Jean Smart bids farewell to ‘Hacks’ - Fresh Air

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[00:01]
Podcast Announcer
This message comes from National Geographic's Pompeii out of Time with Tom Hiddleston, a new series from the executive producers of Loki. Pompeii out of Time with Tom Hiddleston is now streaming on Disney and Hulu.
[00:14]
Terry Gross
This is FRESH air. I'm Terry Gross. The HBO series Hacks is nominated for 24 Emmys. That's a record breaking number for a comedy series in a single year. It finished its fifth and final season this past spring. Our guest is the show's star, Jean Smart. She spoke with guest interviewer Arthi Shahani. Arthi is a veteran NPR journalist, host of the podcast Art of Power, and author of the memoir Here We Are. Here's Arti.
[00:43]
Aarti Shahani
Jean Smart is on the cusp of making TV history. The star of the hit show Hacks has been nominated again for outstanding lead actress in a comedy series. She won in that category for every previous season of Hacks. The show is about two female comedians, one at the start of her career, the other played by Jean Smart at the purported end of hers. While they can't stand each other at first, they are also ravenously ambitious. That is what fuels a zany journey that becomes about the creative process, chosen family and finding love for a person whose worldview is antithetical to yours. Today, hackstar Jean Smart returns to FRESH AIR to talk about her iconic role as the character Jennifer Deborah Vance and also her life's work. Smart has previously won Emmys for her performances on the shows Frasier and Samantha, who her first claim to fame was starring in the 1980s sitcom Designing Women. She's performed in dramas like Fargo, Watchmen and Mare of Easttown and also on Broadway. She is a real unicorn in Hollywood, a mainstream female actor who who has spent decades on the screen in many stories focused on women's relationships with each other, not with a man at the center. Jean Smart, welcome back to FRESH air.
[02:07]
Jean Smart
Thank you. Happy to be here.
[02:09]
Aarti Shahani
I wanna start with one of my favorite episodes in all of TV history, and I've watched a lot on tv. Wow.
[02:16]
Hannah Einbinder
Yes.
[02:17]
Aarti Shahani
Seriously, Chuckles the Clown.
[02:22]
Hannah Einbinder
You.
[02:23]
Jean Smart
You did it.
[02:24]
Aarti Shahani
In season five of Hacks. Your character, Deborah Vance, is preparing to do her big comeback show at Madison Square Garden. She gets it in her head that she just needs to wear this iconic beaded white jumpsuit that was worn by her comedy hero Carol Burnett. The problem is that the current owner is another female comedian who is a lesbian and she and Deborah have bad blood in part because Deborah has said some very homophobic things in the past to her. Now Deborah is trying to butter up the jumpsuit owner to get her to sell it. The owner lives in a dream home in Montesino with her super hot younger girlfriend. They've invited Deborah to come spend the weekend. Deborah shows up with her business partner and young protege, Ava Daniels. And once they arrive, Deborah tells Ava, oh, you're going to pretend to be my lesbian lover over the weekend so we can endear ourselves to the host and get the jumpsuit. Ava, who is queer herself, is furious. Let's hear the clip.
[03:29]
Jean Smart
Deborah, this is insane. I am not pretending to be a lesbian couple with you. I need that jumpsuit. Please. It means a lot to me. I guess it wouldn't be too bad to spend some time with the wife. Call me Chandler. Cause I want to. Monica, you're my girlfriend. Do not flirt with her and blow up my spot. You and I are in a committed, loving relationship. You're sleeping in the tub. I am not sleeping in the tub. Okay, you know what? If you want me to do this, you gotta give me $1,000.
[04:00]
Aarti Shahani
Your reaction, Gene? Smart. The first time you read that scene.
[04:06]
Jean Smart
Oh, my God, it was. And it was funny because it was so clever. Because it was the first time in the entire series that we've seen Deborah completely at Ava's mercy and at a loss for words. She couldn't say anything to defend herself. So Ava just took full advantage and said and did all these dreadful things.
[04:30]
Podcast Announcer
Yes.
[04:31]
Aarti Shahani
It was such a great role reversal.
[04:34]
Jean Smart
Oh, my God.
[04:35]
Aarti Shahani
It was so much fun, that episode, for all of the reversal going on. I remember watching Deborah in season two back when she was supposed to be entertainment on a lesbian cruise.
[04:45]
Jean Smart
And.
[04:45]
Aarti Shahani
And she just offended everyone there.
[04:49]
Jean Smart
Got put off the ship.
[04:52]
Aarti Shahani
And then by season five, your character is kissing Ava on the lips.
[04:58]
Jean Smart
Yeah. Yeah. Anything for a jumpsuit, I guess.
[05:05]
Aarti Shahani
In addition to the fashionista mandate, what's important about this evolving relationship between Deborah and. And lesbians?
[05:18]
Jean Smart
Well, I was very pleased that. I mean, from what I read and what I heard that a lot of our lesbian fans really enjoyed that episode. Didn't feel like they were being catered to or pandered to or treated with disrespect. And that they felt that it was truthful, but still sort of satisfied whatever fantasies they might have had about Deborah and Eva. I just. I thought it was just written so cleverly and done so well. And Paul directed it brilliantly and it was really fun.
[05:56]
Aarti Shahani
Yeah, it's like this very interesting wish fulfillment without. Without truly being the fulfillment.
[06:04]
Jean Smart
Well, it's such an interesting relationship. And I don't think. I can't think of any other movie or TV show that has had a relationship like this one. It just is so nuanced and so deep and so. But also has been fraught with a lot of pain. I mean, that relationship was. It was mother, daughter, it was best friend, it was enemies for a while. It was respectful co workers. I mean, it was. You know, and Deborah had such an unhealthy relationship with her daughter. I think that filled a huge hole in her life and a massive amount of guilt that she had about her daughter. It's interesting because I was very. I mean, I was very close to both my parents, but my dad was kind of like my favorite person in the world. And I think I always kind of got along with men easier than women. And I could see that in Deborah is that she's had this gap in her life of feminine energy that Ava kind of disrupted, and she thought, what is this? You know, who is this person? It's driving me crazy.
[07:25]
Aarti Shahani
I think you just named. What was landing so deeply for me is that so many modern women actually have this. You know, we survive by, you know, forging alliances with men. And now you see her thriving with this growing feminine energy.
[07:42]
Jean Smart
Absolutely.
[07:44]
Aarti Shahani
You and your co star, Hannah Einbinder, who plays Ava Daniels, have an interesting parallel in real life. You both, at the very beginning of your careers, got cast in hit shows about female friendships that went on for many seasons. Do you find yourself trying to mold Hannah in your image?
[08:05]
Jean Smart
Oh, my God, no. She wouldn't be remotely interested in that. Yeah, no, she. And she's gonna be so annoyed. It's like I tell her every time I tell this next story, I always say, I'm never gonna tell the story again, I promise, but can I tell it one more time? And then I. You know, it's when she was still in awe of me, which was years ago, shortly after we'd started shooting the show. And I think she, you know, really listened to my advice and everything, but she came up to me and she said, I just have to thank you, because I heard you really, really went to bat for me. You know, when I auditioned and I said. I told the producers, you know, I thought you were. You had to be the one. And in fact, I said that if they didn't hire you, I wasn't gonna do the show. And she looked at me and she said, really? I said, no. What, are you nuts? What are you crazy? And as it was coming out of my mouth, I thought, oh, Jean, I can't believe you're gonna say this. You don't even know this girl. I said please laugh. Please laugh. And of course she did. Thank God she laughed. I just couldn't resist.
[09:27]
Aarti Shahani
You know, of all the shows that you have starred in, I've heard you talk about Fargo with the most, I don't know, reverence or nostalgia. And in that series, you play Floyd Gerhardt, matriarch of the Gerhardt crime family.
[09:43]
Jean Smart
Yes.
[09:44]
Aarti Shahani
After her husband has a sudden stroke, the question becomes, who is going to run the family business? Let's play a scene from Fargo, season two, when you, as Floyd Gerhardt, are sitting at the dining room table with your son Dodd, each jockeying for position. Let's play the clip.
[10:05]
Jean Smart
Sit. Eat. This moment, how things go in the next few weeks will decide.
[10:26]
Maureen Corrigan
That's why.
[10:26]
Jean Smart
Let me finish. Your grandfather left the ashes of the Weimer Republic and came to this country to build a name for himself. He built an empire from a shoeshine box. And then, and only then, did he send for your father. Ma, I know the story. No, you don't. Because if you did, you'd know that you are just a small part of it. That's what an empire is. It's bigger than any son or daughter. Eat.
[11:13]
NPR Sponsor Message Voice
I'm not hungry.
[11:14]
Jean Smart
I'm your mother. You will eat with me. Your time will come. It will. But this isn't it. And if you stand by me now, I promise you that as soon as this crisis is over, I'll hand you your legacy and I'll turn my thoughts to the grave.
[11:39]
Aarti Shahani
Your reaction to that clip?
[11:42]
Jean Smart
Oh, I'd forgotten about that scene. Yeah, that was a. That was a great scene. Noah Hawley, so, so brilliant writer. It was funny. It was one of those parts where I. I had the same reaction when I read. I had a certain speech that he sent me to audition with. I had the same reaction to it that I had when I first read the pilot script for Deborah Vance for Hacks. For Hacks was that I just. I could hear this woman in my head. I knew exactly who she was, what made her tick, and the fact that she was named Floyd. And I never asked Noah why he named her Floyd, because I just. I came up with my own. And I didn't want him to sort of disabuse me of that. But I did ask him when we were done, because I had come up with this whole backstory of how she. Her father had always wanted a boy, and he was gonna name him Floyd come hell or high water. But he had a girl Named her Floyd anyway, and taught her how to, you know, be a rancher and how to ride and how to shoot, how to hunt, how to be tough, how to, you know, everything that he would have taught his son and that he named her Floyd. And so I asked Noah, finally, when the our season was done, I said, why? Why did you name her Floyd? And he said, oh, my wife has an aunt named Floyd. I just thought it sounded cool. Oh, okay.
[13:08]
Aarti Shahani
Well, overthinking it helped you deliver it.
[13:14]
Jean Smart
Yeah, but I mean, that show.
[13:16]
Aarti Shahani
Oh, sorry, not a lot.
[13:19]
Jean Smart
I mean, somewhat. I mean, when I was doing 24, the brilliant Gregory Itson and I, who actually done a play together years before. And so it was great fun to get back together with him, he and I. He was playing the president, and I was playing the first lady, and he and I came up with a little bit of a backstory about did we ever have kids and if we did, what happened and where are they? And da, da, da. And so we told one of the producers one day, and he just kind of looked at us like, oh, yeah, okay, just. That's nice. Do your little actory thing. That's nice. Okay,
[13:54]
Aarti Shahani
Well, in playing Floyd, the matriarch mafia boss, how did you grow creatively in that role? It was such a great role.
[14:02]
Jean Smart
I loved playing her. I would have loved to have played her a little longer. And it was so nice to be just rid of any kind of physical vanity, the clothing, the hair, no makeup, everything, and just be able to just do the work and not think about all that other superfluous stuff. Although I do remember because I said to the hair gal, I said. I said, I don't want to wear a wig. I want to be able to, like, grab my hair or touch it or whatever I want to do. I just don't. I don't want to wear a wig. And I said, just cut my hair really short and put a brown hair in there.
[14:38]
Aarti Shahani
Oh, that hairdo was your idea?
[14:40]
Jean Smart
Yeah. I said, put a brown mousy rinse in it and permit or whatever. And. And she did. I just remember I looked in the mirror, I just almost started to cry, but I went, so there she is. There she is. Yep, there she is.
[14:57]
Aarti Shahani
Wow, Transcending vanity. That's great.
[15:00]
Jean Smart
Yeah. Well, it's nice because you think, God, the men get to feel this way almost all the time. You know, they get out of the shower, run their hand through their hair. Makeup artists might pouted them for a second, you know, and they get to just think about the work, not like, oh, God, how come you're lying to me like that? Or, oh, God, I have to hold my stomach in. Or, oh, God, I have this or that. You know, and it's. I've had a few roles like that and it's so freeing. But that was. And it was. I was surrounded by such remarkable actors. I mean, I've. I mean, I've had that experience on so many shows. I've been so lucky. But there was something about that show. I mean, every single human being on that set, in front of the camera, behind it, was on their A game. And it was the most extraordinary experience doing Noah's script.
