Jean Smart makes difficult women funny without making them easier company. In Hacks, she makes professional confidence feel hard-earned and vulnerable, giving us reasons to care without asking us to excuse the behaviour.
Fi1m perspective
Deborah Vance can make a disagreement entertaining even when she is being unfair. In Hacks (2021), Smart plays the veteran Las Vegas stand-up with enough authority that we accept her standing before we have properly inspected her surroundings. Hannah Einbinder’s young writer, Ava, brings grievances of her own to an arrangement neither woman finds comfortable. This is where we find Smart most persuasive: letting us enjoy Deborah without pretending we would enjoy working for her.
Her breakthrough as Charlene in Designing Women (1986) established her as a sitcom actor, and the funny-woman label initially narrowed her dramatic opportunities. The intervening work moved between television guest parts, films and short-lived series. With Floyd Gerhardt, the crime-family matriarch in Fargo (2015), she entered a renewed period of prominence in television. Hacks gives her a particularly useful leading role because the comedy depends on our believing that Deborah is good at her profession, however trying she may be away from the microphone.
Einbinder matters to how well that role works, giving Smart a colleague whose difficulties deserve attention rather than someone merely there to receive the insults. We felt unexpectedly protective of Deborah because Smart makes her skill at the job seem like something she cannot afford to lose. Smart does not soften her into someone agreeable to secure that response. The developing relationship holds our attention because the series takes both women seriously, allowing an entertaining disagreement to have consequences for people we have come to care about.
Adam Bricker’s cinematography helps by keeping our attention on the performances rather than allowing Las Vegas to take over. Production designers including Jon Carlos and Rob Tokarz give Deborah convincing surroundings for an established entertainer, though Smart has already done much of the work of making us believe in her position. The reservation is the writing, which sometimes presses the women’s generational differences beyond what their exchanges need. Start with Hacks for Smart and Einbinder, and allow for the occasions when the script explains a difficulty they have already made perfectly clear.
Biography
Jean Smart is an American actress. She first gained prominence for her role as Charlene Frazier Stillfield in the CBS sitcom Designing Women (1986–1991). She has won seven Primetime Emmy Awards, including four for her performance as Deborah Vance in the HBO series Hacks (2021–2026), as well as awards for guest roles in Frasier (2000–2001) and a supporting role in Samantha Who? (2007–2009).
Smart's other television credits include 24 (2006–2007), Fargo (2015), Watchmen (2019) and Mare of Easttown (2021). Her film roles include Sweet Home Alabama (2002), Garden State (2004), The Accountant (2016), A Simple Favor (2018) and Babylon (2022) as Elinor St. John. On stage, she made her Broadway debut in Piaf (1981) and received a Tony Award nomination for the 2000 revival of The Man Who Came to Dinner.
