https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/17/arts/television/jean-smart-hacks-mare-of-easttown.html

“It’s just odd, because I don’t think I’m any better now than I was before,” Smart says of all the acclaim she's received, not only on her new HBO Max and HBO series, respectively, but in her past Prestige TV series in recent years. "Recently, prestige television has welcomed her as a mob matriarch in the second season of Fargo, an unorthodox therapist on Legion and an F.B.I. agent with an extremely complicated back story in Watchmen," says Alexis Soloski. "Even as Mare of Easttown nears its final episode, Smart has already popped up again onscreen as Deborah Vance, a celebrity comedian, in the barbed, blingy HBO Max comedy Hacks. A lead role and the rare instance when Smart’s name appears first on a call sheet, her Hacks work is the capstone — or maybe the moussed bouffant — atop a career resurgence that the epigrammatists of Twitter have referred to as both a 'Jeanaissance' and a 'Smartaissance.'" ALSO: Jean Smart is definitely going to win an Emmy for Hacks (https://themuse.jezebel.com/jean-smart-is-definitely-going-to-win-an-emmy-for-hacks-1846909859).

Jean Smart Never Went Away (https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-new-yorker-interview/jean-smart-never-went-away)

I want to go back to “Designing Women.” Did the fandom around that show surprise you?

The thing that Linda Bloodworth did in her writing that nobody else did, and which made it fun to do, was that you got a page-long monologue. When does anybody ever have that in a sitcom? Unfortunately, sometimes she would hand them out right before the audience came in. She said, “I’m lucky the four of you are word processors.”

Do you miss the live-television audience?

No, actually. The first time I did something in front of a live audience after it had been years away from that, I found it very intrusive. The audiences, they’ve been trained. If somebody kisses somebody, the whole audience goes “Oooh!” And you think, Oh, God. Please don’t.

You left “Designing Women” after five seasons. Were you just ready to see what else was out there?

The studio was not happy with my decision, but I just felt like five years of doing the same thing as an actor is enough. I wanted to do other things. Delta [Burke] left around the same time, as well. They did two more seasons after that. I wanted to remind myself that I could still do other things. I was getting used to making decent money, and I didn’t get into acting for the money. I hadn’t grown up with any money. And it just wasn’t something that I wanted to get used to.

Jean Smart is both flattered and slightly embarrassed by her “Jeanaissance” (https://variety.com/2021/tv/features/jean-smart-hacks-mare-of-easttown-emmys-1235064464/)

“I told somebody they’re not allowed to say it if they can’t spell it,” she joked of the phrase that has been used to describe her standout Emmy-nominated performances on Hacks and Mare of Easttown this year and on Watchmen last year. Smart says of Hacks and Mare being on at the same time: "It was pure luck. The fact that I had two roles that were such good ones, and kind of worlds apart, coming out at the same time — actors never get that opportunity.” The good news comes as Smart lost her husband, actor Richard Gilliland, who died in March, right as she was wrapping filming on Hacks. Smart says of her having so many great gigs: "I certainly realize that’s not the norm for most actresses of my vintage."