Jean Smart on Why Call Me Izzy Is a Timely Reminder of the Importance of Art

It’s been a quarter century since Jean Smart was on Broadway; she was last seen on the boards opposite Nathan Lane in a 2000 revival of The Man Who Came to Dinner (for which she received a Tony nomination). But it’s not like she’s been twiddling her thumbs in the interim. During her time away, the legendary actor has won five (of her six career total) Primetime Emmy Awards, three of them for her current screen role as comedian Deborah Vance in HBO Max’s Hacks.

“The stage was always my first love,” she says fondly. “I did it for years before I ever did anything in front of a camera. It’s been way too long since I’ve done a play.”

She’s fixing that with Call Me Izzy, a new play from playwright Jamie Wax (making his Broadway debut) that sees Smart playing Isabella, a woman in rural Louisiana who’s trapped in an abusive and loveless marriage. Her emotional outlet comes via a library card and an uncommon gift for writing. The solo play opened at Broadway's Studio 54 June 12—see what critics had to say here. Performances continue through August 17.

But don’t expect Deborah Vance if you catch Smart’s performance. With a thick, Louisiana accent (which Smart has developed with dialect coach Suzanne Selby), Smart might just be closer to her other iconic television role, Charlene Frazier in Designing Women. “She has that same kind of optimism,” Smart says. “An older Charlene.”

But where Charlene is not afraid to speak her mind and stand up for herself, Izzy’s story is a more painful one: A woman who thinks her bleak life is all she deserves, because it’s what the world has told her to expect. It takes some loving care from some special friends and teachers—and the wonder of books and plays—for Izzy to start discovering that maybe she’s worth more, too.

Jean Smart in *Call Me Izzy* Emilio Madrid

For Smart, a childhood of reading Nancy Drew books and going to the theatre with a beloved grandma showed her all sorts of possibilities for herself, which might just be why she’s as adept at playing a woman living in a Louisiana trailer park as she is playing a multi-millionaire comedian living in a Las Vegas mansion. “It’s always fun to do something different,” she shares. “That’s why we become actors. You get to use different parts of yourself.”

But ultimately, it’s less important in the context of Smart’s varied career than it is on the impact to kids, especially in a country that is now cutting library and arts funding at an increasingly rapid rate. Smart says Call Me Izzy is an ode to the sometimes-hidden ways art can be not merely important, but lifesaving. The play is performing the bulk of its run during the summer holiday, but Smart says the production is working on finding ways to get school kids in to catch a performance and to witness the life-changing impact of art on Izzy (and hopefully on the kids watching, too).

“It’s so distressing when you see schools cut their budgets, and one of the first things that goes is always the arts,” Smart laments. “Any child psychologist will tell you it’s immeasurably important for kids to have artistic outlets. They learn so much about themselves. To be able to see yourself in different lights and learn different things about yourself is so vital to mental health, their sense of joy and self-confidence.”

Appropriately, Smart compares Call Me Izzy to a fantastic anecdote that you can’t wait to tell a friend, mirroring the wonder and curiosity that books and plays are uniquely skilled at inspiring. “You know what it feels like when you find a book that just hooks you to the point where you can’t wait to get back to it every night—it’s the most wonderful feeling,” she says wistfully. “Theatre can do that too. It really is a necessity.”