Anjelica Huston reflects on making Smash, says she wasn’t very happy

Anjelica Huston navigated the bright lights of Broadway on the hit series Smash, but her experience behind the scenes was admittedly dim.

Huston, who played a Broadway producer on the series, recently looked back at that period and revealed that it wasn’t a joyous time. “I wasn’t very happy when I was on that show,” Huston told PEOPLE. “I was living in New York and I wasn’t very happy living in New York for the obvious reasons. It was a cold winter.”

The star also said that she “didn’t feel very prized in that role,” adding, “I was a bit depressed by it. It was hard, really. I didn’t really have a good time making it.”

Huston starred as Eileen Rand, an adjunct theater professor and Broadway producer, on all two seasons of the 2012 NBC musical drama centered on the tumultuous making of a musical based on the life of Hollywood royalty Marilyn Monroe. It was created for television by playwright and television writer Theresa Rebeck and also starred Katharine McPhee, Debra Messing, Megan Hilty, Christian Borle, and Leslie Odom Jr.

Huston said she was also still reeling from the death of her longtime husband, sculptor Robert Graham, during that period. Graham, whom Huston wed in 1992, died in December 2008 at the age of 70. “Bob was very special and very irreplaceable,” Huston said. “A lot’s gone on since Bob died.”

The Academy Award winner recently revealed for the first time that she was diagnosed with cancer in 2019, not long after she starred opposite Keanu Reeves in John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum. But Huston is now four years “in the clear” of the diagnosis. “That was a very serious moment for me,” Huston told PEOPLE in a separate interview. “I managed to survive it, and I’m proud of myself.”

“I’m at the four-year mark, and that means so much to me,” Huston added. “I’ve been very lucky. My doctors have been wonderful.”

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