'The Rosie O'Donnell Show' Interview
ROSIE O'DONNELL: Our next guest is currently receiving rave reviews for her performance in The Man Who Came to Dinner on Broadway. I still enjoy watching reruns of her as Charlene on Designing Women. Very very funny -- Jean Smart. Please welcome. ROSIE: Hi, Jean Smart! Looking fabulous! Wow, what is this for me? JEAN: Thank you. Well, this is a little geography lesson for you, so you can sit and eat your breakfast and learn the states. ROSIE: Look at that. Would you know that I learned them this summer. JEAN: Shall I quiz you? ROSIE: Yeah, quiz me. JEAN: Alright. What's north of Kansas? ROSIE: Oh, I didn't learn north, south. I just know where they are. I can tell you Kansas is pink! At least on the map. JEAN: It is pink! Have you ever been there? ROSIE: How are you? JEAN: I'm great! ROSIE: Good to see you. You look fabulous. JEAN: Thank you. ROSIE: How are you enjoying the Broadway run? JEAN: Oh it's great. It's a great cast and a great play, and Nathan Lane -- I could just eat him up. He's fabulous. ROSIE: He's so funny, isn't he? JEAN: He was just on the show last week, wasn't he? ROSIE: Yeah, he was. He makes you laugh 24 hours a day. JEAN: Yeah he does. ROSIE: And my kids always watch his movies, so I get Nathan all the time. JEAN: I told him on my day off, I'm with him 24 hours a day because my son plays Mousehunt and Stewart Little where he does the voice of the cat, so Nathan Lane's voice is ringing through my apartment 24 hours a day. ROSIE: Same with mine. Lion King -- I can always hear him. Now, you got good reviews. Do you read them? JEAN: Y'know, I got out of the habit of doing that. Nancy Marshan taught me that, rest her soul, so if someone said there was a great review and they loved the whole show and loved everybody, then I might go read it. But otherwise, nah. ROSIE: Do you remember some of the bad ones in your mind? Do you have any memorized? -- because I do. JEAN: No, I don't do that to myself. ROSIE: You don't do that. You see? You're much healthier than I am mentally. Because when I was 18 I got a review "Rosie O'Donnell has an annoying habit of laughing at her own jokes." JEAN: But see that's adorable. That's not annoying. ROSIE: I thought I was funny. I was 18. When you're 18 you think you can do anything, y'know. You looked great on the Emmys, and congratulations! JEAN: Oh thank you! ROSIE: You won the Emmy for guest appearance -- on Frasier. That's a fun show to do huh? JEAN: And they want me to come back and do the character again, so I'm very excited because I had the best time. The Emmys were kind of fun. Its kind of an odd thing -- well you've done all those awards things. I was so terrified I was going to trip because every time I took a step, my shoe would catch in the hem of my dress, so right before I went out there they got duct tape from a guy on the crew and put silver duct tape all on the inside of my hem so I could walk out on stage. ROSIE: Oh! Did anyone see it? JEAN: I don't think so. ROSIE: I always have a fear I'm going to fall walking down the stairs, or on the red carpet, y'know. JEAN: Oh yes! Thank god there were no stairs. ROSIE: Do you stop for Joan Rivers? Did you stop? JEAN: I was going to talk to Joan, but then when I got up there she wasn't there and I talked to her daughter. ROSIE: Cuz I always worry what she's gonna say. "Oh Rosie, you fat pig!" or something like that. Y'know what I mean? Like you feel horrible. You're about to go in and you're trying to get -- "Who are you with? Who?" JEAN: "Can we talk? Can we talk, Rosie?" ROSIE: Yeah, but she's funny in that, in a mean kind of way. Um, so do you like living in New York? You haven't lived here before, correct? JEAN: No, I lived here before for a few years back in the early 80's, and then I've been back a few times to do plays. My son always comes with me. He loves New York. I mean, it's a little over-stimulating sometimes for him I think, but he loves it. He loves the subway. We always have to be in the back car or the very front car. So if we get to the platform just as the train is arriving, we always have to run madly to one end or the other 'cuz he wants that view. ROSIE: It's funny how kids love the subway. It's what I use as a reward for my son when he's good. So when I pick him up from school and the teacher says he had two time outs, I say "That's it -- no subway." And the people who have to take the subway look at me like, "Don't you have that Towne Car waiting?" Cuz he thinks it's like going on the train. It's the funnest thing for him. JEAN: Well, now my son has turned into my publicist because I never used to want to sign autographs if I was with him because I didn't want him to feel funny about "Why are people wanting my mom to write her name down?" So I would very politely say, "Today I'm just mom." But now, he sits there and says "Oh no, Mom. It's nice. It means they like you." Which is fine, but now he'll turn to a person on the subway and say "Do you recognize her?" It's just horrible! Horrible! ROSIE: Is it true that he's performing in the show? JEAN: Yes, he made his Broadway debut. I was so nervous. He was cool as a cubumber. There's six little boys who come out in the second act and sing -- they're dressed in little choir robes, and I said do you have a standby in case one of the boys gets sick. And they said no, and I said I've got the perfect one because he just did his school play and he likes to sing and everything. And they said great! So he's done four performances so far, and he said, "Mom, I really did it for the money." I said "Nobody does theater for money!" But he spent it all on his mice. Every time he get the money, he goes -- we have mice, yes. ROSIE: He puts them in a little tank? JEAN: It's like mouse Disney Land at the apartment; all these little tubes for them and little wheels. ROSIE: Now aren't you afraid they'll get out? JEAN: Well, one of them did, and we had a long hunt for one of the mice one day because we were afraid it would run into a 'real' mouse -- you know, a mouse who was living there and get beat up or something. ROSIE: Some mouse in a leather jacket comes out and says "Hey, what're you doing? It's cage boy. We'll teach you a thing or two -- bam! bam!" JEAN: It's true! I mean when we first got to the apartment, there was a mouse running all over the kitchen, and we tried to trap it for a few weeks. And then my son decided that he really wanted mice, and he'd been watching Mouse Hunt and I was feeling really bad because we'd been watching Nathan chase this mouse in ROSIE: Yeah, but y'know, here in New York they become rats easily. JEAN: I've got another one now that just showed up last night. My son just took his back to LA, and I'm sitting last night on the phone and one just goes sauntering by me. ROSIE: And they're so bold, they don't even run. They're supposed to be afraid of us, aren't they? I saw a rat on the street last week over by the garden and I thought it was a kitty, can you imagine? I went over and said "Here, Kitty!" It's a rat! And I was like that close to it. JEAN: Oh I know. I almost stepped on one yesterday. But now that I've had pet mice, I think they're kind of cute. ROSIE: We once had a habitrail desk, where we were having make the desk week for Disneyworld, and one got out during the show and ran under the desk. I needed to change my garments. JEAN: Well, then you shouldn't live at my house, because my son, they way he wakes me up in the morning is to put a mouse on my face. ROSIE: Oh lord in heaven! That wouldn't work in my family. No it wouldn't. The Man Who Came to Dinner is getting rave reviews. I'm going to see it this week, I can't wait. JEAN: And we're going to do it live on PBS! ROSIE: You are? JEAN: On October 7th. ROSIE: Live on PBS on October 7th, look for it. Jean Smart, thanks for being here. JEAN: Thank you. ROSIE: Looking fabulous! |