Interview

Jack Nicholson: Why did you want me to do this interview?

January Jones: Because after you called me to say that you appreciated my work in the first season of Mad Men, you said that I shouldn’t do too many interviews because the show is going to get bigger. So I thought it was ironic that you agreed to do this one.

Nicholson: You said on the phone that you wanted me to do it because you thought I would be curious about the same thing as the average person—and that I wouldn’t ask you who you were dating.

Jones: Yeah.

Nicholson: But that’s what people want to know.

Jones: I guess.

Nicholson: So is your name January because you were born then?

Jones: It’s a coincidence. It’s from a book called Once is Not Enough by Jacqueline Susann. Bad book.

Nicholson: Who read it?

Jones: My mom, but they made the book into a TV movie and my dad watched it with her. My dad liked how January went with Jones. My sisters’ names are Jina and Jacey Jones.

Nicholson: It’s great to have a name that you didn’t have to change when you became an actor.

Jones: People think that I changed my name. I could’ve been an actress, a superhero, or a stripper.

Nicholson: Sounds like a singer at the Interlude. A jazz singer.

Jones: There was an old singer named January Jones. Richard Curtis [who directed Jones in the film The Boat That Rocked, out this month] sent me a picture from London. It was on a marquee from an old theater. It was a second billing, but it said, Singing tonight: January Jones. The picture was from the ’40s or ’50s, so maybe she was a jazz singer.

Nicholson: Okay, so let’s get down to it. Why are you doing this?

Jones: The interview or the job?

Nicholson: The interview.

Jones: Because I play this passive character on Mad Men. She’s very 1960s–ish and Grace Kelly–ish.

Nicholson: She’s more than Grace Kelly-ish. This is a turn on the classic Grace Kelly character. Call her a “Hitchcock blonde”—although this particular blonde that you play is slightly cracked.

Jones: She is cracked, which is why I love her.