Turns out, there would be no Jon Hamm on Mad Men without The Division

By: Start TV Staff     Posted: October 2, 2018, 1:41PM

Once we got to know Jon Hamm's character on The Division, Nate Basso, we immediately saw similarities between him and Don Draper. Well, it turns out that in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Hamm took a moment to connect these two very different shows from his catalog, and it explains a lot about the different approach the actor took to get his start.

Apart from a recurring role on the NBC series Providence, The Division was Hamm's first experience working with a network as a series regular. Airing on Lifetime, he took the role, saying in that characteristically abrupt but charming way of his, "Work is work." It seems he took that same exact mentality when he accepted to role of Don Draper with AMC. He said in the interview of the risk of signing up with AMC, "They didn't do programming; they just showed old movies. But the last show that I was on with any regularity was on Lifetime, so it wasn't like I had some network bias."

And so it was that Hamm's willingness to work on innovative series for less conventional TV networks - a risk for any actor, but also a potential boon for any actor starting out - led him to become one of today's biggest names in television, and movies too! Most recently it was announced Hamm would star in the Top Gun reboot due out in 2020. Work is work, right?

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