[15:50]
Aarti Shahani
Let's rewind back to the very beginning, by which I mean, 1692. You descend from a woman. Aha.
[15:59]
Jean Smart
Yeah. Oh, my God. We.
[16:01]
Aarti Shahani
We're going to go there. You descend from a woman prosecuted in the Salem witch trials.
[16:06]
Jean Smart
Yeah, my eight times great grandmother. I can't believe you brought that up. As I was looking in my closet, I went, what should I wear? I mean. And I didn't know if the studio was gonna be cold or not. So I almost grabbed my 1692 hoodie. Oh, my God, I had my hand on it. That's so weird. And it says 1692. They missed one
[16:31]
Aarti Shahani
because she was not hungry.
[16:34]
Jean Smart
Is that what you're. She was not.
[16:36]
Aarti Shahani
Tell us about that.
[16:37]
Jean Smart
She missed being hanged by one day. She confessed in quotes. And they think that she was actually very clever. And she noticed that people who confessed, it bought them some time because they wanted you to examine your soul and all this kind of stuff, because, of course, nothing back then, nothing they loved more than a repentant sinner. And people who didn't confess were hanged immediately. But she was. What I found out about her was she was an eccentric gal, Grandma. And I think it was probably very, very easy to accuse her of being a witch. She had kind of gotten in trouble a couple of times, and she was now an older woman. And she had owned a book on fortune telling, which back then was considered very suspect. She had also gotten in trouble because she and a couple of her daughters sort of had a little cat burglary ring in Beverly, Massachusetts, which is outside of Salem. And her daughters would make friends with the maids of all the rich people in town and steal stuff for us. And also, too, I found out this wasn't on. It was not, though on part of the show, which I did, which was called who do youo Think youk Are? The Genealogy Show. But I found out through Wikipedia and some other source that she had a lock of hair that was, quote, of another color, I'm assuming white. What other color could it be? And it was what they call an elf lock, which from what I've read is like a kind of like a dreadlock where your hair has become matted and twisted. And it was 4ft 7 inches long when they arrested her. And she can't have been taller than that. I mean, at the time. And when they arrested her, they wanted to cut it and she flipped out and said if they cut it off, she'd die. So she was she was an interesting person, clearly related to you. Certainly didn't help her cause when she did that. But when I found that out, these tears just sprang to my eyes. I just thought I couldn't believe my eyes. I was reading they actually let me hold original transcripts from the 1600s. And I was reading her arraignment and I saw those when I first saw the words witchcraft, I just couldn't believe it. And when they brought my grandmother into the room, these young women started screaming and pretending to faint. And it was and you could tell at first she was frightened, but then she started to get angry and they had to tell her to kind of calm down. But it was weird because I thought, am I having some kind of weird past life regression? Because the names were familiar to me. And I'm thinking, okay, this is really crazy. It was like right out of a scene from the Crucible, that famous play by Arthur Miller about the trials. And then I realized that, of course, Arthur Miller, when he was writing that play, he had access to all the same history that I was being given by these historians and genealogists. And it was just bizarre. It was just crazy.
[20:08]
Terry Gross
We're listening to guest interviewer Arthur Shahani's conversation with Jean Smart. Smart won Emmys for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series for the first four seasons of the hit series Hacks. She's nominated again for Hacks, fifth and final season. We'll hear more of their conversation after a break. I'm Terry Gross, and this is FRESH air.
[20:30]
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[21:14]
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[21:59]
Terry Gross
NPR this is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. Let's get back to the conversation guest interviewer Arthur Shahani recorded with actor Gene Smart and Smart stars and the HBO series Hacks, about two female comedians played by Smart and comedian Hannah Einbinder, who form a close bond despite being at completely different stages in their lives and careers. Hacks concluded its fifth and final season this past spring and is now nominated for 24 Emmys, breaking the record for most nominations received by a comedy series in a single year. In its first four seasons, Smart won Emmys for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series, and she's nominated again this year. Jean Smart's first claim to fame was starring in the 1980s sitcom Designing Women. Since then, she's appeared in a number of shows, including Fargo, Watchmen and Mare of Easttown, and she's performed on Broadway.
[22:56]
Aarti Shahani
You met the love of your life, Richard Gilliland, on the set of Designing Women?
[23:02]
Jean Smart
Yes.
[23:02]
Aarti Shahani
And I want to ask about him first. How did you know that Richard was the one?
[23:11]
Jean Smart
It was just an instant thing. It really was. It was just instant. The day we met, we were never apart after that. And he just, I mean, I don't know. I mean, nobody made me laugh the way he did. He was so warm and so easy to talk to and so funny. And I just, I remember I walked into this building over at Warner Brothers. We were getting ready to do a table read of episode five, and the show had never aired yet. We weren't on the air yet. And we were shooting the fifth episode. And I looked up the stairwell and I saw this guy talking to somebody, and I recognized Him. I'd seen him on television. I didn't know his name, but I thought, I've seen that guy before. But I just. He had these great little smile lines, and he just. He just. I just. He just looked so. And I thought, oh, I wonder if he's here to be on our show, because there were other productions in the building. And, yeah, there he was. And so I walked in the room, and there he was sitting across from me. And, yeah, it was just instant. And I started inviting him into my trailer to play. Do crossword puzzles. And then he invited me to see a play that he was in, which was pretty bad, but he was absolutely hysterical in it. And I went about 12 times.
[24:40]
Aarti Shahani
Aww. You guys were married for 35 years, which seems like a very rare thing in Hollywood.
[24:50]
Jean Smart
Yeah, it was half my life. Yeah. Yeah.
[24:53]
Aarti Shahani
How'd you manage to stay married together for that long?
[24:58]
Jean Smart
Well, yeah, I mean, I don't know if the statistics. I don't know what the statistics are. Compared to other professions, I don't think they're probably drastically different. But I do think that, at least for actors, you're constantly meeting attractive, interesting people and different people all the time. All the time you're exposed to different people, and sometimes you're out of town working with these attractive, interesting people who are all kind of at their most attractive and interesting because they're working, you know, and so that can be, of course, very hard on a marriage. But like I said, we had similar values. We'd both been married before, and again, I mean, it just. I don't know. It's the. Nobody made me laugh like him.
[25:53]
Aarti Shahani
His career, as I understand it, took a bit of a backseat so that the family could focus on your career. Was that an easy or difficult decision?
[26:04]
Jean Smart
No, it was difficult. It wasn't really a decision. It kind of just evolved that way. And it was. It didn't. It was difficult. It was hard on him, which I understand. And, you know, he. Both of us, you know, grew up in the 50s, where it was traditional family values and traditional role models. So that was. That was difficult. And we actually separated for a year, and that was excruciating. But it was also. Probably ended up being a good thing because I really. I think I really understood what wedding vows meant. I was very humbled by the fact that Richard did not ever give up on us. And I had. And I felt. I feel bad about that, that I put him through that, but he always believed that somehow we'd get back together, and we did. I think that next Christmas, after we got back together, we were having a Christmas party, and a friend of ours was there who had recently been ordained so he could marry some other friends of ours. And I said, hey, Greg's here. Let's renew our vows. He said, oh, great. And so we hadn't told anybody. It was just sort of a spur of the moment thing. And so my son, who was about 8, 9, then he and his buddy. I said, set up some chairs, you know, and so he started. His friends started setting up rows of chairs, and people thought, oh, God, Gina, Rich, are gonna put on a little show or something, you know, I don't know what they thought. And I was just wearing a pair of black pants and a leopard print sweater, and he had on a Hawaiian shirt and jeans. And I said, well, this won't do, you know, So I went and I got some fake flowers and I put them in my hair. And he went and got his tuxedo jacket and put it on over his Hawaiian shirt. Aw, I'm sure he looks ridiculous. And we just said what was in our hearts and how grateful we were to be back together, and it was great.
[28:17]
Aarti Shahani
One more question about your personal life. You gave birth to your first child when you were 37. 38. What they call the advanced maternal age.
[28:27]
Jean Smart
38.
[28:28]
Aarti Shahani
Yes, 38. And then at age 57, you adopted a baby.
[28:36]
Terry Gross
Yes.
[28:37]
Aarti Shahani
Explain that.
[28:40]
Jean Smart
Well, we knew two couples who had adopted babies from China and just. And I had. I had wanted to have another child, but it just wasn't in the cards. And I had a miscarriage, and that was really painful. And I just thought, I really want another baby. And so we started talking about it, and Richard would always say, oh, no, I think we're too old. We're too old. And by the time we finally did it, we probably were, but it was like it took so many years to talk him into it, you know? And at one point, we were actually going to start the paperwork, but then my father was diagnosed with Alzheimer's, and I just. I couldn't deal with it. So I kind of put it on the back burner for a while, but then we started again. But unfortunately, that was right when China was hosting the Olympics, I believe, and everything just slowed down to a snail's pace. So it took about five years once we started doing the paperwork. And the paperwork was overwhelming. It was just endless. It was just endless. It was worth it, but it took a long. A long time. But, you know, at that age, I felt like I peaked in my 50s. I felt like I could do anything. And it was just a thrill. And it was so cool because when they place that baby in your arms, you realize in that split second that it doesn't matter that you gave birth to that child or not. It's like it was just instant. It's like that thing of this I'm gonna love you and protect you for the rest of my life. And it was just really cool. But it was a little was kind of dismayed that so many of our friends, most of them really seemed to disapprove when I told them what we were going to do. But when we brought the baby home, all my girlfriends were just so jealous. They were like, oh, my God.
[30:46]
Aarti Shahani
Oh my God.
[30:47]
Jean Smart
And all the husbands were like, thanks a lot, Richard. Jesus shit, stop talking about this.
[30:54]
Aarti Shahani
My guest is actor Jean Smart. She has won seven Emmys, including four for playing the comedian Deborah Vance on Hacks. She's nominated again this year for Outstanding Lead actress in a Comedy series for the show's fifth and final season. More after the break. This is FRESH air.
[31:11]
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[31:29]
Podcast Announcer
for this podcast and the following message come from Strawberry Me. Be honest. Are you happy with your job? Are you stuck in a job you've outgrown or never wanted in the first place? Are your reasons for staying really just excuses for not leaving? Let a career coach from Strawberry Me help you get unstuck. Discover the benefits of having a dedicated career coach in your corner and get 50% off your first coaching session at Strawberry Me.
[31:57]
Aarti Shahani
NPR this is FRESH AIR. I'm Aarti Shahani back with actor Jean Smart. She stars in the critically acclaimed show Hacks. She's won four Emmys for her role and has been nominated again this year for Outstanding lead actress in a comedy series. Her other shows include Designing Women, Frasier, Fargo and Mayor of Easttown. Okay, this last part of our conversation is a spoiler for anyone who has not seen Hack Season five. So you have officially been warned. In the last episode of the season, Deborah Vance and her young sidekick Ava Daniels are in Paris. Deborah has been diagnosed with cancer, is refusing treatment and wants to go out on her own terms. So Paris is supposed to be their last rendezvous before Deborah checks herself into a European center for assisted suicide. In this scene, they are at the train station waiting for their train eating. Let's hear the clip.
[32:59]
Hannah Einbinder
So
[33:02]
Jean Smart
