“Sorry, my dog is escaping,” said Jon Hamm to IndieWire, breaking off an answer midway through a phone interview. “I just opened the door and he went for it.”
The Hollywood heavyweight is managing a lot these days. Formerly known as Don Draper from “Mad Men,” the A-list actor is juggling two Emmy nominations against the backdrop of his ever-boiling film career. The multi-faceted bad guys who Hamm plays — Sheriff Roy Tillman in FX’s “Fargo” Season 5 and billionaire tech mogul Paul Marks in Apple TV+’s “The Morning Show” Season 3 — earned the versatile performer nods for both Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited Series and Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series. The Television Academy has recognized Hamm with 18 nominations (and one win) to date, but this is the fourth year he’s been nominated for two parts simultaneously.
“The pressure of any kind of award stuff is baked in,” Hamm said, when asked if dual-wielding puts more or less pressure on awards night. “It’s an intense thing. It’s a lot of run-up to it, so that sort of naturally amplifies what the meaning of the evening can be, but it’s also self-generated. I learned a long time ago not to put too much emphasis on those things ’cause they are a bit arbitrary in some way.”
Hamm won his only Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series for AMC’s “Mad Men” in 2015. That year, he was also recognized as a nominee for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series thanks to Netflix’s “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.” He was also in that category for 2009, 2010, and 2012, thanks to his work on “30 Rock.”
Swinging between comedy and drama is something Hamm likes and does well. With “Fargo” and “The Morning Show,” the seriocomic actor has sharpened his signature talents to an incisive and topical fine point — finding not one, but two political devils in the detailed work of “Fargo” creator Noah Hawley and Apple TV+’s star-studded cast of scrambling journalists.
“Getting to do two very different characters at the same time is kind of why I got into this business,” said the actor, who also managed to get his dog back inside.
As a genre-crawling artist, Hamm revels in scenes that are chockfull of “both text and subtext.” The following Q&A has plenty of it, with the two-time Emmy nominee for 2024 dissecting everything from the importance of Roy Tillman’s nipple rings to Paul Marks’ softer side, carefully cultivated with “The Morning Show” co-star Jennifer Aniston (who is also nominated). The “Top Gun: Maverick” actor can’t wait for more Tom Cruise when the Olympics hit Los Angeles in 2028. Yes, he and frequent “Fargo” scene partner Joe Keery talked about the “Stranger Things” of it all. Hamm also went to the same high school as OpenAI CEO Sam Altman — and he’s got opinions on that, too.
Read on for a conversation with Jon Hamm, the biggest bad guy of 2024 TV and a dark horse in the Emmys race everyone should have seen coming.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
IndieWire: You worked on “Fargo” and “The Morning Show” concurrently and have talked about that experience being challenging. Why was it difficult switching between Paul Marks and Roy Tillman?
Jon Hamm: The logistics of working on both of those were particularly tricky simply because we were coming out of the COVID protocols at the time, which meant that travel was still a little bit tricky and sticky, and so getting back and forth from Canada to Culver City wasn’t the easiest. Even though there are direct flights, it wasn’t super easy given the protocols that the insurance companies mandated we have in place on both shows. And then there was a lot of wrangling back and forth about who was responsible should something happen or get COVID or they had to shut down production or whatever, the million different permutations of things that could have happened.
So that part of it was a necessary kind of logistical boondoggle and that was tricky in and of itself. The actual work, once I got to whatever place I happened to be shooting in, that part was pretty straightforward and both productions were tremendously well run. Obviously, “Fargo” was in its fifth season and “The Morning Show” was in its third. Everybody kind of knows what they’re doing by now and getting to work with some of the best of the best, both in front of and behind the camera on both of those gigs, was great. That part made it very easy. Obviously, they’re very different characters and different head spaces and being home in LA and shooting is very different from being in an Airbnb up in Calgary and then driving an hour each way to get to set in the very, very cold Alberta winters. That part of it was very different, but it’s also the fun part of it.
With “Fargo,” you’d worked with Noah Hawley before, but what made you want to join the Coen brothers’ storytelling universe?
