Between takes

Christina Hendricks talks summers, strippers and ‘Furry’ sex.

Dark Places is very heavy. Did it leave you in, ahem, a dark place? It did! I had three films in a row that summer that were tough. I did Lost River, God’s Pocket and this was the third one. I said, after I finished those, I had no tears left in my body! I just wanted to go home and laugh! Was Patty the character you were immediately drawn to when you read the script? I’d actually agreed to play another character – Krissi, the drug addict-stripper. And I thought, “That’s interesting. I’ve never done anything like that.” And then I got there and someone else dropped out of the film, and then they offered me this other role entirely. So no drug addict-stripper for me! How did you feel at the end of the shoot? I just remember going home and thinking, ‘Oh God! I need a little break!’ It was really, really intense. And then I went straight back into

Mad Men, which is such a comfort to me. Boy, it took me out of the mud. I was in a lot of heat and mud and bugs and crying! I just wanted to put my beehive back on and get back to work! If they ever did a Mad Men movie, would you be up for it? I can’t imagine Matt Weiner would want to do that, but if he did, I’d one hundred percent do it. Maybe we could all have prosthetic wrinkles on! You’re now doing Fist Fight,

Pottersville and Bad Santa 2, all comedies. Is that a relief? Yeah, I guess this will be the summer of laughs! What is Pottersville about? It’s a movie about a small town in which there ends up being a Bigfoot hoax. Or a Bigfoot sighting that turns out not to be Bigfoot. It’s very quirky and charming. I play a ‘Furry’ – people who dress up in animal costumes! There are a huge group of people who are into this – it’s a deviant sexual act! Nothing at all like Joan in Mad

Men then? This is very, very different from Joan! This is about the most un-Joan character I’ve played. JM

ETA | 22 February Dark Places is available on DVD and Blu-ray later this month.

‘I’d do a Mad Men movie. We could wear prosthetic wrinkles’