By Emma Chance | Celebrity | May 17, 2024 |
By Emma Chance | Celebrity | May 17, 2024 |
In a recent appearance on Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace?, actress Jean Smart of Hacks reflected on the shocking death of her late husband Richard Gilliland, who passed in March 2021 of a heart condition.
“It was such a shock. It was so unexpected,” she said. “And, you know, I thought he had COVID or something. The places I took him to … to get him tested didn’t do anything except a COVID test.” After his death, she “went back to one of those places” and asked to speak to whoever was in charge.
“I said, ‘Let me ask you something.’ I said, ‘If I brought my 71-year-old husband in here, who was complaining of pain when you take deep breaths—,’ and I said, ‘What would you do for him?’ He said, ‘Well, first thing we do is an EKG.’ I said, ‘He died last week. Why didn’t you do that?’”
She explained that between getting tested for COVID and his ultimate death, Gilliland was admitted to the hospital and had a heart attack, “Which is why they couldn’t operate on him because in that time period that we had lost, he had developed pneumonia. So they put in a stent to try to hold him ‘til the pneumonia got dealt with and they could operate. But it was too late.”
Wallace asked if she’d been able to “move on,” and she said, “Just this year.” It’s been three years since Gilliland died, and it’s been unlike any other loss she’s dealt with.
“I’ve lost a sibling. That’s a different, whole different experience. Losing your mate of 35 years—I mean, literally half my life I lived with him—is just indescribable…You go through this period of thinking it’s just not real.”
The couple met on the set of Designing Women, where she says they “bonded instantly,” and “were never apart from that day.”
Smart dedicated her Emmy award for lead actress in a comedy series on Hacks in 2021 to her husband:
“I have to acknowledge my late husband, who passed six months yesterday. I would not be here without him, without his putting his career on the back burner so I could take advantage of all the incredible opportunities I have.”
It’s a rare man who lets his wife be the star. Gilliland was an actor himself for 40 years, so he was honored in the In Memoriam segment that year.
Though she’s healthy now, Smart says she had to undergo heart surgery recently as well. It turned out to be a blockage from her diabetes, but it was “shocking” nonetheless. It was the thought of her and Gilliland’s two sons and the trauma they experienced with their father’s death that led her to seek treatment. She first noticed symptoms on the set of Hacks while filming a scene in which she had to do a keg stand. The feeling kept “nagging” at her and she ultimately had to ask herself, “Do you want these kids to be orphans?”