what are you gonna ask if you get to, you know, meet your maker? My plastic surgeon. Aw. No, really? In 1980, Burt Reynolds called, called me, and I called him back, but he never returned. What was that about? That's what you want to know. I pretty much have everything else figured out. In fact, I think he or she or, you know, they. Them might have some questions for me. Actually, they. Them. Okay. Non binary God love. I meant more of an energy. I don't think there's going to be a gender fluid barista waiting for me at the pearly gate. It's too bad. I love a matcha when I get there. Hey, are you done with that? Yeah, yeah, go for it.
[33:54]
Terry Gross
Wow.
[33:55]
Jean Smart
I guess the best part of dying for a person with disordered eating is having a second croissant. Actually, the best part of dying is not having to save receipts because you know you will never get audited again. Actually, I think the best part of dying is knowing how pissed people are going to be when they realize how much money you left your dogs. But the worst part of dying is that I don't get to see how my corgis decide to spend that 550,000.
[34:25]
Aarti Shahani
Aw. What do you think of that scene?
[34:29]
Jean Smart
Yeah, that was a great scene. Burt Runnells. You know, it was so. It was very much in character, you know, for Deborah to make that decision to do that.
[34:43]
Aarti Shahani
You know, you were mentioning earlier you think that Deborah's character really unfolds over the course of the series. And how would you summarize what that evolution is?
[34:54]
Jean Smart
I think she just becomes so much more relaxed. You know, she's made peace with her daughter, even though it was kind of an unpleasant peace in the sense that she realized she was never going to be able to repair that relationship, that it was never going to be what it should have been. And that's a hole that Ava fills to a certain extent. So she's kind of been making peace with people even before she realized that she was sick. It's like she's relaxing in her life a little bit and she's allowing. She's allowing Ava to sort of, you know, sometimes take control or give her some advice. And when she stands up to Bob Lipka, played by the wonderful Tony Goldwyn, that's a huge thing for her. Very freeing, Very freeing. And she's thinking, screw it. I don't need Madison Square Garden. I don't need the money from the ticket sales. I just want to talk in front of People who want to hear me talk and so just get me a stage in the park. Let anybody who wants to come come. You know, you never. She wouldn't have done that. Season one or too.
[36:22]
Aarti Shahani
Is Deborah Vance and Hacks a creative challenge for you or more like the easy reward after a lifetime of challenges?
[36:32]
Jean Smart
There weren't things like I didn't, you know, because there was a slight accent involved with Floyd, which was, adds, you know, another layer that you need to work through so you can get to. You can just stop thinking about it and let it just come naturally. That's another sort of added challenge. But they were both emotionally demanding, but in very different ways. You know, they were similar in the way, in the sense that they both were kind of held a lot of their feelings in, you know. But the thing about Deborah was it's just so fun to make people laugh and just to see how people responded to the show was such a, such a thrill. And she got to be just more and more three dimensional, more and more human and less guarded as time went by, which was really nice.
[37:24]
Aarti Shahani
You know, Jean, you are kind of making a case for me. All right. I wanted to have this conversation. I wanted to have this conversation with you for a little bit of a hidden agenda.
[37:36]
Jean Smart
Okay, okay.
[37:38]
Aarti Shahani
Which is that, yes, you all say Hacks is over. Season 5 was the last season, but I think it's the wrong call. I don't get why.
[37:51]
Jean Smart
Well, it was written as a five year show from day one. They had every season already in their heads. Written in their heads, if not already written from years before they even met me. That's how they sold it. That's how they pitched it to me. That's how they pitched it to the network. They felt that it ended in an appropriate way. Of course, they had no way of knowing how big the show was gonna become. And I felt that I was ready to move on from the character. So it all kind of gelled nicely.
[38:34]
Aarti Shahani
I know you're okay with it being over, but just if I'm. One more question I think about is how are you feeling now that you are a little bit away from the filming of it?
[38:45]
Jean Smart
Well, I'm not missing getting up at four in the morning and wearing high heels all day. I don't know if you noticed, but the heels got shorter and shorter as the seasons went on. I wore some killer heels season one that I couldn't wear today. The thing is though, unlike our darling crew, who had to kind of rip off the band aid for us and the cast, particularly Hannah and I, we have an entire awards season coming up, so we're gonna still be living with the show, talking about the show, doing interviews about the show, going to ceremonies and things through next February. So after that it might feel a little more real.
[39:29]
Aarti Shahani
Well, Jean Smart, thanks for joining us.
[39:31]
Jean Smart
Thank you so much.
[39:34]
Terry Gross
Jean Smart spoke with guest interviewer arthi Shahani. The fifth and final season of Hacks is nominated for 24 Emmys, including one for Smart for best actress in a comedy series. Arti is a veteran NPR journalist, host of the podcast Art of Power, and author of the memoir Here We Are. Coming up, Maureen Corrigan reviews a new novel by Daniel Mason, who she says has a magic touch as a writer. This is FRESH AIR support for this
[40:03]
Podcast Announcer
podcast, and the following message come from Strawberry Me. Be honest. Are you happy with your job? Are you stuck in a job you've outgrown or never wanted in the first place? Are your reasons for staying really just excuses for not leaving? Let a career coach from Strawberry Me help you get unstuck. Discover the benefits of having a dedicated career coach in your Corner and get 50% off your first coaching session at Strawberry Me. NPR support for NPR. And the following message come from GoodRx. With the days packed with summertime activities and back to school coming up, it can be a challenge keeping everyone healthy while staying on budget. With Goodrx, you can find big savings at the pharmacy for the whole family. Compare prescription prices at over 70,000 pharmacies and instantly find free coupons. Goodrx is not insurance, but it may beat your copay price. If you do have insurance, save at the pharmacy this summer, go to goodrx.com
[41:03]
Terry Gross
fresh this is FRESH AIR. Many writers hold down day jobs to pay the bills, but Daniel Mason is that rare literary creature. His 2020 short story collection was a finalist for the Pulitzer, and his 2023 historical fiction was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Simultaneously, Mason has maintained a second career as a psychiatry professor at Stanford. Our book critic Maureen Corrigan says that academic background stands him in good stead for his latest novel, Country People. Here's Maureen's review.
[41:39]
Maureen Corrigan
Shakespeare was wise to the fact that most folks prefer lighter entertainments in the summer, hence A Midsummer Night's Dream, that confection of a play in which rustics and royals and meddlesome fairies collide in a forest. Country People by Daniel Mason is a satisfying spin on the barb's bubble of an amusement for anyone slow to catch on. Mason even ends his novel with an elementary school performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream the wanderers into a Vermont forest here are not exactly royals, but you might say they're the kind of people Jefferson had in mind when he proposed that the United States be governed not by an inherited aristocracy, but by an aristocracy of the intellectual. Or perhaps not. Kate is a hotshot, a distinguished scholar of Blake and Milton, currently teaching in California, she's been offered a one year visiting professorship at a college in Vermont. Miles, her husband, has been working sort of on his dissertation for the past 14 years, something to do with Russian folklore. To be fair, though, Miles, an eternal graduate student, does provide caretaking to the couple's two young children, as well as for Kate, who's been diagnosed with Ms. He also tends to their dog Giuseppe, who's possessed, much like Miles himself, of a fairly useless skill. Giuseppe has been bred to hunt truffles. Energized by the thought of a year in their new place, the family drives cross country, arriving at a sylvan wood where they'll live suspiciously rent free in the house of a faculty member on sabbatical. The digressive plot of Country People contains golden threads of academic force. To my taste, passages like this one contrasting Kate and Miles student evaluations are some of the funniest in the novel. Our omniscient narrator tells us that Kate taught popular courses, which, according to her teaching evaluations, were super fun and interesting, probably not useful for a job, but still mind blowing. The narrator continues to fill us in. Over the past decade, watching their course enrollments dwindle, Kate's colleagues had been forced to pander, changing English 7 Shakespeare to sex in Shakespeare, English 28 Middlemarch to learning programming from Middlemarch A Novel. But Kate was hardcore again, according to our narrator. The reviews for the courses Miles taught as a teaching assistant described him as nice, if sometimes hard to follow, and said that he got caught up in arcane topics so that a lecture on Turgenev would somehow end in Ecuador. Once a student wrote that Miles was disheveled, not in a gross way, in a nice way. Another wrote, my friend had a crush on him, which we thought was funny. As the novel settles into Vermont, its humor shifts from the dry wit variety to the wacky excess of tall tales. Miles is jazzed to get to know some actual rural folk, since his dissertation, after all, involves peasants. The locals he talks to on nature trails and in the waiting room of the emergency clinic espouse beliefs that make the witches and dragons of Russian folklore seem colorless by comparison. Flat earth theories and hollow earth theories abound, along with the conviction that the area is studded with massive subterranean super rat lines, a veritable vermin expressway, one of which is said to run under the house Miles and his family now occupy, and seductive fairies spring up in the shape of a children's ski coach and an erotically charged drama teacher who entices Miles into helping her stage an unbowdlerized version of A Midsummer Night's Dream to inevitably quote Puck's immortal line, lord, what fools these mortals be. Thanks to Mason's own magic touch as a writer, Country People mostly charms rather than condescends. Sometimes his jokes do go on for too long, like the footnote sprawling over three pages listing adults who attended the school play. And sometimes, much like the Hollow Earthers, I was conscious of the absence of a solid core to this novel. But then I reminded myself that silliness for its own sake is an underrated virtue in art, and there's silliness aplenty in Country People. To keep readers entertained, Maureen Corrigan is
[47:18]
Terry Gross
a professor of literature at Georgetown University. She reviewed Country People by Daniel Mason Tomorrow on FRESH AIR, Donald Trump took in about $2.2 billion last year while serving as president. New York Times journalist Eric Lipton will talk about his Pulitzer Prize winning investigations into Trump's profits and related conflicts of interest. Last month, Lipton was one of the Times reporters subpoenaed by the Justice Department in connection with reporting about Air Force One. I hope you'll join us. To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews. Follow us on Instagram @NPRFreshAir. Fresh Air's executive producer is Sam Brigger. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our engineers today are Charlie Kyer and Adam Stanischewski. Our senior producer today is Roberta Shorrock. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Ann Marie Boldonado, Lauren Krenzel, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Yakundi, Anna Bauman and Nico Gonzalez Whistler. Our digital media producer is Molly CV Nesper. Theresa Madden directed today's show. Our co host is Tanya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross.
[48:48]
Podcast Announcer
This message comes from ixl. IXL provides personalized learning and powerful insights that help teachers boost achievement and understand student progress in real time. Learn more@ixl.com NPR the midterms are coming,
[49:03]
Layla Faldel
and that means the news cycle, which is already intense, is about to get more intense this fall. So this summer is a perfect time to make sure your news diet is calibrated. I'm Layla Faldel on Up first, we unpack the three biggest stories every morning so you can stay informed and get on with your day in less than 15 minutes. Follow or subscribe to Up First Today,
[49:24]
Aarti Shahani
wherever you get your podcasts.
[49:27]
Hannah Einbinder
Oh, hey there. I'm Brittany Luce, and I don't know, maybe this is a little out of pocket to say, but I, I think you should listen to my podcast. It's called It's Been a Minute, and I love it. And I think you will, too. Over the past couple months, over 100,000 new listeners started tuning in. Find out why. Listen to the It's Been a Minute podcast from NPR today.

