Jean Smart theatre roles we love

The six-time Emmy-winning Hacks and Frasier star currently leads the solo Broadway play Call Me Izzy, about a woman with a secret and a deep source of strength.

Call her multitalented. Jean Smart, of the red-hot series Hacks, is back on Broadway in the solo play Call Me Izzy. At 73, the versatile actress’s career spans five decades across theatre, television, and film, doing comedy, drama, and everything in between.

A graduate of the University of Washington's Professional Actor Training Program, Smart began her career on stage in the mid-1970s in a run of classic roles at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Off-Broadway and Broadway performances soon followed.

Smart has been a top TV figure since landing a lead role in the hit 1986 sitcom Designing Women. So far, Smart has been up for 13 Emmys and won six of them – two for Frasier, one for Samantha Who?, and three for Hacks. It’s no joke that, since playing the deriding Deborah Vance in the HBO Max hit, Smart’s star has shone brighter than ever.

In her return to Broadway after 25 years, she plays the title Izzy, a woman with a difficult life and a powerful secret. Now is a perfect time to look back on Smart's theatre career — get to know more, and then get tickets to Call Me Izzy at Studio 54.

Last Summer at Bluefish Cove

Smart made her Off-Broadway debut as a lesbian facing a health crisis and the prospect of love in Jane Chambers’s groundbreaking 1980 play. Smart played Lil, and she made a big impression, earning a Drama Desk Award nomination for Outstanding Featured Actress.

Piaf

In 1981, Smart got her first Broadway part in Pam Gems’s drama about the life and career of French singer Edith Piaf (Jane Lapotaire, who won a Tony). Smart tackled the minor role of screen icon Marlene Dietrich.

Kean

Smart flexed her comedic gifts again at the end of 1981 in a Hartford Stage run of Alexandre Dumas’s 1836 play about British stage actor Edmund Kean. Smart’s scene as the flirtatious wife of a Danish ambassador was “the evening’s most uproarious sequence,” noted the New York Times review.

Smart spent the rest of the ’80s acting on Designing Women and in new plays and classics on regional stages, including The Greeks, Strange Snow, Enrico IV, and Three Sisters.

The End of the Day

In 1992, Smart was back off Broadway in this tart comedy by Jon Robin Baitz about an English psychiatrist grappling with slippery ideals. Smart did double duty in “the richest role,” per a Deseret review, as the shrink’s ex-wife and new wife.

Marvin’s Room

In this 1994 Los Angeles production of Scott McPherson’s 1990 play about family and forgiveness, Smart starred with Oscar winner Mary Steenburgen. They portrayed estranged sisters Lee and Bessie, who have a poignant, life-and-death reunion.

Fit To Be Tied

In Nicky Silver’s 1996 dark family comedy, Smart played Nessa, a flamboyant mother who, after fleeing her loveless marriage, seeks refuge with her son. She showed off “wonderful verve and comic timing,” as she jumped “from comically selfish egotist to caring mother,” Variety's critic cheered.

The Man Who Came to Dinner

In this 1939 comedy by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart, a famous critic disrupts a family’s life after slipping on their doorstep and being forced to reside with them. Smart earned a Best Actress Tony nomination playing the glamorous actress Lorraine Sheldon opposite Nathan Lane as the reviewer, who gets entangled in the chaos.

Lady Windermere’s Fan

Oscar Wilde’s 1892 comedy about scandal, hypocrisy, and redemption in Victorian London revolves around a woman who suspects her husband is having an affair. In this 2005 revival at the Williamstown Theatre Festival in Massachusetts, Smart played the enigmatic Mrs. Erlynne, who selflessly devises a way to save the day — and a marriage.

Standing on Ceremony: The Gay Marriage Plays

Smart was part of a starry rotating cast that included her late husband Richard Gilliland, Camryn Manheim, and Kathy Najimy, who performed short plays by various playwrights exploring themes of love and marriage equality. The 2010 L.A. production aimed to raise awareness and support for same-sex marriage rights.

Call Me Izzy

Set in rural Louisiana, the one-woman play follows Smart as the title character, Izzy, a writer with a whale of a secret who won’t be silenced. Smart embodies eight different characters in the comedy written by Jamie Wax and directed by Sarna Lapine. Call us excited!

Photo credit: Jean Smart. (Photo courtesy of Call Me Izzy)