Jean Smart bids farewell to ‘Hacks’

This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. The HBO series Hacks is nominated for 24 Emmys. That's a record-breaking number for a comedy series in a single year. It finished its fifth and final season this past spring. Our guest is the show's star, Jean Smart. She spoke with guest interviewer, Arthi Shahani. Arthi is a veteran NPR journalist, host of the podcast Art of Power, and author of the memoir, Here We Are. Here's Arthi. Jean Smart is on the cusp of making TV history. The star of the hit show Hacks has been nominated, again, for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series. She won in that category for every previous season of Hacks. The show is about two female comedians, one at the start of her career, the other, played by Jean Smart, at the purported end of hers. While they can't stand each other at first, they are also ravenously ambitious. That is what fuels a zany journey that becomes about the creative process, chosen family, and finding love for a person whose worldview is antithetical to yours. Today, Hacks star Jean Smart returns to Fresh Air to talk about her iconic role as the character Deborah Vance, and also her life's work. Smart has previously won Emmys for her performances on the shows Frasier and Samantha Who. Her first claim to fame was starring in the 1980 sitcom, Designing Women. She's performed in dramas like Fargo, Watchmen, and Mare of Easttown, and also on Broadway. She is a real unicorn in Hollywood, a mainstream female actor who has spent decades on the screen in many stories focused on women's relationships with each other, not with a man at the center. Jean Smart, welcome back to Fresh Air. Thank you. Happy to be here. I want to start with one of my favorite episodes, in all of TV history, and I've watched a lot of TV. Yes, seriously. Chuckles the clown? You, you did it. In season five of Hacks, your character, Deborah Vance, is preparing to do her big comeback show at Madison Square Garden. She gets it in her head that she just needs to wear this iconic beaded white jumpsuit that was worn by her comedy hero, Carol Bernice, who is a lesbian. She's wearing it because she's a lesbian. The problem is that the current owner is another female comedian who is a lesbian, and she and Deborah have bad blood, in part because Deborah has said some very homophobic things in the past to her. Now Deborah is trying to butter up the jumpsuit owner to get her to sell it. The owner lives in a dream home in Montesino with her super hot younger girlfriend. They've invited Deborah to come spend the weekend. Deborah shows up with her business partner and young protege, Ava Daniels, and once they arrive, Deborah tells Ava, oh, you're going to pretend to be my lesbian lover over the weekend so we can endear ourselves to the host and get the jumpsuit. Ava, who is queer herself, is furious. Let's hear the clip. Monica. You're my girlfriend. Do not flirt with her and blow up my spot. You and I are in a committed, loving relationship. You're sleeping in the tub. I am not sleeping in the tub, okay? You know what? If you want me to do this, you've got to give me $1,000. Your reaction, Jean Smart, the first time you read that scene? Oh, my God. And it was funny because it was so clever. Because it was the first time in the entire series that we've seen Deborah completely at Ava's mercy and at a loss for words. She couldn't say anything to defend herself, so Ava just took full advantage and said and did all these dreadful things. Yeah, it was such a great role reversal. Oh, my God. It was so much fun, that episode, for all of the reversal going on. I remember watching Deborah in season, season two, back when she was supposed to be entertainment on a lesbian cruise. And she just offended everyone there. Got put off the ship. And then by season five, your character is kissing Ava on the lips. Yeah, yeah. Anything for a jumpsuit, I guess. In addition to the fashionista mandate, what's important about this? What's the most evolving relationship between Deborah and lesbians? Well, I was very pleased that, I mean, from what I read and what I heard, that a lot of our lesbian fans really enjoyed that episode, didn't feel like they were being catered to or pandered to or treated with disrespect, and that they felt that it was truthful, truthful, but still, sort of satisfied with whatever fantasies they might have had about Deborah and Ava. I thought it was just written so cleverly and done so well, and Paul directed it brilliantly, and it was really fun. Yeah, for me, it's like this very interesting wish fulfillment without truly being the fulfillment. Well, it's such an interesting relationship, and I don't think, I can't think of any other, movie or TV show that has had a relationship like this one. It just is so nuanced and so deep and so, but also has been fraught with a lot of pain. I mean, that relationship was, it was mother-daughter, it was best friend, it was enemies for a while, it was respectful co-workers, I mean, it was, and Deborah had such an