Summary5 min read

Fresh Air Podcast Summary

Episode: Jean Smart bids farewell to ‘Hacks’

Host: Terry Gross
Guest Interviewer: Aarti Shahani
Guest: Jean Smart
Air Date: August 4, 2026

Episode Overview

This episode of Fresh Air marks a notable occasion: Emmy-winning actress Jean Smart joins guest interviewer Aarti Shahani to reflect on her acclaimed performance as Deborah Vance in the HBO series Hacks, which concluded its fifth and final season this spring. Smart discusses the evolution of her character, the show's unique take on female relationships, her own storied TV career, personal stories from her life (including her marriage, motherhood, and surprising ancestry), and her feelings as she bids farewell to a career-defining role.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Jean Smart on ‘Hacks’ and Deborah Vance

Why ‘Hacks’ Resonates
- Hacks received a record 24 Emmy nominations for its final season, underscoring its unique voice in TV comedy.
- The series centers on the creative partnership (and friction) between two women comics: seasoned Deborah Vance (Smart) and millennial writer Ava Daniels (Hannah Einbinder).
- Quote: “It just is so nuanced and so deep... mother, daughter, best friend, enemies... Deb had such an unhealthy relationship with her daughter. I think [Ava] filled a huge hole in her life.” (Jean Smart, 06:04–07:08)
Memorable Season 5 Scene
- Smart recounts a signature episode in which Deborah enlists Ava to pretend as her lesbian partner in hopes of charming a jumpsuit’s owner—providing both cringe comedy and character depth.
- Quote: “It was the first time in the whole series that we’ve seen Deborah completely at Ava’s mercy and at a loss for words.” (04:06)
Representation and Audience Response
- Smart notes pride in how Hacks episodes resonated with LGBTQ+ fans, striking a balance between playful fantasy and respect:
  - "A lot of our lesbian fans really enjoyed that episode. Didn't feel like they were being catered to or pandered to or treated with disrespect." (Jean Smart, 05:17)

2. On-Screen Partnerships and Mentorship

Parallel Careers with Hannah Einbinder
- Both Smart and Einbinder began their careers with acclaimed ensemble shows about women's relationships.
- Smart rejects the idea of consciously mentoring Einbinder into a mini-version of herself, sharing a humorous anecdote about early work together.
- Quote: “She wouldn’t be remotely interested in that! ... She did laugh, thank God she laughed. I just couldn’t resist.” (Jean Smart, 08:05–09:17)

3. Career Highlights Beyond ‘Hacks’

Playing Floyd Gerhardt in Fargo
- Smart discusses her creative approach to the crime matriarch role, including influencing Floyd’s “un-glamorous” appearance:
  - “It was so nice to be just rid of any kind of physical vanity… just do the work.” (14:01)
  - She shares her imagined backstory for the character’s unusual name, only to discover it was based on a family acquaintance of the showrunner:
    - “Oh, my wife has an aunt named Floyd. I just thought it sounded cool.” (13:05)
- On the unique freedom of getting past vanity:
  - “God, the men get to feel this way all the time… they get to just think about the work... it’s so freeing.” (14:59)

