Mr. and Mrs. Smith's Maya Erskine on When She Knew the Show Was Going to Work

The way Maya Erskine remembers the early days of filming Mr. & Mrs. Smith, the anxiety around her casting as Jane Smith was palpable. "There was a lot of, ‘Is this going to work?’” she says, meaning her costarring with cocreator Donald Glover in the Prime Video series. “We didn’t even chemistry-read together. We assumed maybe this would work based on our vibes. I remember Francesca [Sloane, showrunner and cocreator] and Hiro Murai, the director of the first two episodes, turning to each other and saying, 'Okay, I think this is going to work.'"

The stars did click, and the show scored 90% on Rotten Tomatoes — with some critics calling it an improvement over its source material, the 2005 film starring Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt — and last month earned a second-season renewal. The success of the diverse casting even quieted the chatter of many bigoted naysayers. For that, Erskine, whose mother is Japanese, is especially grateful. “I did see some racist comments — that they didn’t want to see an Asian woman as a spy or a Black man as a spy — and then it actually worked,” she says. “I think a lot of people could see themselves in these characters, with us as these people. I just believed in it from the beginning.”

A TV adaptation had long been in the works, with Glover and Phoebe Waller-Bridge (Fleabag) as both leads and writers. When Waller-Bridge left over creative differences, Glover and Sloane started searching for a new Jane. They were already fans of Emmy nominee Erskine, who had drawn praise as the cocreator and costar of the cringe comedy Pen15. Stepping aboard a moving train wasn’t ideal, but Erskine admired Glover’s work, and streamlining her career was a priority.

“After Pen15, I wanted to focus on just one aspect, just acting. When Donald and Fran approached me about it, I think I said, ‘I don’t have to write, right? I don’t have to go home and write after a day of acting?’ And he said, ‘No, if you don’t want to,’” she recalls. “But they did treat me like a collaborator. I couldn’t help but voice my opinions.”

Months later, Erskine thinks fondly of the community that developed on set — she, Glover and Sloane all have young kids, and there was a playroom built next to the stage — and of the many guest stars she’d grown up watching. “I’m just obsessed with all of them. Parker Posey and John Turturro — those were pinch-me moments."

This article originally appeared in emmy magazine, issue #8 2024, under the title "Jane Reaction."