unhealthy relationship with her daughter. I think that filled a huge hole in her life and a massive amount of guilt that she had about her daughter. It's interesting because I was very close to both my parents. My dad was kind of like my favorite person in the world, and I think I always kind of got along with men easier than women, and I kind of, I think I was very close to both my parents and my dad was kind of like my favorite person in the world, and I think I always kind of got along with men easier than women, could see that in Deborah is that she's had this this gap in her life of feminine energy that Ava kind of disrupted and just thought what is this you know who is this person it's driving me crazy I think you just named what was landing so deeply for me is that so many modern women actually have this you know we survive by you know forging alliances with men and now you see her thriving with this growing feminine energy absolutely you and your co-star Hannah Einbinder who plays Ava Daniels have an interesting parallel in real life you both at the very beginning of your careers got cast in hit shows about female friendships that went on for many seasons do you find yourself trying to mold Hannah in your image oh my god god no she she and she wouldn't be remotely interested in that yeah no she um and she's gonna be so annoyed it's like I always I tell her every time I tell this next story I always say I'm never gonna tell the story again I promise but can I tell it one more time and then I you know it's when she was still in awe of me which was years ago shortly after we started shooting the show and I think she you know really listened to my advice and everything but she came up to me and she said I just have to thank you because I heard you really really went to bat for me you know when I auditioned and and I said I I told the producers you know I thought you were you had to be the one and in fact I said that if they didn't hire you I wasn't gonna do the show and she looked at me she said really I said no what are you nuts what are you crazy and as it was as it was coming out of my mouth I thought oh Jean I can't believe you're gonna say this you don't even know this girl I said please laugh please laugh and of course she did thank god I just couldn't resist you know of all the shows that you have starred in I've heard you talk about Fargo with the most you know reverence or nostalgia and in that series you play Floyd Gerhardt matriarch of the Gerhardt crime family yes after her husband has a sudden stroke the question becomes who is going to run the family business let's play a scene from Fargo season two when you as Floyd Gerhardt are sitting at the dining room table with your son Dodd each jockeying for position let's play the clip sit eat something this moment how things go in the next few weeks will decide that's why let me finish your grandfather left the ashes of the weimar republic and came to this country to build a name for himself he built an empire from a shoeshine box and then and only then did he send for your father ma i know the story no you don't because if you did you'd know that you are just a small part of it that's what an empire is it's bigger than any son or daughter eat you i'm not hungry i'm your mother you will eat with me your time will come it will but this isn't it and if you stand by me now i promise you that as soon as this crisis is over i'll hand you your legacy and i'll turn my thoughts to the grave your reaction to that clip oh i i i'd forgotten about that scene yeah that was a that was a great scene i noah holly so so brilliant um writer it was but it was one of those parts where i had the same reaction when i read the the i had a certain speech that he sent me to audition with i had the same reaction to it that i had when i first read the pilot script for deborah vance for hacks was that uh i just i could hear this woman in my head i knew exactly who she was what made her tick and uh and the fact that she was named floyd and i never asked noah why he named her floyd because i just i came up with my own theories and i didn't want him to just sort of disabuse me of that but um i did ask him when we were done uh because i had come up with this whole backstory of how she her father had always wanted a boy and he was going to name him floyd come hell or high water but he had a girl named her floyd anyway and taught her how to you know be a rancher and how to ride and how to shoot how to hunt how to be tough how to you know everything that he would have taught his son and that he named her floyd and so i asked noah finally when this when our season was done i said why why did you name her floyd and he said oh my wife has an aunt named floyd i just thought it sounded cool oh okay well overthinking it helped you deliver it yeah but i mean that show a lot oh sorry um not not a lot i mean i somewhat i mean when i was doing 24 uh the brilliant gregory it's an and i who had actually done a play together years before and so it was great fun to get back together with him he he and i uh he