From creator Brad Ingelsby and director Craig Zobel, the seven-episode HBO limited series Mare of Easttown follows small-town Pennsylvania detective Mare Sheehan (Kate Winslet, who’s also an executive producer on the project), as she investigates a grisly local murder that threatens to tear the community apart. At the same time, Mare’s own family life is a mess, which is starting to bleed into her career in a way that will lead to unavoidable consequences.

During this 1-on-1 phone interview with Collider, actress Jean Smart talked about how grateful she is for the incredible projects she’s been a part of, the appeal of Mare of Easttown, the complex mother-daughter relationship, what she enjoyed about working with Winslet, and the fun she has in being a storyteller. She also talked about how she wishes her Watchmen experience had lasted a little bit longer, whatever happened to that big blue prop, and why she’d never want to do a Designing Women reboot.

Collider: With projects like Fargo, Legion, and Watchmen, and now Mare of Easttown, your career has really been on fire and you’re playing some great roles in standout projects. How does this stage of your career feel to you? Does it feel like you’re on a roll with smart and challenging material?

JEAN SMART: Oh, absolutely. I don’t take any of it for granted. The petty part of me is saying, “Where was this, 20 years ago, for Pete’s sake?” I’m not any better than I was back then. But now, I’m very grateful. I’ve had amazing opportunities, in terms of material and roles and writers and fellow actors and directors. I know how lucky I am. I really, really do. I know a lot of extraordinarily talented actors that have just never gotten the chance to show what they can do, which is true of most actors. They don’t get the opportunities to show what they can do, unlike other artists who paint or sing or dance or sculpt, and can do it anytime they want to. It doesn’t mean they’ll get paid, but they can do it anytime they want to. Actors need to be given permission to do what they do, and it’s difficult and frustrating. I’m very, very, very happy. I’m not going to question it. I’m just going to say thank you to the universe.

When this project came your way, what was it that made you want to be a part of it? Was it reading the scripts? Was it who this woman would be? Was it Kate Winslet? Was it all or none of the above?

SMART: The first thing was definitely Kate. I heard her name and I was offered the role of her mother, and I thought, “Oh, please let this be a part I want to do, because I would love to work with her.” So then, I read it and fortunately I thought the part was really fun and interesting, and I thought their relationship was fun and interesting. And I knew it was HBO, so it was a no-brainer, except that I had to fly to Philadelphia. And I’m not saying that about Philadelphia, I’m talking about flying. I love Philadelphia.

A lot of the work that you’ve been doing, including this show, feels totally tricky between dark comedy and bleak drama. How do you walk that tight rope? Does it feel like you’re trying to find that balance, or is it something that you feel comes from a well-written script?

SMART: It definitely comes from a well-written script. People who are actors, you think about your own lives, and there are a lot of different levels and people inside you that you inhabit, depending on the circumstances and how you’re feeling. The actors are lucky because they get to plumb the depths of those highs and lows more often than people do in their day-to-day life. It’s just fun to tell stories. That’s what we are, we’re storytellers, and it’s fun to show people characters and stories that they’ve never known before. The characters of Mare are such wonderful characters. It’s such a tight community and it’s perfectly laid out, like a real page-turner. When you’re reading the script, you’re like, “Oh, my God, what happens next?” You get inside these people’s personal lives, and they’re all struggling in their own way, they’re all gloriously courageous, in the face of awful things, and they still find love and humor. You see how everyone kind of knows or thinks they know everybody’s secrets and their relationships, and then they find out, “Oh, my God, someone was holding a secret for all those years that I never knew. How is that possible?” That’s a life lesson, in the sense that we all never really know another person, in the deepest recesses of their heart and mind.

mare-of-easttown-jean-smart-kate-winslet
Image via HBO

One of the most interesting and most complex relationships in the show is the mother-daughter relationship, whether it’s your character as mother to Mare, or Mare as mother to her own daughter. What did you like about exploring that, as mother and grandmother?

SMART: Oh, it was great fun. Even when they just bark at each other and say sometimes pretty awful things to each other, hopefully people also still see that there’s love and respect. There’s also a lot of blame. When families go through tragedy, it’s very hard to come out the other side of it without a lot of damage, and not a lot of finger-pointing and blame and regret. It’s poignant to see people doing their best to try to survive that and make the best of a bad situation. That little boy who plays Mare’s grandson, wasn’t he delightful? Is he not the cutest thing you’ve ever seen? He’s such a natural in front of the camera. He’s not a precocious stage kid at all. He was just a sweet little boy, and he would totally get it when the director told him something like, “You’re mad at great-grandma right now,” or “You had a hard day,” or “You’re really, really tired,” or “You’re really excited to see your mom. You haven’t seen her in a long time.” It all seemed to make sense to him. He’s only four years old and just precious. But I thought that the whole cast, top to bottom, was quite amazing. The way Craig [Zobel] directed it, you feel like you’re there in these people’s homes and it’s fun to feel like you’re peering in the window, finding out all of these things.

RELATED: 'Mare of Easttown' Director Craig Zobel Explains What It's Like Helming All 7 Episodes

When I talked to Kate Winslet about this show, she told me that you guys would improvise some of those sparring matches between the two of you. Were you surprised to have that level of freedom on a project like this, and was it fun to get to play like that?