4. Personal Life and Ancestry

Marriage and Partnership
- Smart met her late husband, actor Richard Gilliland, on Designing Women; their instant connection led to 35 years together.
- Candidly discusses the challenges of balancing two acting careers, including a year-long separation, ultimately leading to renewed vows and deeper commitment:
  - “I was very humbled by the fact that Richard did not ever give up on us.” (26:03–27:32)
Later-in-Life Motherhood and Adoption
- Smart gave birth to her first son at 38 and adopted a second son from China at 57, describing the process as long but deeply rewarding.
- Observations on instant parental bonds:
  - “It doesn’t matter that you gave birth to that child or not. In that split second... this is my child.” (29:24)
- Recounts the unexpected pushback—and eventual jealousy—among friends.
  - “When we brought the baby home, all my girlfriends were just so jealous.” (30:46)
Salem Witch Trials Ancestry
- Reveals she is descended from a woman prosecuted during the Salem Witch Trials, sharing a colorful family history of survival and eccentricity:
  - “She missed being hanged by one day. She confessed—in quotes. I found out about her, she was an eccentric gal, Grandma.” (16:06–18:05)

5. Reflecting on Saying Goodbye to ‘Hacks’

Character Evolution
- Smart outlines Deborah’s arc from guarded, abrasive comedian to a softened, more self-accepting artist reconciled with her past:
  - “She just becomes so much more relaxed... made peace with her daughter—even though it was kind of an unpleasant peace... Ava fills that hole to an extent.” (34:54)
Series Finale and Farewell
- In the show’s closing, Deborah faces a cancer diagnosis and contemplates her legacy, with mordant humor.
- Memorable exchange:
  - Ava: “So, what are you gonna ask if you get to, you know, meet your maker?”
  - Deborah: “My plastic surgeon.” (Jean Smart, 33:53)
Intentional Ending
- Smart affirms the showrunners’ plan to end after five seasons:
  - “It was written as a five-year show from day one... they pitched it to me like that... I was ready to move on from the character.” (37:51)
Parting Thoughts
- Jean doesn’t miss 4am wake-ups and high heels, but notes, “We still have an entire awards season to talk about the show—after that, it might feel more real.” (38:44)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

On the Mother-Daughter Dynamic in ‘Hacks’:
- “That relationship was mother-daughter, best friend, enemies... and Deborah had such an unhealthy relationship with her own daughter. That filled a huge hole in her life.” (Jean Smart, 06:04)
On Adopting Her Son at 57:
- “When they place that baby in your arms, you realize in that split second it doesn’t matter if you gave birth to that child or not.” (Jean Smart, 29:59)
On Saying Goodbye to “Hacks”:
- “I was ready to move on from the character... it all kind of gelled nicely.” (Jean Smart, 37:51)
On Legacy:
- “The best part of dying is not having to save receipts because you know you will never get audited again.” (Jean Smart as Deborah Vance, 33:54)

Timestamps for Key Segments

00:43–02:06: Opening remarks and Hacks synopsis
03:29–05:56: Key episode in season 5 and its significance
06:04–08:05: Deep dive into Deborah and Ava’s bond
09:26–13:15: Transition to ‘Fargo’ and character-building process
15:50–20:06: Family ancestry and Salem witch trial connections
22:56–28:17: Marriage, relationship dynamics, and motherhood
31:56–34:25: Series finale, character arc, and legacy (Includes finale dialogue)
34:54–39:28: Reflection on show's end and legacy

Episode Tone

The conversation balances sharp wit, heartfelt confession, and the kind of warmth and comic timing that has become Jean Smart’s signature. Throughout, Smart is genuine, playful, and candid—offering both laughs and thoughtful introspection.

For fans of Jean Smart, “Hacks,” and rich conversations about women in comedy, television history, and creative resilience, this episode offers both a look back and a celebration of legacies—on and off screen.