was playing the president and i was playing the first lady and he he and i came up with a little bit of a backstory about did we ever have kids and if we did what happened and where are they and so we we told one of the producers one day and he just kind of looked at us like oh yeah okay just that's nice do your little actor-y thing that's nice okay well in playing floyd the matriarch mafia boss how did you grow creatively in that role is such a great role i loved playing her i would have loved to have played her but i didn't want to play her i would have loved to played her a little longer um and it was so nice to be just rid of any kind of physical vanity um i i the clothing the hair no makeup everything and just be able to just do the work and not think about all the other superfluous stuff um although i do remember because i said to the i said to the uh hair gal i said i said i don't want to wear a wig i want to be able to like grab my hair or touch it or whatever i want to do i don't want to wear a wig i want to wear a wig i just don't i don't want to wear a wig and i said just cut my hair really short and and put a brown hairdo was your idea yeah i said put a brown mousy rinse in it and and permit or whatever and and she did and i just remember i looked in the mirror and i just almost started to cry but i went so there she is there she is yep there she is wow transcending vanity that's great yeah well it's nice because you think god the men get to feel like they're the ones that are going to feel this way almost all the time you know they get out of the shower run their hand through their hair makeup artists might powder them for a second you know and they get to just think about the work not like oh god how come you're lighting me like that or oh god i have to hold my stomach in or oh god this or that you know and it's uh i've had a few roles like that and it's so freeing um but that was and and it was i was surrounded by such remarkable actors i mean i've i mean i've had that experience on so many shows i've been so lucky but there was something about that show i mean every single human being on that set in front of the camera behind it was on their a-game and it was the most extraordinary experience uh doing noah's script let's rewind back to the very beginning by which i mean 1692 you descend from a woman uh-huh yeah oh my god and we were going to go there you descend from a woman prosecuted in the salem witch trials yeah my eight times great grandmother i can't believe you brought that up as i was looking in my closet i went what should i wear i mean and i didn't know if the studio was going to be cold or not so i almost grabbed my 1692 hoodie oh my god i had my hand on it that's so weird and it says 1692 they missed one because she was not hung is that she was not she was not um she missed she missed being hanged by one day she confessed in quotes um and they think that she was actually very clever and she noticed that people who confessed it bought them some time because they wanted you to examine your soul and all this kind of stuff because of course nothing back then nothing they loved more than a repentant sinner um and people who didn't confess they didn't confess they didn't confess they didn't confess were hanged immediately but she was what i found out about her was she was an eccentric gal grandma and i think it was probably very very easy to accuse her of being a witch she had kind of gotten in trouble a couple of times and she was now an older woman and she had owned a book on fortune telling which back then was considered very um suspect she had also gotten in trouble because she and a couple of her daughters sort of had a little cat burglary ring in beverly massachusetts which is this outside of salem and and her her daughters would make friends with the maids of all the rich people in town and steal stuff for us and also too i found out this wasn't on on it was not though on part of the show which i did which was called who do you think you are the genealogy show but i found out through wikipedia and some other things that i found out through other sources that she had a lock of hair that was quote of another color i'm assuming white what other color could it be um and it was what they call an elf lock which from what i've read is like a kind of like a dreadlock where your hair has become matted and twisted and it was four feet seven inches long when they arrested her and she can't have been taller than that i mean at the time and when they arrested her they wanted to cut it and she flipped out and said if they cut it off she'd die so she was she was an interesting person and that's clearly related to you yeah certainly didn't help her cause when she did that but when i found that out of these tears just sprang to my eyes i just thought i couldn't believe my eyes i was reading they actually let me hold original transcripts from 1600 and i was reading her arraignment and i saw those but when i first saw the words witchcraft i just couldn't believe it and uh when they brought my grandmother into