ubiquitous homemaking maven, the show is a bold choice -- both for the network, which also employs Stewart, and Smart, who said she'd sworn off sitcoms. Smart left Designing Women in 1991 after five seasons playing Southern sweetie Charlene Frazier, the Sugarbaker sisters' loopy business manager. She pursued an eclectic career in feature films and TV movies, playing a serial-killing prostitute (Overkill), a disabled mother (The Yarn Princess) and a Florida swamp farmer (The Yearling). In 1995, she was lured back to series television with High Society, and Absolutely Fabulous knock-off co-starring Mary McDonnell. It was canceled after one season, and Smart said she was done with sitcoms. Then came the script for Style & Substance. She liked it but turned it down. "I didn't become an actor to have a 9-to-5 job," says Smart, who is in her 40's. "It's very satisfying to sort of free-lance and work only when you're inspired to work, which I know is a luxery few can afford. "But signing a six-year contract? I guess for some people that makes them feel secure. It scares me to my marrow." She eventually accepted the role after Disney's Touchstone Television, which produces the series, sent her flowers everyday for more than a week. She also says she "connected" with series creator Peter Tolan, who raves about Smart. "When Jean's name came up for the part, I thought, 'Well, she'd be good,'" Tolan says. "That was the biggest disservice I did to her. She's great." While Disney was persuading Smart, CBS was busy assuring Stewart, who was concerned about the show after seeing the pilot. Indeed, CBS would seem the last network to lampoon Stewart, since its Eyemark Entertainment division distributes Stewart's syndicated show. Stewart is also part of the CBS' This Morning team. To appease Stewart, the network agreed to make it clear in future episodes the Chelsea Stevens is a Martha Stewart wanna-be, one reason why she dresses like Stewart, wears her hair like Stewart and lives in a Connecticut farmhouse -- just like Stewart. Smart says she watches Stewart's Living show to learn how a gracious-living expert would move and speak and work. "I'm not trying to do an impression of her, but I've watched to get ideas of stuff that she does," she says. "We don't want to hurt her feelings, and we don't want to make fun of her." Stewart was out of the country and unavailable for comment. But her publicist issued a statement from her saying: "CBS is free to broadcast any program it chooses to. I would hope that it would be of the highest quality and educational value." As for Smart's homemaking abilities in real life, the actress says she's lacking. "Once, I got out the hot-glue gun and made clothespin reindeer for my son's school carnival. Martha Stewart would gag," she says. "When they didn't sell, the teachers let me take them home." |