What Jean Smart found most surprising about working on Frasier

Long-form television shows can be a blessing and a curse. The blessing part is pretty obvious: if a show has run long enough to surpass the old syndication marker (100 episodes), then it must be popular. (Television networks, before and after broadcast, are not in the habit of charitably renewing a series whose ratings do not deserve a new life.) The longer a show runs, regardless of its genre, the stronger its popularity should be. . Consider that procedural shows like “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” and “Grey’s Anatomy” have been on the air for literally more than two decades.

But the longer a show runs, the more it can cost to produce (the actors on those shows understand very well how popular they are and want to be compensated accordingly). And for guest stars who arrive later in a show’s run, they may find the atmosphere a bit closed to newcomers, whether the guest is there for one episode or several. One of those long-running shows would be the original version of “Frasier,” which aired on NBC from 1993 to 2004; One of those late-arriving guest stars is the inimitable Jean Smart. But it’s good to know that, at least for Smart, the experience was exactly as light-hearted as Seattle-based comedy fans would like.

By the time she arrived on “Frasier,” Smart was already a well-known figure in the world of television comedies thanks to her co-starring role on “Designing Women” in the late ’80s. Smart, then as she is now, is a luminous blonde leggy and was therefore well cast as the adult version of the most popular girl from Frasier’s high school years. Although he had had a crush on her as a teenager, she had never had a free moment. When they meet as adults, he as a well-known radio personality and she as a powerful real estate agent, at first it seems like love at first sight. Everything goes well for Frasier and Lorna (as they originally called her) on their first date, which ends with them in bed together.

But the next morning, Frasier is surprised to see that Lorna is as abrasive as she is beautiful, smoking in bed, yelling at her son on the phone, and appearing much more aggressive than at first glance. Eventually, their relationship falls apart, but Frasier keeps running into her and ends up having to tutor her flamboyant and dim-witted son Kirby (Brian Klugman). Although the character’s name was originally Lorna Lynley, it was changed after Smart’s first appearance to prevent the fictional character from having the same name as a real woman. Later, she was known as Lana Gardner. Smart made a very fun adjustment to the show, as Lana continues to pose an obstacle for Frasier, who falls in love with one of her friends after his own romance ends.

And fortunately, it was an opinion shared by Smart herself. A few years ago, while talking to Entertainment Weekly On the eve of a new season of the FX show “Fargo,” Smart was asked to speak briefly about his time on “Frasier” and he spoke highly of the experience. “They didn’t disappear into their offices when they were done shooting,” Smart recalled. “They would watch each other’s scenes and laugh.” He later talks about how impressive the show’s humor still is, as it was deliberately intellectual, but his other comment speaks to a rarity among some long-running sitcoms of the ’90s era.

For a show like “Friends,” which remains enormously popular, the six lead actors were so close that some of the recurring guest actors have talked about how they felt like they were outsiders looking in. A good example of this is if you look at this. interview on Conan O’Brien’s former NBC late night show with Paul Rudd on the eve of the end of “Friends.” Although the actor played Phoebe Buffay’s eventual husband, he talks about how uncomfortable the experience of filming the finale was; Even though his tongue is firmly planted in cheek for most of the interview, this seems to be more than slightly true.

Jean Smart’s career remains somewhat underrated, although it’s been very encouraging to see her rise as a star thanks to shows like “Hacks” and “Watchmen,” demonstrating her ability to dive deep into comedic and dramatic characters. It’s true that her recurring job on “Frasier” isn’t putting too much pressure on her, but that doesn’t mean she wasn’t enormously funny. And whether you’re leaning toward a parasocial relationship with a TV show or not, it’s somewhat encouraging to know that Smart’s brief time on the show (she appeared in just seven episodes among the show’s 264 total) was neither cold nor unwelcoming when the cameras were focused. off. Considering that the end result was a brilliantly funny series that managed to stay relatively fresh for at least seven or eight of its original eleven seasons, whether Smart was pleasantly surprised by “Frasier’s” friendly atmosphere almost doesn’t matter. But given that some great shows were biased and confrontational, it’s nice to know that a series whose protagonist often talked about avoiding rehearsal to sound as fresh as possible (he called (it’s “necessary disrespect”) when the cameras were rolling he was open to welcoming each and every one of his esteemed guests.