Bronson Pinchot Explains Why Maggie Smith Once ‘Whacked’ Him on Set

Dame Maggie Smith’s First Wives Club co-star Bronson Pinchot good-naturedly recalled to People an incident in which the Oscar-winning actor “crisply whacked” him over the head for complimenting one of her performances. Smith passed away on Friday morning at the age of 89. Pinchot joins a laundry list of Smith’s co-stars, including Daniel Radcliffe and Rob Lowe, paying tribute to the legendary icon of stage and screen.

The 1996 cult comedy stars Diane Keaton, Goldie Hawn, and Bette Midler as divorced “first wives” who enact revenge on their ex-husbands and their new trophy spouses. Smith plays an old-money, oft-divorced Manhattan socialite who aids the central trio, while Pinchot essentially reprises his Beverly Hills Cop role as an interior designer with dubious taste whom Smith weaponizes against the philandering men.

On Friday, Pinchot recalled meeting Smith moments before they were to shoot their first scene together. "No one introduced us; they just sat us together," he told People. A longtime fan of the Oscar-winning star, Pinchot found it hard not to gush. "I started to tell her that her performance as Desdemona in Othello had moved me so much I had to be literally carried out of the movie theater," he explained.

Smith’s slightly aggressive reaction both shocked and delighted the Perfect Strangers star. "She picked up her clutch purse and crisply whacked me with it, saying sweetly but firmly, 'We'll have none of that,'" Pinchot recalled. "I had loved her as an artist, but from that moment, I loved her as a person.”

Pinchot spoke more about Smith’s performance in Othello and her good-natured whack in a separate People interview back in June. "I got so emotional that my girlfriend and my sister literally carried me out like a scarecrow because I was so broken," he recalled of the film which earned Smith her first of six Oscar nominations.

Pinchot never felt offended by Smith’s slap, rather seeing it as a self-deprecating act on her behalf. "She smacked me with it like we're colleagues, and you don't need to be telling me that I'm something great…It was the most affectionate, eloquent [moment], because what she was saying was, 'Look, we're equals here,” Pinchot said, before adding, “Oh, God, I just adored her.”

The First Wives Club is streaming on Paramount+.