the room these young women started screaming and pretending to faint and it was and you could tell at first she was frightened but then she started to get angry and they had to tell her to kind of calm down but it was weird because i thought she was going to die and i was thinking am i having some kind of weird past life regression because the names were familiar to me and i'm thinking okay this is really crazy it was like right out of a scene from the crucible that famous play by arthur miller and about the trials and then i realized that of course arthur miller when he was writing that play he had access to all the same history that i had was being given by these historians and genealogists and it was just bizarre it was just it was just crazy we're listening to guest interviewer arthur shahani's conversation with gene smart smart won emmys for outstanding lead actress in a comedy series for the first four seasons of the hit series Hacks. She's nominated again for Hacks' fifth and final season. We'll hear more of their conversation after a break. I'm Terry Gross, and this is Fresh Air. This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. Let's get back to the conversation guest interviewer Arthur Shahani recorded with actor Gene Smart. Smart stars in the HBO series Hacks about two female comedians, played by Smart and comedian Hannah Einbinder, who form a close bond despite being at completely different stages in their lives and careers. Hacks concluded its fifth and final season this past spring and is now nominated for 24 Emmys, breaking the record for most nominations received by a comedy series in a single year. In its first four seasons, Smart won Emmys for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series, and she's nominated again this year. Gene Smart's first claim to fame was starring in the 1980s sitcom Designing Women. Since then, she's appeared in a number of shows, including Fargo, Watchmen, and Mare of Easttown, and she's performed on Broadway. You met the love of your life, Richard Gilliland, on the set of Designing Women. Yes. And I want to ask about him first. How did you know that Richard was the one? It was just an. It was an instant thing. It really was. It was just instant. The day we met, we were never apart after that. And he just, I mean, I don't know, I mean, nobody made me laugh the way he did. He was so warm and so easy to talk to and so funny. And I just, I remember I walked into this building on. Over at Warner Brothers, we were getting ready to do a table read of episode five. And the show had never aired yet. We weren't on the air yet. And we were shooting it, the fifth episode. And I looked up the stairwell, and I saw this guy talking to somebody. And I recognized him. I'd seen him on television. I didn't know his name. But I thought, I've seen that guy before. But I just, he had these great little smile lines. And he just looked so. And I thought, oh. I wonder if he's here to be on our show. Because there were other productions in the building. And yeah, there he was. And so I walked in the room, and there he was sitting across from me. And yeah, it was just instant. And I started inviting him into my trailer to play, do crossword puzzles. And then he invited me to see a play that he was in, which was pretty bad. But he was absolutely hysterical in it. And I went about 12 times. Aw. Yeah. So you were married for 35 years, which seems like a very rare thing in Hollywood. Yeah, it was half my life. Yeah. Yeah. How'd you manage to stay married together for that long? Well, yeah. I mean, I don't know if the statistics, I don't know what the statistics are compared to other professions. I don't think they're probably drastically different. But I do think that, at least for actors. You're constantly meeting attractive, interesting people, and different people all the time. All the time you're exposed to different people. And sometimes you're out of town working with these attractive, interesting people who are all kind of at their most attractive and interesting because they're working. And so that can be, of course, very hard on a marriage. But like I said, we had similar values. We'd both been married before. And again, I mean, it's just, I don't know. Nobody made me laugh like him. His career, as I understand it, took a bit of a backseat so that the family could focus on your career. Was that an easy or difficult decision? No, it was difficult. It wasn't really a decision. It kind of just evolved that way. And it was difficult. It was hard. Yeah. It was hard on him, which I understand. And both of us grew up in the '50s with traditional family values and traditional role models. So that was difficult. And we actually separated for a year. And that was excruciating, but it also probably ended up being a good thing because I really. I think I really understood what wedding vows meant. I was very humbled by the fact that Richard did not ever give up on us, and I had. And I felt bad about that, that I put him through that. But he always believed that somehow we'd get back