Long before his days as Don Draper, John Hamm had a very different—and X rated—job.
In an interview with Esquire, the Mad Men actor revealed he worked as a set dresser on soft-core pornography films when he was 25-years-old.
“I’d lost my catering gig,” he told the publication. “I was like, ‘I need a job.’ My friend said, ‘You can have my job. I’m doing set dressing.’ I said, ‘I don’t know how to do that.’ She says, ‘It’s not that hard. They’ll hire anybody. … It’s just soul-crushing for me. I can’t do it.’
“I said, ‘Soul-crushing: That sounds amazing. I’ll do it.’”
Hamm asked for more details about the job and got a very surprising answer from his friend.
“And she’s like, ‘It’s for these Skinemax soft-core titty movies.’ I asked, ‘What do you do?’ She hands me this bucket with all of her tools in it and says, ‘You just move shit around. Do whatever they want you to do,’” he recounted.
“I went in the following Monday and said, ‘I’m the new set dresser.’ Literally, no one blinked.”
Before eventually landing the role of advertising genius Don Draper in 2007, Hamm made a series of appearances on shows including Gilmore Girls (yes, really), Ally McBeal, Charmed and CSI: Miami.
In the Esquire interview, Hamm also addressed reports he was involved in a violent college fraternity hazing incident at the University of Texas in 1990. Assault charges were filed against the actor and fellow fraternity members, but then dropped.
“I wouldn’t say it’s accurate,” Hamm said of the reports. “Everything about that is sensationalized. I was accused of these things I don’t. … It’s so hard to get into it. I don’t want to give it any more breath.”
He added: “It was a bummer of a thing that happened. I was essentially acquitted. I wasn’t convicted of anything. I was caught up in a big situation, a stupid kid in a stupid situation, and it’s a f–king bummer. I moved on from it.”
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