A lot of actors don’t like smoke and don’t want to be around it, so what would be the point? To still annoy co-stars and crew with smoke and not even get a nicotine buzz? Eh Eh!
Actors smoke real cigarettes on the set and it really drives some of the non-smokers nuts. Larry Hagman, pictured here with Linda Gray, was one actor who hated smoke.;
On the set of Dallas, Larry Hagman would insist that if people were going to smoke, they had to air out the set for at least 15 minutes every hour. Hagman was the biggest star on the show so he could demand that. It made the producers strongly encourage actors to not smoke!
Having 15 minutes of downtime every hour to air out the set caused a lot of wasted time. For Hagman it was essential because not only could he not stand the smoke, but he was very careful of protecting his voice. He would forgo speaking entirely every Sunday to rest his vocal cords.
You’d better believe that the producers of the show put some considerable pressure on the smokers to stop smoking on the set!
Eventually it got to where people stopped smoking on the set because they couldn’t justify being responsible for so much down-time, just to get their nicotine fix. So you might say that Larry Hagman was responsible for helping a lot of people stop smoking or at least cut down on smoking to where they didn’t smoke at work.
Hagman returned to play the role of J.R. Ewing when a Dallas continuation aired in 2012. A lot of people had quit smoking since the 80s when the original Dallas aired. In fact, given Hagman’s hatred of smoke as well as changing attitudes about smoking, nobody smoked on 2012 Dallas set.