January Jones played the forever-troubled Betty Draper in AMC’s Mad Men. Initially paired up with Jon Hamm’s Don Draper, Jones’ character has an incredible arc as the seasons progress and for her performance, she received a Primetime Emmy and two Golden Globe Award nominations.
One of the most interesting arcs for Betty Draper is her weight condition in season five. While the makers had already wanted to explore that storyline, January Jones’ pregnancy at the time reportedly gave them the perfect opportunity to explore it. However, Jones reportedly had to undergo severe preparation to perform that season.
January Jones reveals the strenuous filming of Mad Men when she was pregnant
January Jones is not the first person in a TV show to have been pregnant during the shooting schedule. Modern Family’s Julie Bower was reportedly pregnant even while shooting the pilot of the series. However, instead of writing it in or hiding the pregnancy, the makers did something else.
As Jones said, she was ‘very pregnant’ when Mad Men season 5 was being planned. Hence, when she informed the showrunner, Matthew Weiner about her situation, instead of going the usual route of hiding the pregnancy or making the character pregnant, the show decided to give Betty Draper a weight condition and explored how she navigated it.
While it gave an incredibly compelling storyline for the series, it was reportedly tiring for the actress as she initially hid her pregnancy with prosthetics and a fat suit, and then continued wearing it after her child was born to continue the storyline. She told Collider,
It was very challenging. It was extremely challenging just physically and time-wise because I had 6 or 7 hours of prosthetics, so I’d have to arrive at work at 3 in the morning and then an hour to take it off at the end of the day. And I was nursing a baby. It was just very physically challenging and it was also physically limiting in what I could do on screen.
She mentioned that the whole process was a nightmare for the crew as it limited a lot of their movements. However, she said that she learned a lot about how to navigate complex emotions without much movement.
Betty Draper’s weight storyline may have been difficult to film but it added value to the character
January Jones’ Betty Draper spent most of Mad Men season five worried about her increased weight. After dispelling some health scares, her complex relationship with her children after the divorce from Don Draper and her fractured relationship with her husband Henry makes her develop unhealthy eating habits.
While the storyline only came about due to January Jones’ real-life pregnancy and the process of filming with prosthetics was a pain, Jones mentioned that it made the character all the more relatable and gave Betty a favorable arc that season. She said,
It was challenging and still is. But I loved how I felt in it, too, because I just felt that it meant so much to Betty and made her a bit more sympathetic. People empathize with her a bit more, I think.
Betty Draper is one of the most incredible characters in Mad Men, a show that has no dearth of amazing supporting characters led by the great Don Draper. Jones received two Golden Globe nominations and one Primetime Emmy nomination for her performance in the series.
Mad Men is available to stream on AMC+.
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