How’s this for a punchline: Jean Smart has the most acting wins in prime-time Emmy history. She ties Cloris Leachman and Julia Louis-Dreyfus with eight. (Leachman also has a daytime Emmy, for an ABC after-school special.)
Smart won the Emmy for best lead actress for the final season of “Hacks.” She dedicated the award to the show’s creators Lucia Aniello, Jen Statsky and Paul W. Downs.
“What a ride this has been!” she said brandishing her statuette.
She has won the lead actress Emmy for each of the four previous seasons on “Hacks,” where she plays the acclaimed standup Deborah Vance. A Vegas regular, Deborah’s style is transformed when she hires a Zillennial comedy writer, Ava Daniels (Hannah Einbinder, also nominated this year) to zhuzh her act.
This year’s win, for the final season of “Hacks” makes it a sweep: Smart is the first woman to win best actress for each season of a show’s run.
Smart, 74, who broke out on the CBS comedy “Designing Women,” won her first Emmys for guest appearances on “Frasier” and then another for a supporting role on “Samantha Who.”
All of Smart’s Emmy wins have been for comedies, which makes sense. “You reach people easier with comedy than drama,” Smart told The Times after “Hacks” ended. “There’s so much to depress people right now; we need comedy more than ever.”
Smart has needed it, too. Her time on “Hacks” straddled various personal crises. She lost her husband, Richard Gilliland, just before the premiere, and filming for Season 3 was postponed while she recovered from a triple bypass. But somehow Smart channeled all that pain into Deborah’s barbed, irresistible humor.
In a recent interview, Smart discussed how much of herself she gave to Deborah. “I knew I couldn’t copy another comic’s style, even somebody I really admired,” she said. “It had to come from me, or it just wasn’t going to work.”
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