It’s been almost a week since the Smoke finale, and if you’re still reeling — you’re not alone.
We took the time to let the dust (and ash) settle before revealing our earlier chats with Jurnee Smollett, Greg Kinnear, and Rafe Spall to unpack burning love, fatal betrayal, and the fire that consumed them all.
Smoke didn’t just flirt with fire in its final hours — it was consumed by it. The finale pushed every character to their breaking point, and the actors behind them had plenty to say about betrayal, intimacy, and survival.
Jurnee Smollett on Michelle’s Fatal Decision
Jurnee Smollett was drawn to Michelle’s contradictions from the start.
“None of us are all one thing,” she said. “And none of the characters in the show are all good or all bad. Watching and embodying her struggle helps me learn about myself.”
That struggle came to a violent climax in the finale. After Dave exposed her, Michelle found herself stripped of the control she clung to.
Then Burke betrayed her in the most cutting way — reducing his pursuit of her to little more than getting “a pretty girl in bed.”
In that moment, Michelle lashed out, killing him in a fit of rage. And rather than facing the fallout, she let him die and twisted the act into an opportunity, framing Dave for the murder.
For Smollett, it was all about survival. “She’s just been exposed by Dave and felt the most vulnerable — which is the thing she fears most.
“Then Burke betrays her, and I think the animal part of her brain, the part that has had to survive, goes, ‘No, he’s dangerous, and you all need to be put away from me.’ So it’s survival.”
The irony, of course, is that Michelle always saw herself as the hero. But by the end, she became something much darker — the kind of villain she thought she was fighting.
Rafe Spall: Playing a “Love Warrior” to the Bitter End
Stephen Burke’s trajectory was tragic from the start. He blew up his marriage, abandoned his children, and convinced himself it was all for love.
“He keeps doubling down on that, ‘I left my wife for you,’” Rafe Spall explained. “That’s a big deal. He’s set fire to his life. It’s burned up. Because he was pursuing love, in his mind.”
Spall never saw Burke as a monster, but as a man blinded by his own conviction. “Even though he may seem like a son of a bitch, he doesn’t think he is one. He thinks he’s some kind of love warrior… Because he does genuinely love her.”
But Michelle didn’t see a love warrior in the end — she saw the kind of dangerous, destructive presence that echoed her past, and she struck him down.
Spall pointed out that the sting of his death is sharpened by what he’s talking about in his final moments. “Right before he dies, he’s talking about his kids. He’s still a father. It’s not all bad. No one is.”
That contrast — his self-image as a man chasing love, versus Michelle’s judgment that he was another threat to be destroyed — is what makes his death so haunting.
Greg Kinnear on Harvey’s Betrayal and Hypocrisy
Greg Kinnear’s Harvey spent the season believing in Dave, only to learn the hard way that his faith was misplaced.
“The greatest blind spot I have is a good friend, someone you count on, someone maybe you love and trust, who’s just got a few other cards in them that you didn’t expect,” Kinnear said.
When Harvey discovered who Dave really was, it wasn’t the lies that cut deepest — it was the betrayal. “When you bestow that onto someone and it’s broken, it’s devastating personally. It’s humiliating. Dave is at the crux of what causes Harvey to reevaluate a lot of things in his life.”
Yet Harvey wasn’t without sin. The finale revealed he had been embezzling all along, shattering any illusion that he was the noble one amid corruption. “Not me when I read it,” Kinnear laughed.
“Every one of the compromises you find these people in — it’s a great page turn. And Harvey is not the guy you think. Once he dipped his hand into the cookie jar… like all things, like fire, it burned him.”
Everyone Drawn to the Fire
Michelle’s act of violence. Burke’s desperate pursuit of love. Harvey’s misguided loyalty and hidden crimes. Each character in Smoke met their endgame the same way: drawn to the fire, undone by the very thing they thought they could control.
As Kinnear put it: “All these people are attracted to what hurts them, like fire.”
And that, in the end, may be the show’s greatest trick — that we see pieces of ourselves in these contradictions, and it forces us to wonder how far we’d go when the flames close in.
Are you still reeling from the finale? Let us know if hearing from the actors themselves helped you process it all.
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