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Smart didn’t know anything aboutLegion based on a Marvel comic and debuting Wednesday on FX at 10 p.m.
ET or about her role opposite star Dan Stevens working with young mutants.
Credit: Maarten de Boer/Getty Images
But it didn’t matter.
“LikeFargo, this is something completely new and unique,” says Smart.
“I think people are going to be blown away.”
NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images
Teachers Only1983Smart had been a theater actress before landing this NBC show starring Lynn Redgrave and Norman Fell.
She played Shari, a secretary having an affair with the principal.
“She was from the South and she said, You poor baby.
CBS /Landov
You really don’t know your ass from apple butter, do you?'
All evening I thought, Toto, we are not in Kansas anymore.'”
It was a big break not just professionally for Smart but personally, too.
Everett Collection
She met her husband, actor Richard Gilliland who played J.D.
Shackleford, the on-again off-again love interest of Potts' character while working on the series.
“I met him when he was kissing someone else,” Smart says with a laugh.
Chris Haston/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images
Later, when Charlene got married, she had another big epiphany.
“I was sitting in my dressing room strapped into this gorgeous wedding dress.
I looked at myself in the mirror and said, You are pregnant.'
Fox Searchlight Pictures
I put out my cigarette, and it was the last one I ever had.”
So while fans may remember the witty banter among the women, Smart cherishes the offscreen milestones.
“Those are the things that stand out most to me when I think about the show.”
Kelsey McNeal/FOX
Smart received good reviews for her performance but wishes the timing had been different.
“It was a internet, and at that time they were still pretty conservative.
We didn’t have the freedom that the story needs,” she says.
MITCH HADDAD/ABC
“When I sawMonster, I was pea green.
I admired it very much.”
“The way he reacted to me made it very hard to keep a straight face.”
Chris Large/FX
She recalls being struck by the fact that even seven seasons in, the cast still enjoyed one another.
“They didn’t disappear into their offices when they were done shooting.
They’d watch each other’s scenes and laugh.”
“They never talked down to the audience.
That show was so intelligent and so screamingly funny.
They made jokes about obscure vintages of wine, for God’s sake!”
Garden State2004There’s a nickname Smart gave her character in Zach Braff’s directorial debut.
Sarsgaard played Smarts son in the movie, but it was the actor who taught her an important lesson.
But she soon learned why audiences loved it.
“When they offered me the job, I got this huge box of videotapes.
Her onscreen husband was played by Gregory Itzin, with whom Smart had done a play years before.
“It was nice to reunite,” she says.
“We’d sing show tunes between scenes.
People don’t know that he’s a bit of a song-and-dance man.”
“This was a special one,” says Smart, who played Samantha’s mom, Regina.
“We all still get together regularly usually at Christina’s every New Year’s.”
It also earned Smart her third Emmy award with an episode involving drunken makeovers.
“I credit Melissa McCarthy for that,” Smart says of her scene partner.
“She’s hysterical.”
Fargo2015"Oh, Floyd.
“The anticipation would grow with every script: Is it out yet?
Have they printed it?
But it got bittersweet for me 10 episodes were just not enough,” she says.
She laughs when remembering how she asked creator Noah Hawley if there was a way to keep Floyd around.
“Oh, I begged him.
Are you kidding me?
I told him, I’ll be a ghost!
I’ll be anything!'”
