Latest news with #JeanSmart
Daily Mail
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Fans distraught as future of hit HBO series is revealed
The future of HBO 's hit comedy series Hacks as in jeopardy as the showrunner has doubled down on plans to end the show after its fifth season. Paul W. Downs, who co-created Hacks and serves as showrunner, opened up about the future of the critically-acclaimed series in an interview with Deadline. He confirmed that the plan from the beginning of Hacks was always to end it after its fifth season. However, he tellingly avoided stating if they would go through with the plan or not. 'Knowing that we're coming to a close in the universe of Hacks, we do want to serve all the characters in the ensemble and give them a proper farewell,' he said. 'So I don't know how many episodes that takes, but we do know where we're headed. We've always known the last scene of the last episode and we're still headed there,' he added. Fans are already distraught about the hit series ending and many weren't afraid to sound off about it on social media. 'Noooo this is my comfort show,' wailed one, while another begged, 'Please don't end Hacks! It's too good!' 'If this show ever ends, we are rioting in the streets,' raged another. 'I never want to think of Hacks ending,' cried a fourth, while a fifth fan added, 'Best show ever.' Hacks wrapped up its fourth season in May and a fifth season was then confirmed. Starring Jean Smart and Hannah Einbinder, Hacks follows the ups and downs of the relationship between a legendary comedian in her '70s and an up-and-coming writer who works for her. Last year, Smart received a standing ovation after she took home the award for Best Lead Actress at the 2024 Primetime Emmy Awards. After receiving the gong for her role in Hacks, the beloved star said that she was thrilled for the win and jokingly added, 'I just don't get enough attention.' She was nominated in the same category that also included The Bear's Ayo Edebiri, Palm Royale's Kristen Wiig, Loot's Maya Rudolph, Abbott Elementary's Quinta Brunson and Only Murders in the Building's Selena Gomez. After clinching the honor, she received a rapturous applause and gave an engaging speech. 'Thank you. Thank you so, so much,' she began. 'It's very humbling. It really is.' Evoking laughter from the audience, she joked: 'And I appreciate this, because I just don't get enough attention. I'm serious!' During her speech, she recalled how she felt when she first read the script for the Max series. 'When I read the script, I said, "This is everything I could possibly want for my next job.' She also quipped about the streaming service's name change during her acceptance speech. 'Casey and everybody at HBO... Max... No, I'm sorry. Just what we needed, another network,' as the audience roared with laughter. At the 2021 and 2022 Emmys, Smart also for her role as comedian Deborah Vance on Hacks.
Daily Mail
13-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Brooke Shields rocks youthful look at Call Me Izzy Broadway opening after calling Meghan Markle 'too precious'
Brooke Shields showed off a casual-cool look that made her look years younger than her age when she made a splash at the opening night of the Broadway play Call Me Izzy. The 60-year-old actress showed off her impressively toned arms in a button-up best as she joined other stars on the red carpet in New York City on Thursday. Brooke stepped out just days after she admitted to criticizing Meghan Markle for being 'too precious' during a live event in front of thousands of people last year. exclusively reported earlier this week that King Charles ' goddaughter India Hicks had removed a clip of Brooke speaking about the surprising critique on her personal website. For her Broadway attire, she paired her black vest with a flared pair of high-waisted dark-wash jeans. The sleek pants, which emphasized her trim figure, were paired with modest black heels decorated with gold eyelets. Brooke completed her low-key ensemble with her lustrous brunette hair, which she wore in thick waves draped over her shoulders. She was attending the one-woman drama Call Me Izzy (its title is an allusion to Moby Dick's opening line, 'Call me Ishmael.'), which stars Jean Smart. The Hacks actress plays a downtrodden housewife in Louisiana who cultivates a secret life of the mind by writing poetry, which she has to keep secret from her abusive husband, whom she also plays, in addition to other supporting characters. Initial reviews were mixed on the play and its script, but Jean's performance received widespread acclaim. Brooke has been a vocal fan of Jean's hit HBO series Hacks, which recently wrapped up its fourth season and has been renewed for a fifth. Last year, she told that she loved the show and Jean 'so much,' and she claimed its other lead Hannah Einbinder had pledged to try to get the show's writers room to come up with a guest part for her. When Hannah appeared on the Today Show later, she sounded shocked that Brooke would share their conversation. 