together. And we did. I think that that next Christmas, after we got back together, we were having a Christmas party. And a friend of ours was there. And he was like, "You know what? I'm not going to marry you." And I was like, "No, I'm not going to marry you." And he was like, "No, was there, who had recently been ordained so he could marry some other friends of ours. And I said, hey, Greg's here. Let's renew our vows. And he said, oh, great. And so we hadn't told anybody. It was just sort of a spur of the moment thing. And so my son, who was about eight, nine then, he and his buddy, I said, set up some chairs, you know. And so he started, he and his friends started setting up rows of chairs. And people thought, oh, God, Gina and Rich are going to put on a little show or something, you know. I don't know what they thought. And I was wearing, I was just wearing a pair of black pants and a leopard print sweater. And he had on a Hawaiian shirt and jeans. And I said, well, this won't do, you know. So I went and I got some fake flowers and I put them in my hair. And he went and got his tuxedo jacket and put it on over his Hawaiian shirt. I'm sure he looked ridiculous. So cute. And we just said what was in our hearts and how grateful we were to be back together. And it was great. One more question about your personal life. You gave birth to your first child when you were 37, 38, what they call the advanced maternal age. 38. Yes. Okay, 38. And then at age 57, you adopted a baby? Yes. Explain that. Well, we knew two couples who had adopted babies from China and just, and I had, I wanted to have another child, but it just wasn't in the cards and I had a miscarriage and that was really painful. And I just thought, I really, I really want another baby. And so we started talking about it and Richard would always say, oh, no. No, no, no, no, no. I think we're too old. We're too old. And by the time we finally did it, we probably were. It took so many years to talk him into it. You know, and at one point we were actually going to start the paperwork, but then my father was diagnosed with Alzheimer's and I just, I couldn't deal with it. So I kind of put it on the back burner for a while, but then we started again. But unfortunately that was right when China was hosting the Olympics, I believe. And everything just slowed down to a snail's pace. So it took about five years once we started doing the paperwork. And the paperwork was overwhelming. It was just endless. It was just endless. It was worth it, but it was, it took a long, a long time. But you know, at that age, I felt like I peaked in my fifties. I felt like I could do anything. And it was just a thrill. And it was so cool because when they placed that baby in your arms. You realize in that split second that it doesn't matter that you gave birth to that child or not. It's like, it's just, it was just instant. It's like that thing of this, I'm going to love you and protect you, you know, for the rest of my life. And it was, it was just really cool. And, but it was, it was a little, a little, I was kind of dismayed that so many of our friends, most of them really seemed to disapprove when I told them what we were going to do. And, but when we brought the baby home, all my girlfriends were just so jealous. They're like, oh my God, oh my God. And all the husbands were like, thanks a lot, Richard. Jesus, she doesn't stop talking about this. My guest is actor Jean Smart. She has won seven Emmys, including four for playing the comedian Deborah Vance on Hacks. She's nominated again this year for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series for the show's fifth and final. More after the break. This is Fresh Air. This is Fresh Air. I'm Arati Shahani, back with actor Jean Smart. She stars in the critically acclaimed show Hacks. She's won four Emmys for her role and has been nominated again this year for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series. Her other shows include Designing Women, Frasier, Fargo, and Mayor of Easttown. Okay, this last part of our conversation is a spoiler for anyone who has not seen Hacks yet. This is a spoiler for anyone who has not seen Hacks yet. So, you have officially been warned. In the last episode of the season, Deborah Vance and her young sidekick, Ava Daniels, were in a relationship. are in Paris. Deborah has been diagnosed with cancer, is refusing treatment, and wants to go out on her own terms. So Paris is supposed to be their last rendezvous before Deborah checks herself into a European center for assisted suicide. In this scene, they are at the train station, waiting for their train, eating. Let's hear the clip. So, um, what are you gonna ask if you get to, you know, meet your maker? My plastic surgeon? No, really. In 1980, Burt Reynolds called me, and I called him back, but he never returned. What was that about? That's what you want to know. I pretty much have everything else figured out. In fact, I think he, or she, or, you know, they, them, might have some questions for me, actually. They, them. Okay. Non-binary God. Love. I