Jean Smart

The Emmy winner on politics, popularity, and sex with Brad Pitt

- ALEX MORRIS

Your new movie Babylon is about the excesses of Hollywood's early days. I heard that in that first crazy party scene there were extras who were actually doing coke and molly.

[Laughs.] If I had seen anybody taking anything, I would've just assumed it was a prop. A few people were asked to leave, I guess. But I did think, "I'm not sure what my mother would think of this scene."

What was she like?

My parents were both very bright and funny. My dad was a history teacher. My mother chose to stay home and raise four kids. They both grew up very, very poor in the Depression, so they knew how to do things for themselves.

What's something they taught you and your siblings that's really mattered?

A very clear message about being on the side of the underdog, which is why, I think, we were all staunch Democrats. I never could understand friends who wanted to do things deliberately to piss off their parents. I didn't have that rebellious streak.

So you weren't cutting class with the burnouts.