Christina Hendricks Is Grateful That Mad Men Role Influenced Her Career

Christina Hendricks is grateful for her time on Mad Men because of how her career has prospered since the show came to an end.

During an interview with Us Weekly about Good American Family, Hendricks, 49, explained how she has chosen new projects in the decade since playing Joan Holloway: “It’s tricky. It was such an extraordinary show and it opened up a lot of opportunities for me. So I get to be a little pickier than I was before — or a lot pickier than I was before — which is a gift as an actor.”

Hendricks noted that “each project is tricky” for different reasons.

“I did a few TV shows and then I chose Good Girls, which I think was a wonderful move. It was so strategically different from Mad Men, and they had so much comedy that opened up a whole world of other kinds of roles that people saw me in,” she recalled. “All of a sudden I was getting all these comedy scripts, which I love doing.”

The actress has since kept the “long term” in mind, adding, “You’ve got to think, ‘How can I contribute to this? Is this a world I want to be in for possibly 10 years like I was on Mad Men? Or is this something that is a limited time where you’re going to come and you’re going to go and you just sink your teeth into it?’”

Hendricks’ role on Mad Men, which ran from 2007 to 2015, earned her six Emmy Award nominations and multiple Screen Actors Guild Awards. From there, Hendricks moved on to crime dramedy Good Girls, historical drama The Buccaneers, quirky Irish comedy Small Town, Big Story and now true crime-inspired drama Good American Family.

“You make different decisions depending on how long you think you might be involved in it. But for me it’s always just about the storytelling,” she explained. “It is all about if I think I can bring something to a project that would be interesting and unique. And sometimes I’ll read something that’s being offered to me and I go, ‘I wouldn’t cast me in this. Thank you, but I don’t see it.’”

Hendricks continued: “I know pretty immediately if I start to imagine myself in the role as I start reading the lines. All of a sudden if in my mind I’m in the scene then I know it’s something that I should be considering further.”

That instinct is what inspired Hendricks to join Good American Family as Cynthia Mans.

“I got cast 30 hours before I was on set. So I had to work very, very quickly,” Hendricks recalled to Us. “I had an opportunity to read the scripts and I did watch Investigation Discovery’s The Curious Case of Natalia Grace series that’s out there to try and get as much information as possible. Then I worked with a dialect coach because we wanted Cynthia to stand out in a little bit of a different way from the [Barnetts]. So I did all of the big fittings and everything in 30 hours and then I was on set.”

Hendricks knew immediately that the limited series was something special, saying, “I’ve never played a character like this, and it is a very different kind of story than I played in the past. … So it was a fun year to just try on all these different people and all these different experiences. It was just a way to keep my artistic drive going, try something new and show people that I’m open to something new. That was something really lovely and unexpected.”

New episodes of Good American Family premiere Wednesdays on Hulu.