Life after ‘Mad Men’ is a varied path for Jon Hamm
“The Morning Show” has regained its footing somewhat this season, thanks in no small part to the addition of Jon Hamm to the cast.
Now comes word that Hamm will also join the cast of FX’s “Fargo,” playing a North Dakota sheriff. Add that to the reasons for looking forward to the November return of that singular series.
In “The Morning Show,” Apple TV+’s series about the behind-the-scenes machinations and melodrama at a “Today”-like news-and-chat show, Hamm plays Paul Marks, an Elon Musk-like tech billionaire with his own space program and a restless appetite for owning a news network.
Hamm rose to stardom as mysterious advertising executive Don Draper in AMC’s “Mad Men” (2007-15). Who can forget that final image of Draper, wearing a beatific expression of enlightenment as that “I’d like to buy the world a Coke” finale played out? Since then, he has done an impressive job avoiding the chief occupational hazard of actors who are closely identified with one role: typecasting.
Hamm is good at creating characters who are not easy to read, who project a general aura of self-possession. But he has stepped outside that comfort zone in his post-“Mad Men” work, resulting in interestingly varied trajectory.
He was hilarious in guest stints on NBC’s “30 Rock” as the dumbest doctor alive, utterly content to live in “the bubble” afforded him by his good looks. The good doctor’s romantic involvement with Liz Lemon (Tina Fey) was shortlived.
He was creepy in Netflix’s “Unsinkable Kimmy Schmidt” as a cult leader and Kimmy’s captor. He’s very funny in the Progressive Insurance commercials, playing a guy besotted with Flo (Stephanie Courtney), who does not reciprocate and only wants to sell him insurance. As Kristen Wiig’s massively self-absorbed lout of a lover in “Bridesmaids” (2011), Hamm made you want to heave a shoe at the screen.
He’s been an FBI agent in Ben Affleck’s “The Town” (2010); a sports agent hunting for (and finding) baseball talent in India in “Million Dollar Arm” (2014); a mellow Wall Street-bankerturned thief in “Baby Driver” (2017); a bumbling reporter in the comedy “Confess, Fletch” (2022); and a vice admiral in “Top Gun: Maverick” (2022).
All in all, it’s a roster of leading roles, supporting roles, dramas, comedies, even commercials, proving that Hamm is not just willing but able to live outside the bubble.