MAD MEN Draper Almost a Jane?

After being on the air for four seasons (and a fifth to start this winter!), it’s hard to imagine anyone else other than Jon Hamm as Mad Men’s Don Draper. He fits the role to a tee, but did you know Hamm was at the bottom of the list of actors to play the now iconic Draper? Any ideas who was at the top? Believe it or not, Hung actor Thomas Jane was this close to being the face and star of AMC’s Mad Men.

Hamm was a guest on the WTF with Marc Maron Podcast where he spoke for the first time about the possibility of Jane playing Don Draper. “I started, literally, on the very, very bottom — I couldn’t have had less heat on me,” said Hamm, who was a pretty big nobody at the end the time Mad Men was casting. “Nobody knew who I was. The casting directors didn’t know who I was. I wasn’t on anybody’s lists. … The funny thing was, I think they went to Thomas Jane for it, and they were told that Thomas Jane does not do television. Now starring in Hung, by the way.”

Yes, it is quite ironic Jane would turn down a television role to go and do television. But if that is the reason he didn’t take the part, you could say HBO doesn’t count as TV. I mean it does, but you could make the flimsy argument.

Now Jane plays a divorced high school teacher working as a male prostitute to earn a living. Hung has a good niche audience, which just might be exactly what Jane wants.