'Oh, my God! Wait, that's so — wow, Brooke Shields that's crazy,' she said, before vowing to keep her promise to find a way to get the veteran actress on her show. The sleek pants, which emphasized her trim figure, were paired with modest black heels decorated with gold eyelets. Brooke completed her low-key ensemble with her lustrous brunette hair, which she wore in thick waves draped over her shoulders Brooke recently caused a scandal when she admitted that she shut down Meghan Markle onstage last year. The two were part of a panel discussing International Women's Day at the South by Southwest Festival in Austin, Texas, when the former Suits star, 43, began answering a question that Brooke thought turned overly serious. 'Katie asks the first question to Meghan and talks about how at a young age, she was already advocating for women, etcetera, etcetera,' Brooke explained. '[Meghan] starts telling a story about how when she was 11... And she keeps saying, well, when I was 11, I saw this commercial and they were talking about washing dishes and only soap for washing dishes was for women. 'And she said, "I didn't think only women wash dishes. It wasn't fair. So I wrote to the company. And when I was 11, I wrote my first letter and when I was 11..." and she kept saying she was 11! She wrote to the company, they changed the text, they changed the commercial.' At that point, Brooke said, she couldn't resist breaking the tension in the room and the earnestness of Meghan's response. 'I go, "Excuse me, I'm so sorry. I've got to interrupt you there for one minute." 'I was trying not to be rude, but I wanted to be funny because it was so serious. '"I just want to give everybody here a context as to how we're different,"' Brooke told the audience. 'I said, "Well, when I was 11, I was playing a prostitute." 'The place went insane. And then luckily, it was more relaxed after that.' The comment was a reference to Brooke's breakout role as a child star in the controversial 1978 film Pretty Baby, in which she played a child sex worker, a role that sparked debate at the time and has remained the subject of intense scrutiny in the decades since. In Austin, the moment broke the ice, as the crowd broke out into laughter. 'I was like, oh, I hope she doesn't think I'm rude. I'm not being rude,' Brooke added. India — daughter of Lady Pamela Mountbatten, a lady-in-waiting to Queen Elizabeth II, and the late interior designer David Hicks, agreed that lightening the serious mood Meghan created was the right thing to do. 'I think it's genius,' she said. Reflecting on the exchange, Brooke added: 'It was just too precious. And I was like, they're not going to want to sit here for 45 minutes and listen to anybody be precious or serious.' Despite the crowd's response, Brooke acknowledged that the moment might not have gone down quite so well with Meghan herself. 'This was in front of [thousands of people]. I mean, it was crazy,' she said. 'And then afterwards, she was kind of like, oh, okay. And I was like, let's just have some fun with it.' Brooke added: 'I don't know if you'll have to cut this out.' After the episode came both Brooke and India were accused of being 'racist Karens' and 'b*****s' on X (formerly Twitter) due to the comments.
Wall Street Journal
13-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Wall Street Journal
‘Call Me Izzy' Review: A Woman Shows Her Smarts on Broadway
New York Jean Smart makes a welcome, and warmly welcomed, return to Broadway after an absence of a quarter-century in 'Call Me Izzy,' a solo show by Jamie Wax about a woman trying to break free from an abusive marriage. Ms. Smart has reached a later-career peak recently, winning three Emmy Awards for her performance as a down-and-out comic rampaging on the comeback trail in 'Hacks,' in which she has given one of the most superlative performances of the streaming-television era.