meant more of an energy. I don't think there's gonna be a gender-fluid barista waiting for me at the pearly gate. It's too bad. I love a macho when I get there. Hey, are you gonna come with that? Yeah, yeah, go for it. Wow. I guess the best part of dying for a person with disordered eating is having a second croissant. Actually, the best part of dying is not having to save receipts, because you know you will never get audited again. Actually, I think the best part of dying is knowing how pissed people are gonna be when they realize how much money you left your dogs. But the worst part of dying is that I don't get to see how my corgis decide to spend that $550,000. Ha ha ha! Ha ha ha! What do you think of that scene? Yeah, that was a great scene. Burt Reynolds. You know, it was so, it was very much in character, you know, for Debra to make that decision to do that. You know, you were mentioning earlier, you think that Debra's character really unfolds over the course of the series. And how would you summarize what that evolution is? I think she just becomes so much more relaxed, you know. She's made peace with her daughter, even though it was kind of an unpleasant peace, in the sense that she realized she was never going to be able to repair that relationship, that it was never going to be what it should have been. And that's a hole that Ava fills to a certain extent. So she's kind of been making peace with people, even before she realized that she was sick. It's like she's relaxing in her life a little bit, and she's allowing Ava to sort of, you know, sometimes take control or give her some advice. And when she stands up to Bob Lipka, played by the wonderful Tony Goldwyn. That's a huge thing for her. Very freeing. Very freeing. And she's thinking, screw it. I don't need Madison Square Garden. I don't need the money from the ticket sales. I just want to talk in front of people who want to hear me talk. And so just get me a stage in the park. Let anybody who wants to come, come. You know, you never, she wouldn't have done that season one or two. Is Deborah Vance and Hacks a creative challenge for you, or more like the easy reward after a lifetime of challenges? There weren't things like I didn't, you know, because there was a slight accent involved with Floyd, which was, adds, you know, another layer that you need to work through so you can get to, you can just stop thinking about it and let it just come naturally. That's another sort of added challenge. But they were both emotionally demanding. But in very different ways, you know, they were similar in the way, in the sense that they both were kind of held a lot of their feelings in, you know. But the thing about Deborah was it's just so fun to make people laugh. And just to see how people responded to the show was such a, such a thrill. And she got to be just more and more three-dimensional, more and more human, and less guarded as time went by, which was really exciting. Which was really nice. You know, Jean, you are kind of making a case for me, all right? I wanted to have this conversation. I wanted to have this conversation with you for a little bit of a hidden agenda, okay? Okay. Which is that, yes, you all say Hacks is over. Season five was the last season. But I think it's the wrong call. I don't get why. But it was written as a five-year show from day one. They had every season already in their heads, written in their heads, if not already written, from years before they even met me. That's how they sold it. That's how they pitched it to me. That's how they pitched it to the network. They felt that it ended in an appropriate way. Of course, they had no way of knowing how big the show was going to become. And I felt that I was ready to move on from the character. So it all kind of gelled nicely. I know you're okay with it being over, but just one more question I think about is, how are you feeling now that you are a little bit away from the filming of it? Well, I'm not missing getting up at four in the morning and wearing high heels all day. I don't know if you noticed, but the heels got shorter and shorter as the seasons went on. I wore some killer heels season one that I couldn't wear today. The thing is, though, unlike our darling crew, who had to kind of rip off the bandaid, for us in the cast, particularly Hannah and I, we have an entire awards season coming up. So we're going to still be living with the show, talking about the show, doing interviews about the show, going to ceremonies, and things through next February. So after that, it might feel a little more real. Well, Jean Smart, thanks for joining us. Thank you so much. Jean Smart spoke with guest interviewer Arthi Shahani. The fifth and final season of Hacks is nominated for 24 Emmys, including one for Smart for Best Actress in a Comedy Series. Arthi is a veteran NPR journalist, host of the podcast Art of Power, and author of the memoir Here We Are. Coming up, Maureen Corrigan reviews a new novel by Daniel Mason, who she says has a magic touch as a writer. This is Fresh Air. This is Fresh Air. Many