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Tavis: This season, she's been one of prime time TV's most talked-about characters, the First Lady Martha Logan on the Fox drama "24.' The show wraps up its season on May twenty-second with a special two-hour finale. Here now, a scene from '24,' starring Jean Smart.

Tavis: So Jean Smart, nice to meet you.

Jean Smart: Thank you, Tavis, nice to meet you.

Tavis: All right, so opening salvo, what do you really wanna be remembered for in your career, Charlene on 'Designing Women,' or an unstable First Lady?

Smart: (Laugh) Well, I just wanna be remembered as being a good actress, I guess.

Tavis: Yeah. (Laugh)

Smart: You're so bad.

Tavis: Good answer, good answer, good answer. (Laugh) It's nice to have you on the program.

Smart: Thank you.

Tavis: Are you enjoying '24?'

Smart: I'm having a blast. I have the best job in show biz.

Tavis: Yeah. Do you ever concern yourself with being identified with a character beyond the run of that character?

Smart: Oh, well, sure, I think everybody does. It's the double-edged sword. Someone said there was an actor who had played a serial killer who because he was so good at it, (laugh) he had trouble getting work after that. But sure, I've been lucky; actually, I haven't been typecast. I actually would like to play a character like Charlene again sometime, she was very sweet.

Tavis: How do you avoid that? And I'm glad you said that, because I've asked the flipside of that question, the antithesis of that question, many times of actors on this program. How they feel about being typecast. But I don't know that I've ever asked anybody how one avoids being typecast, and to your point, that you've not been typecast in this wonderful career. How have you avoided that?

Smart: I'm not sure, part of that's luck. Actually, I think the first, no, the second job I was offered after I left that long-running series was actually a serial killer, (laugh) Eileen Wuornos. That the movie 'Monster' was based on. I did a film, I don't remember which network it was, about her. And I thought, I wonder why they thought of me? But -

Tavis: Yeah. When you said you want to be remembered as a good actress, what does that mean for you? How do you define that?

Smart: Well, as someone who's versatile, and who's respected by other actors. I come from the theater, so you're supposed to be versatile. That's an odd thing about working on camera, is that usually, you end up playing some version of yourself. When you're in the theater, you have a lot more latitude and partly because the camera's not right there.

But I've found, actually, that versatility is not a plus in this town. Because they wanna be able to pigeonhole you quickly. They wanna be able to say, they don't have the time to sort of figure out oh, gee, I wonder if she could do that? I bet she could do this or that, or they wanna just say, oh yeah, this is the part we need, let's go to that Rolodex and get so and so.

Tavis: That's boring, though.

Smart: Yeah.

Tavis: How have you, now everybody has a different journey that they have to travel, obviously. But when you come from the theater, to your point, to television, there seems to be, like, there's a, I don't wanna insult anybody in television. I'm trying to figure out how to say this the right way. (Laugh) The stage is live; it's in the moment; it's immediate.

You're not doing take after take after take. There's, like, a certain realness to it that television appears to give us, but you on the set, you know that ain't how it gets done. How did you navigate that journey?

Smart: I think you just sort of, well, it seemed like a breeze to me after doing theater. I remember when I first came out here to do a series called 'Teachers Only' with Lynn Redgrave and the late darling Norman Fell. And I didn't know anything about working in front of a camera. And I remember the first night we shot in front of an audience, someone said, 'Well, who's doing the warm-up?'

And I thought they meant that we were all gonna get together and do some vocal warm-up or some tai chi or something. (Laugh) And they said, 'No, no, no, there's a stand-up comic who goes out and warms up the audience.' I said, 'What? You're kidding me.' I'm trying to imagine in the theater somebody going out before the play and getting the audience going.

I thought, wow. And then they said, 'Okay, everybody line up for intros.' And I said, 'What do they mean, intros?' They said, 'Well, we're gonna introduce the cast.' I said, 'Before the show?' They said, 'Yeah.' I said, 'You mean like a basketball team?' (Laugh) (unintelligible) It was just the strangest, oddest thing I'd ever done.

Tavis: Is there something about the world that we live in, about the country that we live in, more accurately, that is craving or embracing television shows about the White House? The White House has always been a very popular theme to go back to. But it's like so many shows now on television. Three, four, five coming to mind right quick, about the goings-on in the White House, either directly or indirectly. Does that mean something to you? Am I missing something?

