Video: How Jean Smart Learned Her Lines for One-Woman Show CALL ME IZZY
Jean Smart Shares How She Prepares
By: Josh Sharpe Jun. 03, 2025
After 25 years, Jean Smart is back on Broadway. The Hacks star is currently starring in Call Me Izzy, a one-woman show which sees the Emmy winner as a Louisiana woman whose secret writing is both her greatest gift and her only way out.
"I left out one of my favorite couple of lines the other night," she recalled during a recent visit to The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. "And there were people afterwards, and I was signing some autographs. I wanted to give them a refund!" Despite that flub, Smart noted that she has always been good at memorization.
"It's like if you're telling a story you love or a joke you love. You don't forget it because you enjoy telling it so much. But it's been harder than I thought," she admitted. "I would wear headphones and record the whole show on my phone, and I'd just put it on a loop and listen. I would listen with my right ear because that controls the left side of your brain, which is the factual side, which makes you memorize and learn." Watch the conversation now.
Call Me Izzy, starring Jean Smart, will officially open on June 12 and will run for a strictly limited engagement through August 17, 2025. The show is a moving, tour de force portrait of a woman who resists being silenced by embracing her tenacity, humor, and fiery imagination.
Smart’s versatility as an actor transcends mediums and genres. From her Tony Award-nominated performance in The Man Who Came to Dinner opposite Nathan Lane, to her iconic TV roles as sweet, guileless Charlene on “Designing Women” and now her powerful, Emmy Award-winning performance as Deborah Vance in “Hacks”, Smart effortlessly shifts between comedy and drama.
She made history with her 2021 Emmy Award win for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series for “Hacks”, joining Betty White as the only other actor to complete the comedy trifecta of having an Emmy in the Comedy Lead, Supporting and Guest categories. That win, along with several others for “Hacks”, has placed her in an elite group of actors who have swept all five major TV awards in a single television season — Emmys, Golden Globes, SAG Awards, Critics’ Choice Awards, and Television Critics Association.
Photo credit: Scott Kowalchyk
