'The View' Interview
JOY BEHAR: Well, we remember her best as sweet and naive Charlene on Designing Women, and now this Emmy Nominated actress is starring in The Man Who Came to Dinner on Broadway as a woman with designs on another woman's man. Please welcome back to The View Jean Smart. JOY: Jean, would you ever talk about your husband and how good or bad he was -- bad mostly -- in bed to another woman? JEAN SMART: Is he watching? Um...no. JOY: You wouldn't. JEAN: Never. No. LISA LING: To your chicks? To your girlfriends? JEAN: I'm sorry. I don't know women who talk like that. I read that in scripts all the time. They love to write scenes where women talk like that. I find it appalling. JOY: The Designing Women used to talk like that, didn't they? JEAN: Well, not about stuff like that, did we? Well we got payed for it! STAR JONES: Sex and the City does that every day. JEAN: Well, yeah, but I don't know. I'm old fashioned. I just find that shocking. JOY: And you also were saying -- I asked you back there what were you thinking about George Bush and that whole thing. What did you say to me? JEAN: Well, y'know, if someone picked on my kid my first instinct would be -- STAR: Deck 'em. JEAN: Well, yeah, politics or not. JOY: You don't think it makes the 'W' look more like a poppa's boy though? JEAN: Yes. Probably, yeah. MEREDITH VIEIRA: Oh, I don't think so at all. His father loves him and is upset. JEAN: I mean, I hope he's not embarrassed that his dad did that. JOY: Well we'll see in November if it worked or not. JEAN: I don't know. People do want to look up to their president as if he's sort of 'Daddy' -- I don't know. JOY: Well congratulations on your Emmy nomination. JEAN: Thank you. JOY: Now you've done so many different things: Designing Women, and you've done wonderful made-for-TV movies and stuff, and this is your first nomination? JEAN: Yeah. JOY: So what's the difference now? JEAN: I don't know! JOY: You did a guest spot on Frasier for this right? JEAN: I think the difference is that I didn't vote for myself this time. I think that's the secret. I voted for myself before and I didn't get nominated. STAR: Really? JEAN: Maybe you're not supposed to do that in the grand scheme of things. MEREDITH: We vote for ourselves every time. STAR: We lose every time too. JEAN: Please before anything -- the red nailpolish is for the play. I have to spend the summer wearing this nail polish. MEREDITH: You don't like to wear red? JEAN: Well not every day with everything. LISA: Ok, question: since Designing Women you've played like a whole range of deranged characters; you played a lesbian serial killer. You played a boozy, lusty neighbor in The Brady Bunch (Movie). I just wonder if casting directors say "We need a crazy, deranged woman -- let's call Jean Smart!" Is that what happens? JEAN: Yeah, I think I'm in the crazy, deranged rolladex in the casting director's office. Um, I don't know. I think I've gotten to play some interesting gals. I try to take it as a compliment, although I do seem to be playing a lot of lunatics lately. STAR: That's a tribute to your acting. JEAN: The character on Frasier had practically a split personality. I remember my husband reading the script before I did it, and I said "Oh, this is so funny. This is screamingly funny." He said, "I don't get it. I don't get it. You're always like this. I don't understand the joke." STAR: Interestingly enough, on Designing Women, one of the things that I loved was that everyone was always gussied up on that show. You guys were dressed to the nines. JEAN: Way beyond what my character could ever have afforded. STAR: Ya'll were looking like babe-a-liciouses, and I understand your character on Broadway is a real glamour queen also. Jean Smart anything like those women? JEAN: No. I just can't put in the effort, no. I'm sure I'd be better off and further along if I did. JOY: Why do you think you'd be further along? JEAN: I mean in my career -- if I loved getting all done up and going to functions and things. MEREDITH: So what would you rather do? Just sit in a pair of sweats? JEAN: Yeah. Well, you take your son to school, and its so humiliating because there's always a couple mothers who are always totally pulled together by eight in the morning. I really don't know how they do it. It makes me feel like there's something wrong with me. Although, these are women that have to look good at work, and I can go to work and look like a sob, and someone can just plop a wig on my head or something. Y'know these women; one of them is a realtor, one is an interior designer, and they're totally put together from head to toe at 8 am. I don't get that. MEREDITH: Well does your ten year old say "That's my mom. She usually looks better"? JEAN: No, but he does like it when I get dressed up though. I felt bad because -- I wonder if I told you this story -- MEREDITH: Tell it again. JEAN: I felt bad because when he was about six, I was wearing a dress to some big function, and it was off the shoulder and kind of beaded and had this big skirt. And he said "Oh, Mom, you look so pretty." And he wanted me to wear it to Burker King. And I didn't, and I've regretted it to this day. But the reason I didn't was because people would recognize me and think "My god, don't you get enough attention?" you know what I mean? STAR: How old is he now? JEAN: Now he's ten, and I asked him if he wanted me to do that, and he said "NO!!" JOY: He would have been humiliated if he saw the pictures later on anyway! JOY: Well, congratulations on your Emmy nomination and thank you for coming by. Jean Smart, ladies and gentlemen! And if you're in New York, you can catch her in The Man Who Came to Dinner at the American Airlines Theater. |