The short answer is that I’d always been a fan. I can remember back to seeing “Raising Arizona” for the first time and thinking, “Who are these guys?” And of course, this is in the eighties, the days where you had to really seek out those movies and if you missed them in the theater, you had to wait a significant amount of time for it to come out on home video. I think I had seen “Raising Arizona” before “Blood Simple” and then had to go back and catch the rest of their filmography. So then when “Fargo “came out, it was a real revelation — that kind of melding of both sides of their amazing storytelling tonal palette. It’s so deeply dark and serious and yet, it’s also so weird and absurd and whimsical and funny in the same way. And what Noah has done since the first season of the show has really captured that unique Coen brothers’ tone. That part of it is just tremendous and a pretty fertile ground to be able to play in.
Noah mirrors the Coens’ knack for introducing characters so well. What can you tell me about Roy’s big hot tub speech from Episode 1? When was that shot in relation to your other scenes?
That was shot pretty early on because we had to get it before it turned really cold. We shot that, I think, in October, so fairly early in the scheme of things. And it was early in the establishment of Roy too. We hadn’t really seen him do a lot of the things that we were going to see. So again, it was this kind of balance of a sinister threat with a very strange and whimsical — whimsical is maybe the wrong word — but just a very bizarre circumstance. And then of course, we see that he’s got a little hedonistic streak as well with his piercings. So there’s a lot going on in that scene in both text and subtext.
“Does my discussing matters of state in moist repose bother you?” is one of the funniest lines in all five seasons of “Fargo.” How did you and Noah strike the right comedic tone for Roy? Did you talk about the delivery on lines like that or was it a natural extension of the character you’d created?
It’s a little bit of both. Noah’s obviously got an amazing ear for florid dialogue that’s been established over the course of the show. I think somebody’s done a super cut of all the amazing lines from the first five seasons of the show. He’s no stranger to that sensibility, which I think comes right from the Coens. But ultimately, we didn’t really discuss it first. It just felt right. Roy considers himself an artist in some ways and he’s a preacher, so he knows the value of the spoken word and he understands how to convince people and how to set them off on their wrong foot sometimes as well. Like I said, the scene is rife with both text and subtext.
You’ve talked a fair bit about the shadow that was cast by “Mad Men” and Don Draper, mostly positively. Working with Joe Keery, did you speak at all about his experience on “Stranger Things”?
We did a little bit. We didn’t really do it on set very much. We just had a really good time working together and really exploring that dynamic that our characters had together. I did speak to him a little bit about it afterwards. We did an interview where I think I talked to him about having a career-defining role or a career-establishing role that’s really zeitgeist. He, of course, has had that with “Stranger Things,” but has also had a little bit with his music career. He’s a hit maker, so I just said to enjoy it. It is what it is. You can’t really define it while you’re in it. It only comes into focus in retrospect and that’s as it should be. You have to really go through it to really understand it. And “Stranger Things” is such a wonderful show and it’s such a particular sensibility and it has had and will continue to have, through its last season, a tremendous impact on the zeitgeist, so that’s a great place to be.
I know you’ve also got a close relationship with James Gandolfini’s son, Michael. Do you two have any plans to work together anytime soon?
No. No certain plans, although I would love to. He is beyond his years.
Tossing it to “The Morning Show,” your fellow nominee Jennifer Aniston suggested you for the part of her love interest. What was your relationship before the show and what made you say yes?
I had met Jen through mutual friends over the years, of course, and obviously knew very much of her work and honestly was a really big fan of the first season of “The Morning Show.” I just thought what an amazing choice for her and Reese Witherspoon and Steve Carell and Apple, honestly, to go and do this thing. So we had known each other socially. That was pretty much it and, when the idea came up, I just thought it really made sense — both of us in a scene, in a frame. It looked right and I thought it was something that was compelling in some way. I’m glad she thought so too.
We really had a lot of conversations about what the tone should be and how it really would play out and what it would feel like. And we really both understood, “OK, we’re both of a similar age,” now, “What does that look like?” It’s not two 25-year-olds getting together. It’s not that story. It’s something very different. It’s two very accomplished older people in a different place in their life that have certain things and are looking for certain different things. We both responded to that call.
The character of Paul Marks is a billionaire and a tech billionaire at that. Is that a tough type of character to play in the current political landscape?
