Jean Smart’s ‘High’ Hopes : ‘Designing Women’ Star Returns to TV--in a Very Different Role

Another series? No, thanks. Jean Smart swore off after five seasons of “Designing Women.” The show was lovely and lucrative, but why play the same character again for years, potentially, when she was flush with TV movie, theater and film roles?

“I was having such a good time just sort of doing what I wanted and working when I really felt excited about something,” says Smart, who even told her agent to quit sending her series scripts.

“But then he called me and said, ‘This you have to read.’ He said, ‘If nothing else, it’ll give you a good laugh. Call me on Monday.’ So I called him on Monday and cursed him out. I said, ‘Oh, why did you do this to me? You’re torturing me.’ I said, ‘I don’t think I can pass this up.’ ”

And she didn’t. So Smart is back--in “High Society,” co-starring with Mary McDonnell (“Dances With Wolves”) in the season’s first replacement series. The sitcom, which premiered Oct. 31, took over for CBS’ canceled “If Not for You” in the advantageous 9:30 p.m. time slot after “Murphy Brown.”

Ironically, it’s also “Designing Women’s” old slot. But Smart’s new character, Ellie Walker, is nothing like Charlene Frazier, the Sugarbakers’ sweet but daft business manager on the old show.

For starters, Charlene was usually sober. Not Ellie, the ever-woozy author of best-selling trash novels born to shop and party with her fellow Manhattanite, best friend and publisher Dott (McDonnell).

The buxom, leggy blonde pursues sex with the same zeal. She openly lusts after Dott’s 17-year-old son and writes her phone number on waiters’ shirts. She’s free with her opinions, too. At one soiree, she informs Jackie Collins that Collins could “lapse into a six-month coma and still produce eight books.”

Cosmetics should be tested on ugly people, Ellie asserts. “That way, if there are any nasty side effects, who’ll care?”

Trained in the classics--Smart is an Ashland, Ore., Shakespeare Festival alum--she landed several serious dramatic roles after “Designing Women.” In TV movies, she played a woman terrorized by the father of her adopted baby (“A Stranger in Town”), a stern Florida swamp farmer (“The Yearling”), a mentally disabled mother of six (“The Yarn Princess”) and a serial killer prostitute (“Overkill: The Aileen Wuornos Story”).

Last year, she co-starred with Mary Steenburgen in “Marvin’s Room,” a dark comedy-drama about a dysfunctional family, at West Hollywood’s Tiffany Theatre.

Now, the versatile actress is having a ball wearing lots of makeup and acting audacious.

“It’s fun to play someone who just has no checks on their behavior,” Smart said during a recent rehearsal lunch break. “She’s like a child, like a large 6-year-old with a big bank account just sort of wreaking havoc through New York City.

“We’re hoping that we can be [viewers’] id let loose,” she continued, “and say and do all the things that everybody secretly wishes they could say and do but don’t have the guts to or are too polite or too politically correct to.”

Or are too conservative to, added “High Society” co-creators Robert Horn and Daniel Margosis. “Bawdy women who party like crazy and make no excuse for it” represent a “backlash against conservatism,” Horn said.

Comparisons between “High Society” and Comedy Central’s “Absolutely Fabulous” have abounded. That British hit likewise features two hedonistic best friends. But Margosis said that he and Horn have had the “High Society” idea for six years and that their show is less a “farce and satire” and “much more based in reality.”

Reality is not Smart’s first concern. Tall (5-foot-10) and svelte in a charcoal gray pantsuit, the actress said that she’s striving for “tongue in cheek,” if not farce, so that the show’s “risky” material doesn’t offend. She cited a line delivered by Dott’s mother in response to a query whether her fur coat is real: “Relax,” she says, the furry animals “died of cancer.”

“Those are the kind of things you want to say [when] you’re tired of that political correctness,” said Smart, polishing off her halibut with a glass of Chardonnay. “Even if you don’t really feel that way, at a certain point, you just want to say, ‘Shut up!’ . . . But I hope people will take it all in the spirit it’s intended, which is not at all mean-spirited. It’s all done in fun; it’s a big romp.”

Smart is striving to emphasize Ellie’s weaknesses, “so it makes her more likable and understandable,” she added. “She is such a mass of insecurities and neuroses, which sort of takes the onus off her sometimes being so nasty and self-involved and vain and spoiled.”

Nastiness isn’t part of Smart’s makeup. “I like to make people laugh,” she said, “but I don’t like to hurt people’s feelings.” As for Ellie’s promiscuity. . . .

“A year ago I said to the [producers], ‘I’m going to give you an out right now.’ I said, ‘I’m a prude, and I’m going to be a pain in the rear about a lot of this stuff and I’m quite serious, so you have my total permission to rescind this offer.’ ”

Obviously, nobody rescinded and the scripts have been fairly racy. But Smart has had to be a pain, at times.

“You should see some of the stuff we didn’t say,” she said. “Please. PUULLLEEESE! My father would be in a grave. I [told the producers], ‘He’s in his 70s and healthy, and I’d like to keep it that way.’ ”

Smart, whose film credits include “The Brady Bunch,” “Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey” and “Mistress,” admits she’s “still terrified” of being boxed into playing the same character for years if “High Society” becomes a hit.

But she thinks the show’s wit, fast-paced dialogue and liberating lack of political correctness will keep things vital. Moreover, while she’d like to continue to act in films and theater, she doesn’t view television as inferior to either and believes the masses don’t believe “in that whole hierarchy idea.”

“Most people don’t make that differentiation,” Smart said. “The only people who do are a few people in this business who are--dare I say this--who were geeks in high school and now want to find somebody to pick on because they’re so pissed off.”

* “High Society” airs Mondays at 9:30 p.m. on CBS (Channel 2).