SMART: Oh, gosh, yes. It’s always nice when the writer and the director don’t have such an ego that they don’t mind seeing if there’s something the actors can actually add to it. We had great fun and we laughed a lot too. I can’t say enough nice things about Kate, as an actor and as a person. We had a really good time. People don’t realize how funny she is. Somebody has got to put her in a really fabulous comedy because the woman is hilarious. I don’t think anybody knows that, and I was blown away.

What did you enjoy about working with Kate Winslet as an actress?

SMART: It was great. Over the years, the relationships have always been between a man and a woman, but more and more, we’re getting to see really fun female relationships. I was really excited to work with Kate. I had no idea what it was going to be like. All I knew was that she’s extraordinarily talented, and fortunately, she turned out to be extraordinarily nice and kind and generous and sweet. We had a really good time. She and Angourie [Rice] and I shared this big house for a while, which was great fun. And then, I had to leave, so Guy [Pearce] moved in, who’s also lovely. Kate is a very generous actor. You’d think someone in her position would be a little more demanding, but she’s very much a team player and allows everyone to work in the way that they like to work and doesn’t expect everything to be her way. I was very impressed with her.

mare-of-easttown-jean-smart-angourie-rice-izzy-king
Image via HBO

What does Helen really think of Mare?

SMART: She thinks that Mare makes bad choices. She probably always hated the fact that she followed in her father’s footsteps and became a cop because I think Helen hated being a cop’s wife. It’s one of those things where they’re different, but they still love each other and they fight all the time because they are different. Anytime there’s a suicide in a family, there’s a lot of blame and finger-pointing. Mare obviously has a great deal of guilt. Siobhan has a great deal of guilt, being the sibling who feels she should have known more. Helen probably feels enormous guilt because she wasn’t involved more in his life, and maybe she was judgmental about his drug use and rejected him. It’s probably the most destructive thing that can happen to a family, by far. Not only do you have the pain and the loss, but the regret and the guilt would eat you alive.

Your work on Watchmen was tremendous, but one of the moments from that show that will always be talked about is the big blue dildo. That was such a loud moment in a show that, up to that point, had been so serious. Were you ever worried about that being too over the top? Were there ever conversation about making sure that didn’t happen?

SMART: No, I was only worried that it was not going to go any further. When I first talked to the producers, I said, “Okay, let’s talk about the big blue elephant in the room. What’s up with that and what you expect me to do with it because I’m not going there.” They laughed and said, “No.” That was the only time I thought, “It’s a good thing my parents are both gone.” That’s all I could think.

Did you ever put any thought into why she carried that around with her?

SMART: For such an arrogant, supposedly confident, intelligent, capable person, she’s shockingly lonely and obsessed with this man who was the love of her life. She lives by herself with an owl she feeds mice to and has closets with nothing but black pantsuits in them. It’s a very sad existence. She doesn’t see it that way, except maybe late at night when she’s alone. She was great fun to play. I wouldn’t have minded doing a few more episodes. That was hard to say goodbye to.

Were you disappointed that the show didn’t continue on, or do you feel that it’s perfect, just the way it is?

SMART: That’s how our lovely writer felt about it. He left everything out on the field. It took him an enormous amount of time to make the decision is do it. He’d been offered it a few times, over the years, and always said no. When he finally said yes, he knew that he was going to do it exactly the way he wanted to do it and he had this brilliant concept in his mind. It was a fully formed idea that he had and I don’t think he wanted to dare try to make anything more out of it. I selfishly would have liked to have played the character a little bit more, but I knew, from the beginning, that it was just a one-off, like Mare.

watchmen-jean-smart-social
Image via HBO

Did they tell you what happened to that big blue prop? Do you know where it lives, or did it just go away and you hope to never see it again?

SMART: The idea for it was from one of the female writers on the staff, who was presented it as a joke. He went, “Oh, cool, good idea. Yeah, let’s put it in there.” And on the wrap day, they had gift wrapped it and presented it to her ceremoniously.

With so many reboots and revivals, are you surprised that they haven’t done one for Designing Women?

SMART: Well, no, because we only have less than half the cast, so that would be very sad and pointless. We did do a reading for Sony, when they were having Zoom script readings with casts from old shows and we were raising money for charity. Kyra Sedgwick did a beautiful job of reading Dixie [Carter]’s role and Wendi McLendon-Covey from The Goldbergs did Delta [Burke]’s part. That was absolutely shocking, how familiar it felt. Delta couldn’t do it. She was taking care of her mother. Annie [Potts] and I were saying, “This is bizarre. It feels like we just did this a week ago.” We did a reading of the pilot, and it was crazy. It was fun. But we couldn’t remake that without Dixie Carter, Meshach Taylor, or even Alice Ghostley, who was just the funniest woman in the world.

Mare of Easttown airs on Sunday nights on HBO, and is available to stream at HBO Max.

KEEP READING: Kate Winslet on HBO's 'Mare of Easttown', Sparring with Jean Smart, and Giving Up on Glamorous Roles