In the latest issue of The Hollywood Reporter, Christina Hendricks dishes on how she won the role of Joan Holloway, why she once dismissed Joan as ‘a b**ch,’ and her own opinion regarding the indecent proposal that exploded into TV’s most-talked about moment. Even though the 37-year-old bombshell was initially called in for Peggy, she instead got Joan. “I thought Joan was such a b**ch, and I struggled sometimes trying to make her as real as possible because I thought, who would be so mean?” the actress says.
Still, Hendricks admits that she somehow felt the obligation to explain Joan’s actions to her friends and family. “The question is, what would you do to protect your family? Joan is raising her son all on her own. She has no help from anybody. So is it noble? Is it slutty? I don’t know,” she says.
On being pigeonholed, Christina told The Hollywood Reporter that “People always ask me if I’m worried about being pigeonholed as Joan, but there isn’t another character like her. The show takes place in the 1960s and has such a specific mood and quality to it.”
Speaking about Hendricks, costar John Slattery says that, “People want to think because of how stunning she is that she’s just this torpedo, but she’s way more complicated than that.” “My first scene was walking in with Don Draper at the end of a scene in which she’s telling Peggy to, ‘Go home, take a paper bag, tear out two eye holes and put it over your head.’ I didn’t know what I was getting myself into until I saw her. It was that scene that kind of woke me up to the potential for this whole thing,” he added.
Hendricks confesses in the interview that she would like to do a Woody Allen movie “I’d love to do a Woody Allen movie,” she says. The actress reveals that on her list are also Wes Anderson and Tim Burton films.
Matthew Weiner, the creator, executive producer and head writer of the popular television series Mad Men, talked to The Hollywood Reporter about Joan’s evolution.
“She was not at all what I expected to cast,” Weiner says. “I thought Joan would be more like an Eve Arden type, that she would just be Peggy’s friend. […] Christina brought all of this power, sexuality and confidence, and I recognized this dynamic between her and Peggy. I thought, this is going to be interesting to see how this office works, especially since I had been so influenced by the books Sex and the Single Girl and The Feminine Mystique.”
Read Christina Hendrick’s full cover story in the new issue of The Hollywood Reporter.
Photos courtesy of The Hollywood Reporter