Chicago Tribune
13-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Chicago Tribune
Review: ‘Call Me Izzy' on Broadway stars Jean Smart as a working-class woman with dreams
NEW YORK — Jean Smart hasn't been on Broadway for 25 years. The last time, she played a glittering, glamorous and ruthless actress in George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart's 'The Man Who Came to Dinner,' a powerful siren who enjoyed breaking up marriages for sport. This time, she's an abused woman from small-town Louisiana who makes her first appearance on stage in the bathroom of a mobile home in a Louisiana trailer park. It's likely quite the jolt for fans of a much-awarded actress familiar for her work on 'Hacks,' 'Designing Women' and 'Mare of Easttown,' a contrast intensified by playwright Jamie Wax's 'Call Me Izzy' opening in the slipstream of the Tony Awards. As the Broadway glitterati walked by Studio 54 over these last few nights, Smart was inside, slipping disinfectant into a toilet bowl for her bemused fans. 'My husband, Fred, he hates the blue cleaner I put into the toilet almost as much as he hates my writing,' Smart's titular character says to the audience at the start of 'Call Me Izzy,' as she flushes and marvels at the various shades of swirling azure. Uh oh, you'll surely think, right off the bat. This Izzy sounds like a working-class writer trapped in a marriage with an oafish, one-syllable Southern man who won't understand such matters as artistic freedom, artistic expression, and the desire to escape said trailer park for a more examined life. The kind of scared little dude who might well resort to violence to keep his wife in line. You would of course be right. That's exactly the scenario in 'Call Me Izzy,' a solo show about the power of poetry and its ability to lift working-class writers out of their difficult lives, but only if they can find room to express themselves, avoid those who would block their progress and align themselves with the kind of mentor who will take an interest. For those of us who've been around a while, 'Call Me Izzy' starts to recall the plot of Willy Russell's 'Shirley Valentine,' another play about the power of humanistic education, albeit set in Liverpool in the U.K. rather than Mansfield, Louisiana. In both plays, the lovable central character finds herself in the thrall of a charismatic teacher who clearly represents a means of escape from those with no understanding, but might also just be a distraction from what is typically venerated in plays like this, which is finding your own way with words and ideas. Those are noble sentiments and there are only so many stories under the sun. Moreover, stories about white, working-class characters from Louisiana are as rare on Broadway as dramas about blue-collar poets; I'd venture that no toilet has ever played so prominent a role at Studio 54, at least not since that venue's days as a nightclub. All that is to say 'Call Me Izzy' is not a total bust, especially given Smart's formidable acting chops. Monologic shows like this with no explicit person being addressed require deeply conversational kinds of performance, as if the audiences were all your best friend who just happens to be outside the bathroom door. Smart is skilled and experienced enough to forge such a bond. I believed her entirely as a woman from small-town Louisiana capable of both great stoicism (often a feature of those in abusive relationships) and profound artistic yearning. Her performance is somewhat under-scaled and under-vocalized for so large a Broadway house (and why are we here in so huge a space, one wonders), but then it has been 20 years and the deeply honest Smart is clearly immersed in her character, with nary a note of condescension. But you still always know where 'Call Me Izzy' is ultimately going, even if the piece is a tad confusing as to its chronology; that's another frequent risk with long monologues recounting a story that may have happened in the past, may still be happening, may go wrong in the future. The audience needs more signposts from a director, and heftier moment-by-moment tension, than director Sarna Lapine here provides us. 'Call Me Izzy' is simply one character's point of view and you can't help contrast it with the complexity of 'The Picture of Dorian Gray,' which uses one live actress to create an entire Victorian world. In the case of 'Izzy,' one might as well be reading the narrative on the page. Except of course for the chance to see Smart, which is why most people will be there. The biggest challenge she faces here is to overcome the fundamental familiarity of a moralistic script that gives us a clearly sympathetic character battling against a brute we never see and wants us to be surprised by the outcome. Wax is so in love with his central character, he finds it hard to give her anything truly substantial to fight against as she rolls down her personal runway. Smart does her considerable best to find it for him, but she didn't write the play.
New York Times
13-06-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Review: Jean Smart, Gritty and Poetic in ‘Call Me Izzy'
Two things can happen when a big star appears in a small play. She can crush it, or she can crush it. The first is almost literal: She leaves the story in smithereens beneath her glamorous feet. The second is colloquial: She's a triumph, lifting the story to her level. Returning to Broadway after 25 years in 'Call Me Izzy,' which opened Thursday at Studio 54, Jean Smart crushes it in the good way. Naturally, Smart plays the title character, a poor Louisiana housewife who writes poems on the sly. In the manner of such vehicles, she also plays everyone else, including Ferd (her abusive husband), Rosalie (a nosy neighbor), Professor Heckerling (a community college instructor) and the Levitsbergs (a couple who have endowed a poetry fellowship). You could probably write the play from that information alone, but I'm not sure you'd achieve the level of old-fashioned floweriness and deep-dish pathos that the actual author, Jamie Wax, has achieved. For this is quite self-consciously a weepie, one that with its allusions to Melville's lyrical prose ('Moby-Dick' begins with the phrase 'Call me Ishmael') aspires to poetry itself. The play's first words are an incantation: six synonyms for 'blue' as Izzy drops toilet cleaner tablets in the tank. ('Swirlin' cerulean' is one.) Shakespeare comes next, after a visit to a local library she didn't know existed. Ears opened, she is soon devising sonnets of her own. This she does in secret, lest Ferd, who sees her hobby as a betrayal, should discover the evidence and beat her up. (He has been doing that with some regularity since their infant son died years earlier.) In a detail that's a few orders of magnitude too cute, Izzy's sanctum is the bathroom, where she scratches out her lines in eyebrow pencil, on reams of toilet paper. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