Smart: Well, I wonder if it has to do partly with the fact that we don't look at our politicians as sort of these untouchable people in an ivory tower anymore. In fact, we've gone maybe too far in the other direction. So there's sort of a gossipy fascination with that part of it.

But also, too, I think because of the climate we live in now, and certainly since 9/11, I think that there's a concern and an insecurity and a fearfulness which I think is what '24' really fulfills that need, I think, for everyone, whatever side of the political fence you're on. I think that there's a feeling that somehow, we're being taken care of when you watch '24.' You kind of hope that there's a CTU in downtown LA, or there's a Jack Bauer out there, looking out for you, and getting rid of the bad guys.

Tavis: You think there is?

Smart: I have no idea. There's gotta be something like that out there. (Laugh)

Tavis: Somebody's looking out for us, huh?

Smart: Doesn't there? Yeah. I hope so. I don't know. When you've got, who was it, the fellow at Homeland Security who was just arrested for soliciting a child on the Internet? You think oh, good lord. This is the guy who's looking out for us? Or one of the guys, excuse me.

Tavis: Let me take you back right quick to something you said a moment ago, 'cause I'm curious what you meant by that. When you say that perhaps, with regard to how we portray the goings-on in the White House, that we've gone too far. We don't see it as an ivory tower anymore, but you suggest maybe we've gone too far, explain.

Smart: Well, not necessarily in terms of the dramas, but when you read about some of the former Presidents and FDR and even JFK, and how the media was so respectful of them, you did not go too far in your questions with them. You gave them a certain amount of respect and privacy that you felt was just due them the nature of their job.

Because when you think about it, it's got to be the most difficult position to be in in the world. And, but that's gone. That's gone in every area of life now. There's no boundaries; there are no boundaries. And I think it's an unhealthy place that we're in. There's no respect, and any kind of boundaries are thought of as being just sort of silly or old fashioned.

Tavis: You think of yourself as a political person?

Smart: Yeah, I've become that. (Laugh)

Tavis: Become that? Why, how?

Smart: Because I just find the world a little scary right now, and I find that the very people who say that they are Christians seem to be the least Christian in their view of life, in their level of intolerance. People who are supposed to be looking out for us don't seem to be looking out for us at all, or our planet. But my mother said something after Clinton was sort of, that whole debacle.

She said, 'The level of personal information that we got was just way, way too much.' And she said, 'Who is gonna ever want this job again? What normal, intelligent, healthy human being is gonna want that job? The person who's gonna want that job is gonna be, gonna want it for strange reasons.'

Tavis: So what does she say about George Bush?

Smart: Oh, you don't wanna know.

Tavis: And his strange reasons?

Smart: You don't wanna know.

Tavis: You can't say it on television, can you?

Smart: No. (Laugh) My mother found out I was playing a Republican, she said, oh my God, I hope they're paying you a lot of money.

Tavis: (Laugh) Republicans always make a lot of money. That's how they become Republicans. What was the old joke? We're all Democrats until we start making some money.

Smart: Yeah.

Tavis: And speaking of, finally, your comment about the Christians, I saw a bumper sticker the other day. I happen to be a Christian, but I saw a bumper sticker that really got my attention, to your point, about those who profess to be Christians being the least Christian in behavior. The bumper sticker said, 'Jesus, save us from your followers.' (Laugh)

Smart: Oh, dear.

Tavis: Please, Jesus.

Smart: Well, those people...

Tavis: Save us from your followers.

Smart: Those people that are going to those funerals of soldiers? How could you do that to someone? That is the cruelest thing I've ever heard of. It is so cruel it's beyond comprehension.

Tavis: Yeah. Well.

Smart: Sorry, didn't mean to...

Tavis: No, not at all. (Laugh) It's your conversation. You want politics, drama, and a whole lot of other good stuff, check out Fox's '24' big season finale, two hours, coming up. Check it out on the Fox Network. Jean Smart, nice to have you here.

Smart: Thank you very much.

Tavis: My pleasure. That's our show for tonight. Catch me on the weekends on PRI, Public Radio International. Check your local listings. See you back here next time on PBS. Until then, good night from L.A., thanks for watching, and as always, keep the faith.