When Jon Hamm first started hearing the chatter around Mad Men, he noticed a surprising political parallel. The first season of his show was set in 1960, with an episode centered on the infamous Nixon vs Kennedy presidential debate. Around the same time it aired, Barack Obama was soaring as a candidate for president. “The new, sexy Democrat challenging the old guard Republican in McCain—it was very much a, ‘Huh, this seems very resonant for some odd reason,’” Hamm says on this week’s Little Gold Men (listen or read on below). “It struck people as, ‘This is happening right in front of our eyes—in fiction and in reality.’”
Some 15-odd years later, Hamm is picking up on similar overlap in another election cycle. He’s nominated for two Emmys this year, for both his role as the lead antagonist in the fifth season of Fargo and his mysterious supporting part in The Morning Show. In the former, Hamm plays Roy Tillman, an abusive constitutional sheriff running a North Dakota county by his own rules; the show’s creator, Noah Hawley, has been forthright about Donald Trump inspiring the character. In the latter, he stars as oddball tech billionaire Paul Marks, who takes a seemingly nefarious interest in buying a major news network; the basis for that character, Hamm explains, could cover a range of eccentric contemporary figures.
Hamm’s work in both shows is chilling if also discomfitingly humane, darkly nuanced characterizations that speak starkly to today’s political culture. It’s the first time Hamm has been Emmy-nominated since his Mad Men run ended—that year, he was also nominated for his hysterical guest appearance on Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt—but he’s nevertheless kept busy. Over our wide-ranging conversation, the TV veteran gives his frank assessment of the state of the medium, and of highs and lows that have gotten him to where he is today.
Vanity Fair: These two shows have landed in an interesting moment. In Fargo, you’re playing this Trumpian figure, and in The Morning Show, an Elon Musk-esque tech bro. And we are in an election year where both of those inspirations are quite relevant.
Jon Hamm: Certainly prescient, right? I think sometimes those things happen. Obviously Trump’s been on our radar for some time. And it’s not just Elon Musk, it’s fill in the blank—Zuckerberg, or Bezos, or whichever one of those guys you want to slot into the space. What we did very well was try not to present them in a cartoony way and try not to present them in a tremendously judgmental way. I remember Noah saying, “If I do this right, if I get this balance right, there’s going to be a significant portion of the audience that’s really going to agree with Roy.” And you have to go, “Okay, well, then I can’t play this guy as just a buffoon.”
Fargo presents an elevated reality, to say the least, in the florid language and in the dark humor, and that’s the hallmark of the film. So there is a fable kind of nature to it. But you can’t lean over the edge on that and turn it into a parody, otherwise it doesn’t land. There has to be a sense of reality to it. That was the line that I think we really successfully walked, especially with Roy. There was something reminiscent of a certain orange person in our lives, and that was on purpose, clearly. But we didn’t want that to be overly reminiscent. The parallels are there and we just wanted to ride that story out as long as we could. He does end up in jail, by the way.
Just throwing that out there.
He ends up orange in a different way.
Courtesy of Michelle Faye/FX.