Loading summary

Transcript111 lines

[00:01]
Podcast Announcer
This message comes from National Geographic's Pompeii out of Time with Tom Hiddleston, a new series from the executive producers of Loki. Pompeii out of Time with Tom Hiddleston is now streaming on Disney and Hulu.
[00:14]
Terry Gross
This is FRESH air. I'm Terry Gross. The HBO series Hacks is nominated for 24 Emmys. That's a record breaking number for a comedy series in a single year. It finished its fifth and final season this past spring. Our guest is the show's star, Jean Smart. She spoke with guest interviewer Arthi Shahani. Arthi is a veteran NPR journalist, host of the podcast Art of Power, and author of the memoir Here We Are. Here's Arti.
[00:43]
Aarti Shahani
Jean Smart is on the cusp of making TV history. The star of the hit show Hacks has been nominated again for outstanding lead actress in a comedy series. She won in that category for every previous season of Hacks. The show is about two female comedians, one at the start of her career, the other played by Jean Smart at the purported end of hers. While they can't stand each other at first, they are also ravenously ambitious. That is what fuels a zany journey that becomes about the creative process, chosen family and finding love for a person whose worldview is antithetical to yours. Today, hackstar Jean Smart returns to FRESH AIR to talk about her iconic role as the character Jennifer Deborah Vance and also her life's work. Smart has previously won Emmys for her performances on the shows Frasier and Samantha, who her first claim to fame was starring in the 1980s sitcom Designing Women. She's performed in dramas like Fargo, Watchmen and Mare of Easttown and also on Broadway. She is a real unicorn in Hollywood, a mainstream female actor who who has spent decades on the screen in many stories focused on women's relationships with each other, not with a man at the center. Jean Smart, welcome back to FRESH air.
[02:07]
Jean Smart
Thank you. Happy to be here.
[02:09]
Aarti Shahani
I wanna start with one of my favorite episodes in all of TV history, and I've watched a lot on tv. Wow.
[02:16]
Hannah Einbinder
Yes.
[02:17]
Aarti Shahani
Seriously, Chuckles the Clown.
[02:22]
Hannah Einbinder
You.
[02:23]
Jean Smart
You did it.
[02:24]
Aarti Shahani
In season five of Hacks. Your character, Deborah Vance, is preparing to do her big comeback show at Madison Square Garden. She gets it in her head that she just needs to wear this iconic beaded white jumpsuit that was worn by her comedy hero Carol Burnett. The problem is that the current owner is another female comedian who is a lesbian and she and Deborah have bad blood in part because Deborah has said some very homophobic things in the past to her. Now Deborah is trying to butter up the jumpsuit owner to get her to sell it. The owner lives in a dream home in Montesino with her super hot younger girlfriend. They've invited Deborah to come spend the weekend. Deborah shows up with her business partner and young protege, Ava Daniels. And once they arrive, Deborah tells Ava, oh, you're going to pretend to be my lesbian lover over the weekend so we can endear ourselves to the host and get the jumpsuit. Ava, who is queer herself, is furious. Let's hear the clip.
[03:29]
Jean Smart
Deborah, this is insane. I am not pretending to be a lesbian couple with you. I need that jumpsuit. Please. It means a lot to me. I guess it wouldn't be too bad to spend some time with the wife. Call me Chandler. Cause I want to. Monica, you're my girlfriend. Do not flirt with her and blow up my spot. You and I are in a committed, loving relationship. You're sleeping in the tub. I am not sleeping in the tub. Okay, you know what? If you want me to do this, you gotta give me $1,000.
[04:00]
Aarti Shahani
Your reaction, Gene? Smart. The first time you read that scene.
[04:06]
Jean Smart
Oh, my God, it was. And it was funny because it was so clever. Because it was the first time in the entire series that we've seen Deborah completely at Ava's mercy and at a loss for words. She couldn't say anything to defend herself. So Ava just took full advantage and said and did all these dreadful things.
[04:30]
Podcast Announcer
Yes.
[04:31]
Aarti Shahani
It was such a great role reversal.
[04:34]
Jean Smart
Oh, my God.
[04:35]
Aarti Shahani
It was so much fun, that episode, for all of the reversal going on. I remember watching Deborah in season two back when she was supposed to be entertainment on a lesbian cruise.
[04:45]
Jean Smart
And.
[04:45]
Aarti Shahani
And she just offended everyone there.
[04:49]
Jean Smart
Got put off the ship.
[04:52]
Aarti Shahani
And then by season five, your character is kissing Ava on the lips.
[04:58]
Jean Smart
Yeah. Yeah. Anything for a jumpsuit, I guess.
[05:05]
Aarti Shahani
In addition to the fashionista mandate, what's important about this evolving relationship between Deborah and. And lesbians?
[05:18]
Jean Smart
Well, I was very pleased that. I mean, from what I read and what I heard that a lot of our lesbian fans really enjoyed that episode. Didn't feel like they were being catered to or pandered to or treated with disrespect. And that they felt that it was truthful, but still sort of satisfied whatever fantasies they might have had about Deborah and Eva. I just. I thought it was just written so cleverly and done so well. And Paul directed it brilliantly and it was really fun.
[05:56]
Aarti Shahani
Yeah, it's like this very interesting wish fulfillment without. Without truly being the fulfillment.
[06:04]
Jean Smart
Well, it's such an interesting relationship. And I don't think. I can't think of any other movie or TV show that has had a relationship like this one. It just is so nuanced and so deep and so. But also has been fraught with a lot of pain. I mean, that relationship was. It was mother, daughter, it was best friend, it was enemies for a while. It was respectful co workers. I mean, it was. You know, and Deborah had such an unhealthy relationship with her daughter. I think that filled a huge hole in her life and a massive amount of guilt that she had about her daughter. It's interesting because I was very. I mean, I was very close to both my parents, but my dad was kind of like my favorite person in the world. And I think I always kind of got along with men easier than women. And I could see that in Deborah is that she's had this gap in her life of feminine energy that Ava kind of disrupted, and she thought, what is this? You know, who is this person? It's driving me crazy.
[07:25]
Aarti Shahani
I think you just named. What was landing so deeply for me is that so many modern women actually have this. You know, we survive by, you know, forging alliances with men. And now you see her thriving with this growing feminine energy.
[07:42]
Jean Smart
Absolutely.
[07:44]
Aarti Shahani
You and your co star, Hannah Einbinder, who plays Ava Daniels, have an interesting parallel in real life. You both, at the very beginning of your careers, got cast in hit shows about female friendships that went on for many seasons. Do you find yourself trying to mold Hannah in your image?
[08:05]
Jean Smart
Oh, my God, no. She wouldn't be remotely interested in that. Yeah, no, she. And she's gonna be so annoyed. It's like I tell her every time I tell this next story, I always say, I'm never gonna tell the story again, I promise, but can I tell it one more time? And then I. You know, it's when she was still in awe of me, which was years ago, shortly after we'd started shooting the show. And I think she, you know, really listened to my advice and everything, but she came up to me and she said, I just have to thank you, because I heard you really, really went to bat for me. You know, when I auditioned and I said. I told the producers, you know, I thought you were. You had to be the one. And in fact, I said that if they didn't hire you, I wasn't gonna do the show. And she looked at me and she said, really? I said, no. What, are you nuts? What are you crazy? And as it was coming out of my mouth, I thought, oh, Jean, I can't believe you're gonna say this. You don't even know this girl. I said please laugh. Please laugh. And of course she did. Thank God she laughed. I just couldn't resist.
[09:27]
Aarti Shahani
You know, of all the shows that you have starred in, I've heard you talk about Fargo with the most, I don't know, reverence or nostalgia. And in that series, you play Floyd Gerhardt, matriarch of the Gerhardt crime family.
[09:43]
Jean Smart
Yes.
[09:44]
Aarti Shahani
After her husband has a sudden stroke, the question becomes, who is going to run the family business? Let's play a scene from Fargo, season two, when you, as Floyd Gerhardt, are sitting at the dining room table with your son Dodd, each jockeying for position. Let's play the clip.
[10:05]
Jean Smart
Sit. Eat. This moment, how things go in the next few weeks will decide.
[10:26]
Maureen Corrigan
That's why.
[10:26]
Jean Smart
Let me finish. Your grandfather left the ashes of the Weimer Republic and came to this country to build a name for himself. He built an empire from a shoeshine box. And then, and only then, did he send for your father. Ma, I know the story. No, you don't. Because if you did, you'd know that you are just a small part of it. That's what an empire is. It's bigger than any son or daughter. Eat.
[11:13]
NPR Sponsor Message Voice
I'm not hungry.
[11:14]
Jean Smart
I'm your mother. You will eat with me. Your time will come. It will. But this isn't it. And if you stand by me now, I promise you that as soon as this crisis is over, I'll hand you your legacy and I'll turn my thoughts to the grave.
[11:39]
Aarti Shahani
Your reaction to that clip?
[11:42]
Jean Smart
Oh, I'd forgotten about that scene. Yeah, that was a. That was a great scene. Noah Hawley, so, so brilliant writer. It was funny. It was one of those parts where I. I had the same reaction when I read. I had a certain speech that he sent me to audition with. I had the same reaction to it that I had when I first read the pilot script for Deborah Vance for Hacks. For Hacks was that I just. I could hear this woman in my head. I knew exactly who she was, what made her tick, and the fact that she was named Floyd. And I never asked Noah why he named her Floyd, because I just. I came up with my own. And I didn't want him to sort of disabuse me of that. But I did ask him when we were done, because I had come up with this whole backstory of how she. Her father had always wanted a boy, and he was gonna name him Floyd come hell or high water. But he had a girl Named her Floyd anyway, and taught her how to, you know, be a rancher and how to ride and how to shoot, how to hunt, how to be tough, how to, you know, everything that he would have taught his son and that he named her Floyd. And so I asked Noah, finally, when the our season was done, I said, why? Why did you name her Floyd? And he said, oh, my wife has an aunt named Floyd. I just thought it sounded cool. Oh, okay.
[13:08]
Aarti Shahani
Well, overthinking it helped you deliver it.
[13:14]
Jean Smart
Yeah, but I mean, that show.
[13:16]
Aarti Shahani
Oh, sorry, not a lot.
[13:19]
Jean Smart
I mean, somewhat. I mean, when I was doing 24, the brilliant Gregory Itson and I, who actually done a play together years before. And so it was great fun to get back together with him, he and I. He was playing the president, and I was playing the first lady, and he and I came up with a little bit of a backstory about did we ever have kids and if we did, what happened and where are they? And da, da, da. And so we told one of the producers one day, and he just kind of looked at us like, oh, yeah, okay, just. That's nice. Do your little actory thing. That's nice. Okay,
[13:54]
Aarti Shahani
Well, in playing Floyd, the matriarch mafia boss, how did you grow creatively in that role? It was such a great role.
[14:02]
Jean Smart
I loved playing her. I would have loved to have played her a little longer. And it was so nice to be just rid of any kind of physical vanity, the clothing, the hair, no makeup, everything, and just be able to just do the work and not think about all that other superfluous stuff. Although I do remember because I said to the hair gal, I said. I said, I don't want to wear a wig. I want to be able to, like, grab my hair or touch it or whatever I want to do. I just don't. I don't want to wear a wig. And I said, just cut my hair really short and put a brown hair in there.
[14:38]
Aarti Shahani
Oh, that hairdo was your idea?
[14:40]
Jean Smart
Yeah. I said, put a brown mousy rinse in it and permit or whatever. And. And she did. I just remember I looked in the mirror, I just almost started to cry, but I went, so there she is. There she is. Yep, there she is.
[14:57]
Aarti Shahani
Wow, Transcending vanity. That's great.
[15:00]
Jean Smart
Yeah. Well, it's nice because you think, God, the men get to feel this way almost all the time. You know, they get out of the shower, run their hand through their hair. Makeup artists might pouted them for a second, you know, and they get to just think about the work, not like, oh, God, how come you're lying to me like that? Or, oh, God, I have to hold my stomach in. Or, oh, God, I have this or that. You know, and it's. I've had a few roles like that and it's so freeing. But that was. And it was. I was surrounded by such remarkable actors. I mean, I've. I mean, I've had that experience on so many shows. I've been so lucky. But there was something about that show. I mean, every single human being on that set, in front of the camera, behind it, was on their A game. And it was the most extraordinary experience doing Noah's script.