It’s interesting. I think we have quite a few examples of it and it’s not that Paul is any one of those guys. He’s not Elon Musk, he’s not Jeff Bezos, he’s not Mark Zuckerberg, he’s not Peter Thiel, he’s not any one of these guys. He’s his own person. He’s different and yet maintains some sensibility and familiarity with a lot of those people we think we know. We have parasocial relationships with all of these people that we read about so much; Elon Musk being the most current because of his endeavors into the political arena and his outspokenness on X and what have you.
With Paul, it was a little bit different in his gestation and his creation because we didn’t want him to be a mustache-twirling bad guy. We wanted him to be a little more fluid in where he was on the good-guy-bad-guy spectrum. Because we wanted you to believe that maybe there was something altruistic and possible there. Because I think a lot of those guys do think that there is altruism in what they do in making their billions upon billions of dollars. Just look at Sam Bankman-Fried. I think he thought what he was doing the right thing, even though he was acting very fraudulent. So I think that there’s something there. It’s a composite character. Obviously, it’s very resonant in the 2020s because here we are and we’re dealing with a lot of fallout from the concentration of so much wealth into so few hands, and that comes to create some compelling drama.
In the vein of tech moguls, I know you and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman went to the same high school, although you were separated by several years. Have you two ever met?
We have not met. We were separated by a few decades, in fact. But it’s cool. I’m very proud of my high school that I went to. We’ve turned out quite a few movers and shakers, myself included — Ellie Kemper as well, Sam, and of course Ezekiel Elliott from the NFL. The thing I really enjoyed about going to the school I went to was that there was a pretty significant emphasis put on being creative, but you weren’t looked down upon if you tried to achieve. Achievement was very much considered a badge of honor. It wasn’t like, “Oh, you’re a nerd. You’re trying too hard.” There was no such thing as that, and that was pretty cool. I think sometimes the emphasis can be put on the wrong syllable sometimes in an educational environment.
And our school was founded on the John Dewey approach, which was that art is education and experience is education. Therefore, we had to be exposed and to experience a lot of the different things. Then, over the course of our careers after school, we would narrow in and focus on the things that we liked to do. It ended up working out very well for me and I think Sam. I hope his creation doesn’t end up ending life as we know it, but I think it won’t. We are a very resilient species. I think we will adapt to the AI revolution as much as we adapt to the revolutions of technology that have come before.
The last month or so in politics has been astounding, to say the least. Is “The Morning Show” crew just buzzing right now?
I would imagine they are. I’m not on set with them, but I would imagine they are very excited to deal with all of these tectonic-seismic shifts in the landscape. I think obviously for a show like that, it’s a pretty fertile garden to tend to, so I can only imagine that Jen and Reese and everybody else there are having a real good time trying to navigate it.
Also in current events, I know you’re a big Tom Cruise fan, especially after “Top Gun: Maverick.” Did you catch the Olympics Closing Ceremony?
I happened to catch it. I had heard that there was going to be something and I’m a sucker. I’m a little bit of a hokey Midwesterner at heart and I love the Olympics and so seeing the pullback with Cruise on the Hollywood sign and it turned into the Olympic rings was, I was like, “Yep, you got me. I’m ready to go. Let’s go.” Then cutting to Chili Peppers, Billie Eilish, Snoop Dogg, Dr. Dre — just going to town on the beach — I was like, “Can it be 2028 already? I’m stoked.” The last time the Olympics were in LA was ’84, and I remember watching them on TV. It was Carl Lewis and Mary Lou Retton and all of them, Evander Holyfield, there were so many great stories coming out of those Olympics. I just can’t wait for it to happen again.
Two rapid-fire questions to wrap up. Between Roy Tillman and Paul Marks, who would win in a fight?
Oh, I think Roy would. That wouldn’t be fair. He would probably play dirty, but he would most likely win.
In 2015, you opted to sort of half-vault over the Emmys stage to accept Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series for “Mad Men.” If you win this time, will you take the stairs?
I make no promises. It all really depends on where you’re seated. I was very pleased that when I did win that it was Tina Fey that was handing it to me. She’s a dear friend.And I thought it appropriate to take the most direct line and crawl onto the stage, which I’m glad was received in the humorous mode that it was intended. Yeah, I don’t know. We’ll see. I don’t take anything for granted in this business for sure, but it was an attempt at humor that I’m glad landed.
You got a standing ovation.
Well, that was nice too.