writers hold down day jobs to pay the bills, but Daniel Mason is that rare literary creature. His 2020 short story collection was a finalist for the Pulitzer, and his 2023 historical fiction was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Simultaneously, Mason has maintained a second career as a psychiatry professor at Stanford. Our book critic Maureen Corrigan says that academic background stands him in good stead for his latest novel, Country People. Here's Maureen's review. Shakespeare was wise to the fact that most folks prefer lighter entertainments in the summer. Hence, A Midsummer Night's Dream, that confection of a play in which rustics and royals, and meddlesome fairies collide in a forest. Country People by Daniel Mason is a satisfying spin on the barb's bubble of an amusement. For anyone slow to catch on, Mason even ends his novel with an elementary school performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream. The wanderers into a Vermont forest here are not exactly royals, but you might say they're the kind of people Jefferson had in mind when he proposed that the United States be governed not by an inherited aristocracy, but by an aristocracy of the intellect. Or perhaps not. Kate is a hotshot, a distinguished scholar of Blake and Milton. Currently teaching in California, she's been offered a one-year visiting professorship at a college in Vermont. Miles, her husband, has been working, sort of, on his dissertation for the past 14 years, something to do with Russian folklore. To be fair, though, Miles, an eternal graduate student, does provide caretaking to the couple's two young children, as well as for Kate, who's been diagnosed with MS. He also tends to their dog, Giuseppe, who's possessed, much like Miles himself, of a fairly useless, useless skill. Giuseppe has been bred to hunt truffles. Energized by the thought of a year in their new place, the family drives cross-country, arriving at a sylvan wood where they'll live, suspiciously rent-free, in the house of a faculty member on sabbatical. The digressive plot of country people contains golden threads of academic farce. To my taste, passages like this one, contrasting Kate and Miles' student evaluations, are some of the funniest in the novel. Our omniscient narrator tells us that Kate taught popular courses, which according to her teaching evaluations were super fun and interesting, probably not useful for a job, but still mind-blowing. The narrator continues to fill us in. Over the past decade, watching their course enrollments dwindle, Kate's colleagues had been forced to pander, changing English 7, Shakespeare, to Sex in Shakespeare, English 28, Middlemarch, to Learning Programs, programming from Middlemarch, a novel. But Kate was hardcore. Again, according to our narrator, the reviews for the courses Miles taught as a teaching assistant described him as nice, if sometimes hard to follow, and said that he got caught up in arcane topics so that a lecture on Turgenev would somehow end in Ecuador. Once, a student wrote that Miles was disheveled, not in a gross way, in a nice way. Another wrote, My friend had a crush on him, which we thought was funny. As the novel settles into Vermont, its humor shifts from the dry wit variety to the wacky excess of tall tales. Miles is jazzed to get to know some actual rural folk, since his dissertation, after all, involves peasants. The local He talks to on nature trails and in the waiting room of the emergency clinic espouse beliefs that make the witches and dragons of Russian folklore seem colorless by comparison. Flat-earth theories and hollow-earth theories abound, along with the conviction that the area is studded with massive subterranean super-rat lines, a veritable vermin expressway, one of which is said to be run under the house Miles and his family now occupy. And seductive fairies spring up in the shape of a children's ski coach and an erotically charged drama teacher, who entices Miles into helping her stage an un-badlerized version of a Midsummer Night's Dream. To inevitably quote Puck's immortal line, Lord, what fools these mortals be, Thanks to Mason's own magic touch as a writer, country people mostly charms rather than condescends. Sometimes his jokes do go on for too long, like the footnote sprawling over three pages, listing adults who attended the school play. And sometimes, much like the hollow-earthers, I was conscious of the absence of a solid core to this novel. But then I reminded myself that silliness, for its own sake, is an underrated virtue in art. And there's silliness aplenty in country people to keep readers entertained. Maureen Corrigan is a professor of literature at Georgetown University. She reviewed Country People by Daniel Mason. Tomorrow on Fresh Air, Donald Trump took in about $2.2 billion last year while serving as president. New York Times journalist Eric Lipton will talk about his political career. Our digital media producer is Molly C.V. Nesper. Teresa Madden directed today's show. Our co-host is Tanya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross.