Tragic Details About Jean Smart

While filming the first season of HBO's "Hacks," one of the show's stars suffered a tremendous tragedy. In 2021, Richard Gilliland, Jean Smart's husband of 34 years, died suddenly from a heart condition. "I thought he had COVID or something," Smart shared on an episode of "Who's Talking to Chris Wallace?" (via People). "The places I took him to to get him tested didn't do anything except a COVID test." After Gilliland died, Smart went back to one of the doctor's offices and asked what they'd do if someone came in with a certain set of symptoms. "He said, 'Well, [the] first thing we do is an EKG.' I said, 'He died last week. Why didn't you do that?'" she recalled.

Though she was racked with grief, the Emmy-winning star didn't want to hit pause on the show. "I still had a week of 'Hacks' left to do," she said in The New Yorker. "That was hard. I had to do a funeral scene. I was a wreck, but it actually turned out to be very funny." As series co-creator Paul W. Downs told "Today," "She really wanted to finish the show. And she really wanted to be back on set with her set family."

Sadly, the loss of her beloved husband is just one of several tragedies Jean Smart has faced behind the scenes. 

What you may not know about Jean Smart is that long before she met Richard Gilliland on the set of the hit sitcom "Designing Women," she married a Marine named John W. Norwalk Jr. The two tied the knot in 1974, but divorced three years later. After they split, Norwalk died in a car accident. Smart was overcome by grief when she learned of his death. "I think the first time you lose somebody you love [it] changes you forever, especially when it's a young person," she recalled in The Philadelphia Inquirer in 2008. "We had divorced but were still extremely close, and he died in a car accident and it just leveled me." 

In a 1992 chat with the Chicago Tribune, Smart expressed a similar sentiment. "He was a very important part of my life-my first love in every sense of the word, a wonderful man, even though our marriage hadn't worked out," she said. The beloved star also noted that while the deaths of her own grandparents were hard, the unexpected nature of her ex-husband's death brought on a different kind of grief. "Theirs was sad, but it wasn't a tragedy. This was so sudden. He was so young," she said.

Jean Smart and Richard Gilliland shared two sons: Connor Gilliland, who was born in 1989, and Forrest Gilliland, who was born in 2008. After Richard's death, Connor moved in with his mom and younger brother. "He's been helping me a lot since we lost his dad, and so it's been very nice to have him around," Smart told People in 2023. "I don't know how single working mothers do it." The year prior, she shared a similar sentiment while chatting with red carpet reporters, stating, "Being a single mother is the hardest thing I've ever done" (via People).

While Connor was old enough to pitch in, Smart's younger son, Forrest, was still a child when Richard died. "I mean, he lost his dad when he was 12. How do you take away that pain?" Smart said of her son in Glamour. "That's a trauma that people need to think of and be mindful of."

As trying as it might be to both raise a teenager and keep up with a thriving acting career, Smart cherishes every minute of it. As she told The New York Times in 2024, she loves getting to pick him up from school and hang out with him at home... and on red carpets. At the 2022 Screen Actors Guild Awards, she brought Forrest along — and yes, he got to see his mom win. When accepting the award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series, Smart gushed, "To my two children, Forest and Connor, you are my life."

In 2009, Jean Smart's older sister, Georgia Smart, died from glioblastoma, a form of brain cancer. The following year, the award-winning actor spoke to WebMD about losing her sibling and how difficult it was for her to receive a diagnosis. "She went to four eye specialists and not one of them ordered an MRI, even though they couldn't tell her what was wrong," she said. Georgia only got an MRI once she was no longer able to safely operate a vehicle due to her declining vision.  

In the wake of her sister's death, Jean became a board member at the Seattle-based Chris Elliott Fund for Glioblastoma Brain Cancer Research. Jean, who was born and raised in Seattle, spoke to the Washington-based Bellevue Reporter in 2011 about becoming an advocate for increased patient education and additional treatments. "When I learned my sister was diagnosed with brain cancer I was filled with fear and didn't know what to think about the disease," she said. "There were so few treatment options for my sister. What I now know is we have to bring brain cancer out of the shadows and illuminate it with light, science and optimism. Itʼs the only way to find a cure in our lifetime."

In February 2023, Jean Smart revealed on Instagram that she underwent a heart procedure. She uploaded the post during American Heart Month, which aims to bring attention to heart disease and its prevalence as the leading cause of death in Americans. She also shared that the procedure was recent. "I am fortunate to have excellent care and support from family and friends while I continue to recuperate," she wrote.

"Hacks" was in the middle of filming Season 3 when Smart went in for surgery, but once she recovered, she was ready to get back to it and win another Emmy. But perhaps the biggest win of all was Smart's intuition to stay on top of managing her own health. As she wrote on Instagram, "Please listen to your body and talk to your doctor– I'm glad I did!"

In addition to her unspecified heart condition, Smart also lives with type 1 diabetes. She received her diagnosis when she was 13, and she continues to manage it. When she learned that COVID-19 could potentially trigger complications, she read up on the virus and took whatever precautions she could. "Knowledge is power, and so the more I learned about it, the better I felt about it," she told EatingWell. Talk about a smart outlook.