Jean Smart is sharing what it was like to film an on-screen romance with The Summer I Turned Pretty star Christopher Briney in the fifth and final season of Hacks.
The 74-year-old actress and younger actor, 28, have a 46-year age gap between them, but their characters have a romance in the show.
“I did think, oh god, I hope he isn’t just cringing,” Jean told Deadline. “He’s thinking, ‘Oh, I’d really like to be on that show, but oh damn, really?’ But he made me feel very comfortable and we had fun.”
Showrunner Jen Statsky added, “We always want to portray Deborah as the full, dimensional character that she is and show that women don’t stop having sex and being sexy at any age. We also always thought it’d be funny and interesting that she would date this international rockstar that maybe wasn’t exactly her type and dressed a little bit more like her than other people she dated. And so that was just always a storyline that excited us.”
She added that they’ve done a lot of stories they’ve “been really waiting and wanting to do,” but felt it wasn’t right in previous seasons.
“So that was just one of the storylines that we knew would be funny, but also really sexy and real and grounded and important to show that, yeah, why wouldn’t these two get together?” Statsky said.
Earlier this month, Jean opened up about having to get triple bypass heart surgery while filming season 3 of the HBO show.