Jean Smart is ready for the red carpet.
The Emmy and Golden Globe winner is dressed in a midnight-blue gown with gold accents. Her blonde hair is styled and piled as high as the gods. Her makeup? Flawless.
“I’m nervous,” I tell her.
“You have nothing to be nervous about,” she replies, placing her hands on my shoulders. “You’ve interviewed me dozens of times.”
True, but this time is different. I am about to interview Smart while I’m pretending to be Marc Malkin and she’s pretending to be Deborah Vance.
Spoiler alert: I make a cameo as myself in the Season 3 premiere of “Hacks.”
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“Do you want to run lines?” Smart asks me.
“Sure,” I say, before reciting my fake interview question.
Smart delivers Vance’s response perfectly. A couple of seconds later, I’m directed to a faux red carpet built to look like the Time100 Gala, where Deborah is one of the honorees. I’m positioned next to the photo pit, where a group of extras holding non-working cameras are ready to take Vance’s photo.
A director’s voice booms from a speaker system: “Action!”
As Smart saunters onto the carpet, the extras start calling out, “Deborah, over here! Over here, Deborah!”
The director asks for a few more takes. The pretend paparazzi are lacking a certain authenticity, so during a break I suggest they shout much louder. I also tell them to yell, “Over your shoulder, Deborah! Blow us a kiss!”
During the next take, they follow my directions. Smart gives them a smile over her shoulder, and yes, blows them a kiss.
It all started a month earlier, when an HBO publicist sent me an email in the fall of 2022 on behalf of “Hacks” co-creators Lucia Aniello, Paul W. Downs and Jen Stasky to invite me to appear in an episode of the upcoming Season 3. I said yes. Before I knew it, I was signing an NDA, promising not to breathe a word about my gig to anyone.
A few weeks later, I drive myself to set for my 3:30 call time. I have my own trailer. I quickly change into my Jack Victor tux, an emerald green velvet number that was immediately approved by the wardrobe department when I sent them a photo of the jacket earlier in the week.
A van comes to take me and two other reporters who also have cameos — Rachel Lindsay from “Extra” and Gerrad Hall from Entertainment Weekly — along with “Hacks” star Carl Clemons-Hopkins, to the carpet, which is built outside the lobby of a Culver City office building.
We have dinner (chicken grape salad with sweet chili sauce for me), get mic’d up and make small talk with Smart about Los Angeles traffic while waiting a couple of hours before cameras start rolling. I nail my “interview” with Smart in about five takes. Aniello and Downs come from behind the cameras to thank us before we’re driven back to our trailers.
“Will my work merit an Emmy FYC campaign?” I ask Downs.
“Totally,” he says, laughing.
About a month later, Smart and I are back on the carpet together. I’m interviewing her — for real, this time — at the Golden Globes, during Variety’s live pre-show. I ask her who she’d love to guest star on “Hacks.” She tells me Jeff Bridges. When I ask her what it was like working with Margot Robbie and Brad Pitt on Damien Chazelle’s “Babylon,” she recalls Pitt congratulating her on set the morning after she won an Emmy for “Hacks.”
As our chat is winding down, Smart suddenly asks me a question: “Did you tell them that you’re on the show?”
Uh-oh.
“I don’t know if we’re supposed to say,” I respond, trying to keep my cool, thinking about that NDA.
We start stuttering.
“Never mind,” Smart says. “Didn’t say that.”
We start laughing.
“I’m sorry…,” Smart says as the camera pans away.
So much for the NDA. At least I still have my day job.