[15:50]
Aarti Shahani
Let's rewind back to the very beginning, by which I mean, 1692. You descend from a woman. Aha.
[15:59]
Jean Smart
Yeah. Oh, my God. We.
[16:01]
Aarti Shahani
We're going to go there. You descend from a woman prosecuted in the Salem witch trials.
[16:06]
Jean Smart
Yeah, my eight times great grandmother. I can't believe you brought that up. As I was looking in my closet, I went, what should I wear? I mean. And I didn't know if the studio was gonna be cold or not. So I almost grabbed my 1692 hoodie. Oh, my God, I had my hand on it. That's so weird. And it says 1692. They missed one
[16:31]
Aarti Shahani
because she was not hungry.
[16:34]
Jean Smart
Is that what you're. She was not.
[16:36]
Aarti Shahani
Tell us about that.
[16:37]
Jean Smart
She missed being hanged by one day. She confessed in quotes. And they think that she was actually very clever. And she noticed that people who confessed, it bought them some time because they wanted you to examine your soul and all this kind of stuff, because, of course, nothing back then, nothing they loved more than a repentant sinner. And people who didn't confess were hanged immediately. But she was. What I found out about her was she was an eccentric gal, Grandma. And I think it was probably very, very easy to accuse her of being a witch. She had kind of gotten in trouble a couple of times, and she was now an older woman. And she had owned a book on fortune telling, which back then was considered very suspect. She had also gotten in trouble because she and a couple of her daughters sort of had a little cat burglary ring in Beverly, Massachusetts, which is outside of Salem. And her daughters would make friends with the maids of all the rich people in town and steal stuff for us. And also, too, I found out this wasn't on. It was not, though on part of the show, which I did, which was called who do youo Think youk Are? The Genealogy Show. But I found out through Wikipedia and some other source that she had a lock of hair that was, quote, of another color, I'm assuming white. What other color could it be? And it was what they call an elf lock, which from what I've read is like a kind of like a dreadlock where your hair has become matted and twisted. And it was 4ft 7 inches long when they arrested her. And she can't have been taller than that. I mean, at the time. And when they arrested her, they wanted to cut it and she flipped out and said if they cut it off, she'd die. So she was she was an interesting person, clearly related to you. Certainly didn't help her cause when she did that. But when I found that out, these tears just sprang to my eyes. I just thought I couldn't believe my eyes. I was reading they actually let me hold original transcripts from the 1600s. And I was reading her arraignment and I saw those when I first saw the words witchcraft, I just couldn't believe it. And when they brought my grandmother into the room, these young women started screaming and pretending to faint. And it was and you could tell at first she was frightened, but then she started to get angry and they had to tell her to kind of calm down. But it was weird because I thought, am I having some kind of weird past life regression? Because the names were familiar to me. And I'm thinking, okay, this is really crazy. It was like right out of a scene from the Crucible, that famous play by Arthur Miller about the trials. And then I realized that, of course, Arthur Miller, when he was writing that play, he had access to all the same history that I was being given by these historians and genealogists. And it was just bizarre. It was just crazy.
[20:08]
Terry Gross
We're listening to guest interviewer Arthur Shahani's conversation with Jean Smart. Smart won Emmys for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series for the first four seasons of the hit series Hacks. She's nominated again for Hacks, fifth and final season. We'll hear more of their conversation after a break. I'm Terry Gross, and this is FRESH air.
[20:30]
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[21:14]
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[21:59]
Terry Gross
NPR this is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. Let's get back to the conversation guest interviewer Arthur Shahani recorded with actor Gene Smart and Smart stars and the HBO series Hacks, about two female comedians played by Smart and comedian Hannah Einbinder, who form a close bond despite being at completely different stages in their lives and careers. Hacks concluded its fifth and final season this past spring and is now nominated for 24 Emmys, breaking the record for most nominations received by a comedy series in a single year. In its first four seasons, Smart won Emmys for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series, and she's nominated again this year. Jean Smart's first claim to fame was starring in the 1980s sitcom Designing Women. Since then, she's appeared in a number of shows, including Fargo, Watchmen and Mare of Easttown, and she's performed on Broadway.
[22:56]
Aarti Shahani
You met the love of your life, Richard Gilliland, on the set of Designing Women?
[23:02]
Jean Smart
Yes.
[23:02]
Aarti Shahani
And I want to ask about him first. How did you know that Richard was the one?
[23:11]
Jean Smart
It was just an instant thing. It really was. It was just instant. The day we met, we were never apart after that. And he just, I mean, I don't know. I mean, nobody made me laugh the way he did. He was so warm and so easy to talk to and so funny. And I just, I remember I walked into this building over at Warner Brothers. We were getting ready to do a table read of episode five, and the show had never aired yet. We weren't on the air yet. And we were shooting the fifth episode. And I looked up the stairwell and I saw this guy talking to somebody, and I recognized Him. I'd seen him on television. I didn't know his name, but I thought, I've seen that guy before. But I just. He had these great little smile lines, and he just. He just. I just. He just looked so. And I thought, oh, I wonder if he's here to be on our show, because there were other productions in the building. And, yeah, there he was. And so I walked in the room, and there he was sitting across from me. And, yeah, it was just instant. And I started inviting him into my trailer to play. Do crossword puzzles. And then he invited me to see a play that he was in, which was pretty bad, but he was absolutely hysterical in it. And I went about 12 times.
[24:40]
Aarti Shahani
Aww. You guys were married for 35 years, which seems like a very rare thing in Hollywood.
[24:50]
Jean Smart
Yeah, it was half my life. Yeah. Yeah.
[24:53]
Aarti Shahani
How'd you manage to stay married together for that long?
[24:58]
Jean Smart
Well, yeah, I mean, I don't know if the statistics. I don't know what the statistics are. Compared to other professions, I don't think they're probably drastically different. But I do think that, at least for actors, you're constantly meeting attractive, interesting people and different people all the time. All the time you're exposed to different people, and sometimes you're out of town working with these attractive, interesting people who are all kind of at their most attractive and interesting because they're working, you know, and so that can be, of course, very hard on a marriage. But like I said, we had similar values. We'd both been married before, and again, I mean, it just. I don't know. It's the. Nobody made me laugh like him.
[25:53]
Aarti Shahani
His career, as I understand it, took a bit of a backseat so that the family could focus on your career. Was that an easy or difficult decision?
[26:04]
Jean Smart
No, it was difficult. It wasn't really a decision. It kind of just evolved that way. And it was. It didn't. It was difficult. It was hard on him, which I understand. And, you know, he. Both of us, you know, grew up in the 50s, where it was traditional family values and traditional role models. So that was. That was difficult. And we actually separated for a year, and that was excruciating. But it was also. Probably ended up being a good thing because I really. I think I really understood what wedding vows meant. I was very humbled by the fact that Richard did not ever give up on us. And I had. And I felt. I feel bad about that, that I put him through that, but he always believed that somehow we'd get back together, and we did. I think that next Christmas, after we got back together, we were having a Christmas party, and a friend of ours was there who had recently been ordained so he could marry some other friends of ours. And I said, hey, Greg's here. Let's renew our vows. He said, oh, great. And so we hadn't told anybody. It was just sort of a spur of the moment thing. And so my son, who was about 8, 9, then he and his buddy. I said, set up some chairs, you know, and so he started. His friends started setting up rows of chairs, and people thought, oh, God, Gina, Rich, are gonna put on a little show or something, you know, I don't know what they thought. And I was just wearing a pair of black pants and a leopard print sweater, and he had on a Hawaiian shirt and jeans. And I said, well, this won't do, you know, So I went and I got some fake flowers and I put them in my hair. And he went and got his tuxedo jacket and put it on over his Hawaiian shirt. Aw, I'm sure he looks ridiculous. And we just said what was in our hearts and how grateful we were to be back together, and it was great.
[28:17]
Aarti Shahani
One more question about your personal life. You gave birth to your first child when you were 37. 38. What they call the advanced maternal age.
[28:27]
Jean Smart
38.
[28:28]
Aarti Shahani
Yes, 38. And then at age 57, you adopted a baby.
[28:36]
Terry Gross
Yes.
[28:37]
Aarti Shahani
Explain that.
[28:40]
Jean Smart
Well, we knew two couples who had adopted babies from China and just. And I had. I had wanted to have another child, but it just wasn't in the cards. And I had a miscarriage, and that was really painful. And I just thought, I really want another baby. And so we started talking about it, and Richard would always say, oh, no, I think we're too old. We're too old. And by the time we finally did it, we probably were, but it was like it took so many years to talk him into it, you know? And at one point, we were actually going to start the paperwork, but then my father was diagnosed with Alzheimer's, and I just. I couldn't deal with it. So I kind of put it on the back burner for a while, but then we started again. But unfortunately, that was right when China was hosting the Olympics, I believe, and everything just slowed down to a snail's pace. So it took about five years once we started doing the paperwork. And the paperwork was overwhelming. It was just endless. It was just endless. It was worth it, but it took a long. A long time. But, you know, at that age, I felt like I peaked in my 50s. I felt like I could do anything. And it was just a thrill. And it was so cool because when they place that baby in your arms, you realize in that split second that it doesn't matter that you gave birth to that child or not. It's like it was just instant. It's like that thing of this I'm gonna love you and protect you for the rest of my life. And it was just really cool. But it was a little was kind of dismayed that so many of our friends, most of them really seemed to disapprove when I told them what we were going to do. But when we brought the baby home, all my girlfriends were just so jealous. They were like, oh, my God.
[30:46]
Aarti Shahani
Oh my God.
[30:47]
Jean Smart
And all the husbands were like, thanks a lot, Richard. Jesus shit, stop talking about this.
[30:54]
Aarti Shahani
My guest is actor Jean Smart. She has won seven Emmys, including four for playing the comedian Deborah Vance on Hacks. She's nominated again this year for Outstanding Lead actress in a Comedy series for the show's fifth and final season. More after the break. This is FRESH air.
[31:11]
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[31:29]
Podcast Announcer
for this podcast and the following message come from Strawberry Me. Be honest. Are you happy with your job? Are you stuck in a job you've outgrown or never wanted in the first place? Are your reasons for staying really just excuses for not leaving? Let a career coach from Strawberry Me help you get unstuck. Discover the benefits of having a dedicated career coach in your corner and get 50% off your first coaching session at Strawberry Me.
[31:57]
Aarti Shahani
NPR this is FRESH AIR. I'm Aarti Shahani back with actor Jean Smart. She stars in the critically acclaimed show Hacks. She's won four Emmys for her role and has been nominated again this year for Outstanding lead actress in a comedy series. Her other shows include Designing Women, Frasier, Fargo and Mayor of Easttown. Okay, this last part of our conversation is a spoiler for anyone who has not seen Hack Season five. So you have officially been warned. In the last episode of the season, Deborah Vance and her young sidekick Ava Daniels are in Paris. Deborah has been diagnosed with cancer, is refusing treatment and wants to go out on her own terms. So Paris is supposed to be their last rendezvous before Deborah checks herself into a European center for assisted suicide. In this scene, they are at the train station waiting for their train eating. Let's hear the clip.
[32:59]
Hannah Einbinder
So
