What Jean Smart found most surprising in working on Fraser

Long-running TV shows can be both a blessing and a curse. The blessed part is obvious enough — if the show lasts long enough to pass the old mark for syndication (100 episodes), it should become popular. (TV networks, both before and after broadcast, are not in the habit of renewing series whose ratings aren’t worthy of new life.) The longer a show runs, regardless of its type, the more dramatically its popularity increases. . Consider it Actions like “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” and “Grey’s Anatomy” have been on the air for more than two decades.

But the longer a show runs, the more expensive it is to produce (the actors in these shows are well aware of how popular they are and want to be compensated for it). And for guest stars who arrive later in the show’s run, they may find the atmosphere a little closed to newcomers, whether or not the guest is there for one or several episodes. One of these long-running shows will be The original iteration of “Frasier”, Which aired on NBC from 1993 to 2004; One guest star who arrives late is the inimitable Jean Smart. But it’s good to know that for Smart, at least, the experience was just as enjoyable as fans of the Seattle-based sitcom would want it to be.

When she arrived at “Frasier,” Smart was already a well-known figure in the soap opera world thanks to her starring role on “Designing Women” in the late 1980s. Smart, as she is now, is a leggy, luminous blonde, and thus is well portrayed as the mature version of the more popular girl from Frasier’s high school years. Even though he was infatuated with her as a teenager, she didn’t have a moment to spare. When they meet each other as adults, he as a well-known radio personality and she as a high-powered real estate agent, it initially seems like love at first sight. Everything goes well for Frasier and Lorna (as she was originally named) on their first date, which ends with them in bed together.

But the next morning, Frasier is surprised to find Lorna as tough as she is beautiful, smoking in bed, screaming on the phone to her son, and acting much more forcefully than she did at first. Eventually, their relationship deteriorates, but Frasier continues to stand up to her and ends up tutoring her idiot son, Kirby (Brian Klugman). Although the character’s name was originally Lorna Linley, it was changed after Smart’s debut to avoid the fictional character having the same name as a real woman. After that, she was known as Lana Gardner. Smart is very funny on the show, as Lana continues to be a barrier to Frasier, who falls in love with one of her friends after their romance ends.

Fortunately, this view was shared by Smart herself. A few years ago, while speaking to Entertainment Weekly On the eve of the new season of the FX show “Fargo,” Smart was asked to briefly discuss her time on “Frasier” and she spoke well about the experience. “They didn’t disappear into their offices when they finished shooting,” Smart recalls. “They would watch each other’s scenes and laugh.” She later spoke about how admirable the show’s humor was because it was so intentional, but her other comment speaks to a rarity among some long-running ’90s sitcoms.

For a show like “Friends,” which is still so popular, the six main cast were so tight-knit that some of the recurring guest actors talked about feeling like strangers looking in on them. A good example of this is if you watched this interview On Conan O’Brien’s old NBC late night show With Paul Rudd on the eve of the “Friends” finale. Although the actor played Phoebe Buffet’s eventual husband, he talks about how difficult the experience was filming the finale; Although his tongue was firmly in his cheek for most of the interview, this rings true to an extent.

Jean Smart’s career remains somewhat underappreciated, although it has been very encouraging to see her star rise Thanks to shows like “Hacks” “Guardians” proves its ability to delve deeply into comedic and dramatic characters. It’s true that her recurring work on “Frasier” doesn’t put much pressure on her, but that doesn’t mean she wasn’t pretty damn funny. Whether or not it leans into a quasi-social relationship with a TV show, it’s somewhat encouraging to know that Smart’s short time on the show (she appeared in just seven episodes out of the show’s 264 overall) wasn’t cold or unwelcoming When the cameras were on he was turned 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, Smart was pleasantly surprised by the friendly atmosphere of “Frasier” almost no matter what. But since some great shows have been one-sided and divisive, it’s good to know that a series whose premise is often discussed has avoided rehearsal to seem as fresh as possible (it Named It’s “disrespect required”) as the cameras rolled open to welcome all of her distinguished guests.