“I could murder this part”: the role Jon Hamm was devastated to lose
There have been several genuinely iconic leading TV characters over the last 25 years or so; roles that are instantly recognisable and that stand out above so many others in what will surely go down as a golden age of television. They include James Gandolfini as Tony Soprano, Bryan Cranston as Walter White, and Jon Hamm as Don Draper in Mad Men.
Sometimes things just fall into place where casting is concerned, just as you can’t get your head around any other actor playing Soprano or White, nor could anyone else have played Draper, not to the same extent. It’s almost like it was written for Hamm. But had circumstances gone in another direction, we might have found out what that would have looked like.
That’s because while Hamm was auditioning for the lead in the New York-set tale of advertising and smoking profusely in offices, he was secretly panicking that a previous experience trying out for a major role on a network TV show that he lost out on many years earlier would be repeated.
Pre-Mad Men, Hamm wasn’t exactly inexperienced, but he wasn’t exactly well-known either. He’d landed small roles in films like We Were Soldiers and Space Cowboys and done plenty of television, including 66 episodes of a female police drama called The Division between 2001 and 2004. But by 2007 he wasn’t overly-busy before Mad Men series creator Matthew Weiner got over his initial concern about Hamm being too handsome for the lead role.
Hamm recalled the casting process to The Hollywood Reporter, saying: “I got the Mad Men script, and I was like, ‘Shit, this is really good.’ And it’s a good lesson in not getting ahead of yourself because I remember thinking, ‘They’re never going to cast me.’ Because I’d had an experience with another really good script that I read and I was like, ‘I would do anything to get this part.’
That other script turned out to be for The West Wing, the White House based drama written by Aaron Sorkin that had become one of the most-watched TV shows in history. The part Hamm was asked to read for was the character of Sam Seaborn, the Deputy Communications Director played for four seasons by former Brat Pack star Rob Lowe.
Hamm added: “I thought, ‘I could murder this part.’ And I was great in the audition, but I saw the casting director’s face, and I knew this part’s already cast. Then it was like, ‘Oh, it’s Rob Lowe. OK, I get it.’ So I thought the same thing would happen on Mad Men. I’ll give a great audition, and they’ll give it to a movie star.”
Thankfully, they did not give the character of Don Draper to a movie star, instead, thanks to a feeling from Weiner that Hamm intrinsically understood Draper’s back story about losing his father and empathised with it, he got the part. Within a year Hamm had picked up the Golden Globe for Best Actor in a TV series, going on to be nominated three years in a row and collecting 12 Emmy nominations too.
Mad Men finished in 2015 and Hamm has gone on to become one of the leading actors in Hollywood, appearing extensively in comedy movies and more TV drama like Apple’s The Morning Show with Jennifer Aniston. He’s also teamed up with the same streaming site for his first lead role since Mad Men, Your Friends & Neighbours which will be back for a second season in April this year.
