Jurnee Smollett Reveals How She Prepared For Role In New Series “Smoke”
Jurnee Smollett has been in front of a camera since before she could walk literally. At just 10 months old, she booked her first gig. Now at 38, she’s still choosing roles that stretch her, shake her, and make her dig deep. Her latest transformation? Michelle Calderone, a tough-as-nails former Marine turned arson investigator in Apple TV’s new crime drama Smoke.
But Michelle isn’t your typical badge-wearing heroine. She is haunted, messy, and complicated. And that’s exactly what pulled Jurnee in.
“I was really drawn to this character, Michelle, and when I met [creator] Dennis [Lehane], he said to me something that struck with me and really was my way into her,” Jurnee shared. “He said, ‘We all say we want to be happy, and yet we’re drawn to the very things that want to destroy us.’ And that was it.”
Michelle, at her core, wants to do the right thing. But that path is tangled in trauma, obsession, and isolation. She works alone, breaks rules, and pushes herself to the limit physically and emotionally.
According to Jurnee, Michelle has good intentions, but she “makes a lot of questionable choices.”
“It takes a very special person to say, ‘I’m going to put my life on the line, and I’m seeking out danger to fight for this cause that I believe in or fight for justice.’ But with Michelle, there’s an added layer of complexity because she’s also a bit single-minded, and because she’s a lone wolf, she doesn’t always follow the rules,” she shared.
To truly embody the role, Jurnee did not just read a script. She lived it. She trained like a Marine, adding 20 pounds of muscle to match Michelle’s physical intensity. “She’s someone who uses working out as an escape, and she tries to push herself pretty hard,” Jurnee explained, adding, “She’s running away from a lot of her emotions and pours it into different aspects of her life working out, but overworking out toxic relationships. She’s a workaholic and very ambitious. So, I knew physically that Michelle needed to have more of a muscular presence than I personally did.”
That raw dedication to character also meant diving into some personal shadows. Michelle’s strained relationship with her mother made Jurnee reflect on her own childhood wounds.
“I had an estranged relationship with my late father growing up,” she says quietly. “My parents separated when I was really young, when I was 11 or 12 years old, so I could relate to what it’s like to have that parental wound. My mom and I are — it’s the opposite — I’m very close to my mom, so the relationship she has with her mom, I have to kind of fill in the blanks as to how it relates to the relationship I had with my dad.”
But unlike Michelle, Jurnee isn’t afraid to do the work. She studied attachment styles, interviewed real marines and detectives, and tried to understand what drives someone to walk through fire.
“It was really just about inspecting her choices and asking, well, why is she making such choices?” Jurnee says.
Off set, balancing intense roles with real life isn’t easy. But motherhood has changed how the actress processes it all, as her son, 8-year-old Hunter, keeps her grounded.