[33:02]
Jean Smart
what are you gonna ask if you get to, you know, meet your maker? My plastic surgeon. Aw. No, really? In 1980, Burt Reynolds called, called me, and I called him back, but he never returned. What was that about? That's what you want to know. I pretty much have everything else figured out. In fact, I think he or she or, you know, they. Them might have some questions for me. Actually, they. Them. Okay. Non binary God love. I meant more of an energy. I don't think there's going to be a gender fluid barista waiting for me at the pearly gate. It's too bad. I love a matcha when I get there. Hey, are you done with that? Yeah, yeah, go for it.
[33:54]
Terry Gross
Wow.
[33:55]
Jean Smart
I guess the best part of dying for a person with disordered eating is having a second croissant. Actually, the best part of dying is not having to save receipts because you know you will never get audited again. Actually, I think the best part of dying is knowing how pissed people are going to be when they realize how much money you left your dogs. But the worst part of dying is that I don't get to see how my corgis decide to spend that 550,000.
[34:25]
Aarti Shahani
Aw. What do you think of that scene?
[34:29]
Jean Smart
Yeah, that was a great scene. Burt Runnells. You know, it was so. It was very much in character, you know, for Deborah to make that decision to do that.
[34:43]
Aarti Shahani
You know, you were mentioning earlier you think that Deborah's character really unfolds over the course of the series. And how would you summarize what that evolution is?
[34:54]
Jean Smart
I think she just becomes so much more relaxed. You know, she's made peace with her daughter, even though it was kind of an unpleasant peace in the sense that she realized she was never going to be able to repair that relationship, that it was never going to be what it should have been. And that's a hole that Ava fills to a certain extent. So she's kind of been making peace with people even before she realized that she was sick. It's like she's relaxing in her life a little bit and she's allowing. She's allowing Ava to sort of, you know, sometimes take control or give her some advice. And when she stands up to Bob Lipka, played by the wonderful Tony Goldwyn, that's a huge thing for her. Very freeing, Very freeing. And she's thinking, screw it. I don't need Madison Square Garden. I don't need the money from the ticket sales. I just want to talk in front of People who want to hear me talk and so just get me a stage in the park. Let anybody who wants to come come. You know, you never. She wouldn't have done that. Season one or too.
[36:22]
Aarti Shahani
Is Deborah Vance and Hacks a creative challenge for you or more like the easy reward after a lifetime of challenges?
[36:32]
Jean Smart
There weren't things like I didn't, you know, because there was a slight accent involved with Floyd, which was, adds, you know, another layer that you need to work through so you can get to. You can just stop thinking about it and let it just come naturally. That's another sort of added challenge. But they were both emotionally demanding, but in very different ways. You know, they were similar in the way, in the sense that they both were kind of held a lot of their feelings in, you know. But the thing about Deborah was it's just so fun to make people laugh and just to see how people responded to the show was such a, such a thrill. And she got to be just more and more three dimensional, more and more human and less guarded as time went by, which was really nice.
[37:24]
Aarti Shahani
You know, Jean, you are kind of making a case for me. All right. I wanted to have this conversation. I wanted to have this conversation with you for a little bit of a hidden agenda.
[37:36]
Jean Smart
Okay, okay.
[37:38]
Aarti Shahani
Which is that, yes, you all say Hacks is over. Season 5 was the last season, but I think it's the wrong call. I don't get why.
[37:51]
Jean Smart
Well, it was written as a five year show from day one. They had every season already in their heads. Written in their heads, if not already written from years before they even met me. That's how they sold it. That's how they pitched it to me. That's how they pitched it to the network. They felt that it ended in an appropriate way. Of course, they had no way of knowing how big the show was gonna become. And I felt that I was ready to move on from the character. So it all kind of gelled nicely.
[38:34]
Aarti Shahani
I know you're okay with it being over, but just if I'm. One more question I think about is how are you feeling now that you are a little bit away from the filming of it?
[38:45]
Jean Smart
Well, I'm not missing getting up at four in the morning and wearing high heels all day. I don't know if you noticed, but the heels got shorter and shorter as the seasons went on. I wore some killer heels season one that I couldn't wear today. The thing is though, unlike our darling crew, who had to kind of rip off the band aid for us and the cast, particularly Hannah and I, we have an entire awards season coming up, so we're gonna still be living with the show, talking about the show, doing interviews about the show, going to ceremonies and things through next February. So after that it might feel a little more real.
[39:29]
Aarti Shahani
Well, Jean Smart, thanks for joining us.
[39:31]
Jean Smart
Thank you so much.
[39:34]
Terry Gross
Jean Smart spoke with guest interviewer arthi Shahani. The fifth and final season of Hacks is nominated for 24 Emmys, including one for Smart for best actress in a comedy series. Arti is a veteran NPR journalist, host of the podcast Art of Power, and author of the memoir Here We Are. Coming up, Maureen Corrigan reviews a new novel by Daniel Mason, who she says has a magic touch as a writer. This is FRESH AIR support for this
[40:03]
Podcast Announcer
podcast, and the following message come from Strawberry Me. Be honest. Are you happy with your job? Are you stuck in a job you've outgrown or never wanted in the first place? Are your reasons for staying really just excuses for not leaving? Let a career coach from Strawberry Me help you get unstuck. Discover the benefits of having a dedicated career coach in your Corner and get 50% off your first coaching session at Strawberry Me. NPR support for NPR. And the following message come from GoodRx. With the days packed with summertime activities and back to school coming up, it can be a challenge keeping everyone healthy while staying on budget. With Goodrx, you can find big savings at the pharmacy for the whole family. Compare prescription prices at over 70,000 pharmacies and instantly find free coupons. Goodrx is not insurance, but it may beat your copay price. If you do have insurance, save at the pharmacy this summer, go to goodrx.com
[41:03]
Terry Gross
fresh this is FRESH AIR. Many writers hold down day jobs to pay the bills, but Daniel Mason is that rare literary creature. His 2020 short story collection was a finalist for the Pulitzer, and his 2023 historical fiction was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Simultaneously, Mason has maintained a second career as a psychiatry professor at Stanford. Our book critic Maureen Corrigan says that academic background stands him in good stead for his latest novel, Country People. Here's Maureen's review.
[41:39]
Maureen Corrigan
Shakespeare was wise to the fact that most folks prefer lighter entertainments in the summer, hence A Midsummer Night's Dream, that confection of a play in which rustics and royals and meddlesome fairies collide in a forest. Country People by Daniel Mason is a satisfying spin on the barb's bubble of an amusement for anyone slow to catch on. Mason even ends his novel with an elementary school performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream the wanderers into a Vermont forest here are not exactly royals, but you might say they're the kind of people Jefferson had in mind when he proposed that the United States be governed not by an inherited aristocracy, but by an aristocracy of the intellectual. Or perhaps not. Kate is a hotshot, a distinguished scholar of Blake and Milton, currently teaching in California, she's been offered a one year visiting professorship at a college in Vermont. Miles, her husband, has been working sort of on his dissertation for the past 14 years, something to do with Russian folklore. To be fair, though, Miles, an eternal graduate student, does provide caretaking to the couple's two young children, as well as for Kate, who's been diagnosed with Ms. He also tends to their dog Giuseppe, who's possessed, much like Miles himself, of a fairly useless skill. Giuseppe has been bred to hunt truffles. Energized by the thought of a year in their new place, the family drives cross country, arriving at a sylvan wood where they'll live suspiciously rent free in the house of a faculty member on sabbatical. The digressive plot of Country People contains golden threads of academic force. To my taste, passages like this one contrasting Kate and Miles student evaluations are some of the funniest in the novel. Our omniscient narrator tells us that Kate taught popular courses, which, according to her teaching evaluations, were super fun and interesting, probably not useful for a job, but still mind blowing. The narrator continues to fill us in. Over the past decade, watching their course enrollments dwindle, Kate's colleagues had been forced to pander, changing English 7 Shakespeare to sex in Shakespeare, English 28 Middlemarch to learning programming from Middlemarch A Novel. But Kate was hardcore again, according to our narrator. The reviews for the courses Miles taught as a teaching assistant described him as nice, if sometimes hard to follow, and said that he got caught up in arcane topics so that a lecture on Turgenev would somehow end in Ecuador. Once a student wrote that Miles was disheveled, not in a gross way, in a nice way. Another wrote, my friend had a crush on him, which we thought was funny. As the novel settles into Vermont, its humor shifts from the dry wit variety to the wacky excess of tall tales. Miles is jazzed to get to know some actual rural folk, since his dissertation, after all, involves peasants. The locals he talks to on nature trails and in the waiting room of the emergency clinic espouse beliefs that make the witches and dragons of Russian folklore seem colorless by comparison. Flat earth theories and hollow earth theories abound, along with the conviction that the area is studded with massive subterranean super rat lines, a veritable vermin expressway, one of which is said to run under the house Miles and his family now occupy, and seductive fairies spring up in the shape of a children's ski coach and an erotically charged drama teacher who entices Miles into helping her stage an unbowdlerized version of A Midsummer Night's Dream to inevitably quote Puck's immortal line, lord, what fools these mortals be. Thanks to Mason's own magic touch as a writer, Country People mostly charms rather than condescends. Sometimes his jokes do go on for too long, like the footnote sprawling over three pages listing adults who attended the school play. And sometimes, much like the Hollow Earthers, I was conscious of the absence of a solid core to this novel. But then I reminded myself that silliness for its own sake is an underrated virtue in art, and there's silliness aplenty in Country People. To keep readers entertained, Maureen Corrigan is
[47:18]
Terry Gross
a professor of literature at Georgetown University. She reviewed Country People by Daniel Mason Tomorrow on FRESH AIR, Donald Trump took in about $2.2 billion last year while serving as president. New York Times journalist Eric Lipton will talk about his Pulitzer Prize winning investigations into Trump's profits and related conflicts of interest. Last month, Lipton was one of the Times reporters subpoenaed by the Justice Department in connection with reporting about Air Force One. I hope you'll join us. To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews. Follow us on Instagram @NPRFreshAir. Fresh Air's executive producer is Sam Brigger. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our engineers today are Charlie Kyer and Adam Stanischewski. Our senior producer today is Roberta Shorrock. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Ann Marie Boldonado, Lauren Krenzel, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Yakundi, Anna Bauman and Nico Gonzalez Whistler. Our digital media producer is Molly CV Nesper. Theresa Madden directed today's show. Our co host is Tanya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross.
[48:48]
Podcast Announcer
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[49:03]
Layla Faldel
and that means the news cycle, which is already intense, is about to get more intense this fall. So this summer is a perfect time to make sure your news diet is calibrated. I'm Layla Faldel on Up first, we unpack the three biggest stories every morning so you can stay informed and get on with your day in less than 15 minutes. Follow or subscribe to Up First Today,
[49:24]
Aarti Shahani
wherever you get your podcasts.
[49:27]
Hannah Einbinder
Oh, hey there. I'm Brittany Luce, and I don't know, maybe this is a little out of pocket to say, but I, I think you should listen to my podcast. It's called It's Been a Minute, and I love it. And I think you will, too. Over the past couple months, over 100,000 new listeners started tuning in. Find out why. Listen to the It's Been a Minute podcast from NPR today.