Jean Smart once suffered a brutal injury while filming the drama Mare of Easttown.
On Wednesday’s episode of The Drew Barrymore Show, the actress told host Drew Barrymore how she broke her rib and got a concussion after she flipped over a railing and fell down a flight of stairs on the set of the HBO drama, which streams locally on BINGE.
Smart, who played Kate Winslet’s mum in Mare of Easttown, recalled the painful memory during a game of “Behind the Scenes.”
“I did a scene where I’m drunk with the priest and we’re playing cards like we do every Sunday and I fall out of my chair,” Smart said.
“So I thought it might be kind of fun for that to be a thing for that character — that she’s always falling down or almost falling down occasionally.”
Cut to a scene in which Smart’s character was sitting up on a railing as she spied on her daughter and her date.
“I thought it would be funny if I almost fell over the railing,” she said.
“And, like, take five I went over the railing, down the flight of stairs, broke one of my ribs in half and got a concussion.”
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Fortunately, Smart had Winslet there to comfort her until first responders showed up.
“Kate was so sweet,” she gushed. “We were waiting for the ambulance. My back hurt so bad I thought I’d broken it. She was behind me supporting my back and she was saying, ‘It’s alright, mummy. They’re coming, mummy. It’s alright. It’s alright.’”
However, Smart’s treatment was put on a brief hold once the paramedic realised he had been talking to Winslet.
“He said, ‘Boy, your daughter was sure worried about you.’ I said, ‘My what? Who?’” Smart recalled. “I said, ‘Oh, no no no. That’s an actor. She was playing my daughter. No, she just calls me mummy.’
“I said, ‘Didn’t you recognise her?’ And he said, ‘No, who was it?’ I said, ‘That was Kate Winslet.’ He said, ‘I missed Kate Winslet?!’”
Smart added, “I’m going, ‘Could you get back to the job at hand, please?’”
This article originally appeared in Decider and was reproduced with permission