Jean Smart Jokes 'Nobody Gets Us Actors' as She Accepts 2022 SAG Award for 'Hacks' Role

Jean Smart won big at the 2022 Screen Actors Guild Awards!

The Hacks star took home the prize for outstanding female actor in a comedy series during Sunday's broadcast of the 28th annual awards show.

Smart, 70, beat out Elle Fanning (The Great), Sandra Oh (The Chair), Juno Temple (Ted Lasso) and Hannah Waddingham (Ted Lasso) to take home the trophy.

As she walked on stage to meet the presenters for the award, Rosario Dawson and Vanessa Hudgens, fellow actors in the room stood up and gave Smart a standing ovation.

"Oh, you guys, thank you so much," she said, "I love actors, nobody gets us actors. What we do is valuable, we are the tribe's storytellers since man crawled out the cave and sat around the fire together and it's important."

"We actually are the world's oldest profession," she said, teasing, "Sometimes it feels like we're the other world's oldest profession."

The actress followed the laughter in the room with a list of thank you's, including HBO Max, Universal, the show-runners of the show, her co-stars who were "cast in heaven," and her castmate and "partner in crime" Hannah Einbinder.

"This has been such a joy, this late in the game it's such a treat," Smart said. "To my two children, Forest and Connor, you are my life and please everybody, let's pray for peace thank you"

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Sunday's win marks Smart's first SAG Award. She is also nominated tonight for outstanding performance by an ensemble in a comedy series for Hacks. She could also take home the prize for outstanding performance by a female actor in a miniseries or television movie for Mare of Easttown. She was previously received a nomination as part of the cast of 24.

Smart portrays Deborah Vance, a legendary stand-up comedienne, on the Hacks. She teams up with a young writer (Hannah Einbinder) to help freshen up her act and they must learn to respect each other's differences along the way.

"I love that Deborah is kind of inconsistent or unpredictable. You know, she has very different relationships with all the different people in her life. And it's a testament to the writing that they all seem to make sense," she told Vanity Fair.

She added, "She's incredibly generous, she's incredibly cheap, she can be incredibly kind, and incredibly abusive. But it all seems to just make sense. That was fascinating to me, and makes it very fun to play."

SAG-AFTRA unveiled the nominations for the awards ceremony on Instagram last month.

House of Gucci and Power of the Dog lead the film nominations with three each. Succession and Ted Lasso tied for the most nominations with five. Mare of Easttown, The Morning Show and Squid Game scored four each.

The top prize of best ensemble in a drama series is between The Handmaid's Tale, The Morning Show, Succession, Squid Game and Yellowstone. Meanwhile, the best ensemble in a comedy category includes The Kominsky Method, Only Murders in the Building and Ted Lasso as contenders.

This year, Helen Mirren will be the 57th recipient of the SAG Life Achievement Award. As of November, the 76-year-old actress is the most-decorated recipient of the honor, with a total of 13 SAG Awards nominations and five wins.

The Screen Actors Guild is requiring all ticketed attendees to "show proof of vaccination plus booster shot (if eligible), proof of negative lab-based COVID-19 PCR test within 48 hours of event, and negative antigen (rapid) test the day of the event," according to the event's official website.

The 28th Annual SAG Awards are being broadcast live on TNT and TBS on Sunday, Feb. 27.