Jean Smart bids farewell to ‘Hacks’

Jean Smart’s eight-times-great-grandmother was accused of witchcraft in Salem in 1692. She escaped hanging by one day because she confessed—a clever survival tactic, Smart now thinks, since the authorities loved a repentant sinner. The woman was an eccentric: she owned a book on fortune telling, ran a small cat burglary ring with her daughters, and had a four-foot-seven-inch “elf lock” of matted hair that she refused to let anyone cut. When Smart learned this while filming a genealogy show, she cried. It felt like something out of The Crucible—except Arthur Miller had access to the same historical transcripts, not a past-life regression.

The Deborah Vance arc: from guarded to relaxed

Smart’s role on Hacks—the aging comedian Deborah Vance—has already won her four Emmys, and she is nominated again for the fifth and final season. The show broke the record for most Emmy nominations for a comedy series in a single year. Over five seasons, Deborah softened. In the early seasons, she would never have let anyone see her at a loss. But in season five, when she needed Carol Burnett’s iconic beaded jumpsuit for her Madison Square Garden comeback, she found herself completely at the mercy of her young protégé, Ava. Deborah asked Ava to pretend to be her lesbian lover over a weekend to endear themselves to the jumpsuit’s owner. Ava, furious, demanded a thousand dollars and made De