Helen Fahey

Helen is Mare's mother, sharing her cramped Easttown house and never letting her forget it. She's blunt to the point of comedy, quick with a complaint about the coffee or the state of the kitchen, and utterly unsentimental. Underneath the sniping is a woman who has buried her own losses and refuses to make a show of it.

Jean Smart plays Helen as pure deadpan, landing one-liners with a flatness that makes them funnier and lets real grief slip through unannounced. The writing never softens her into a cozy sitcom mom; she's prickly and self-interested, and that friction with Mare feels lived-in rather than written, which is exactly why the tenderness beneath it lands.