Happy Sad Confused - Jon Hamm, Vol. II

Episode Date: April 6, 2026

Jon Hamm cemented his iconic status with Don Draper and MAD MEN but what drew him back to leading a series after all these years? Jon joins Josh to chat about YOUR FRIENDS & NEIGHBORS, the legacy of MAD MEN, the power of Tom Cruise in TOP GUN MAVERICK, and the superhero role he was a little early on. SUPPORT THE SHOW BY SUPPORTING OUR SPONSORS! Quince -- Go to ⁠Quince.com/HAPPYSAD ⁠for free shipping and 365-day returns. Rula -- Rula patients typically pay $15 per session when using insurance. Connect with quality therapists and mental health experts who specialize in you at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.rula.com/happy⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ #rulapod #sponsored Limited Time Offer–Get Huel today with my exclusive offer of 15% OFF online with my code happy15 at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://huel.com/happy15.⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ New Customers Only. Thank you to Huel for partnering and supporting our show! UPCOMING EVENTS! 4/9 -- Daniel Radcliffe in NY -- Tickets here 4/10 -- Matt Bomer in Miami -- Tickets here 4/16 -- BEEF (Oscar Isaac, Carey Mulligan, Charles Melton) in NY -- Tickets here 5/5 -- Stanley Tucci in NY -- Tickets here Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

My pitch for the Superman thing was like, what if Superman was funny like he used to be with Christopher Reeve? And they were like, great idea. We're going to do that two more Superman's later. But no, so I didn't. Prepare your ears, humans. Happy, sad, confused begins now. Hey, guys, it's Josh. Welcome to another edition of Happy, Say it Confused.

Today on the show, John Hamm, from Mad Men to your friends and neighbors and so much more. Hey guys, thanks as always for joining us on the podcast, enjoying us on YouTube, on Spotify, however you're enjoying it. I appreciate you guys. Thanks as always for tuning in. This is a really fun one. This is another live event we taped at 9 Second Street Wide the other day with the dashing, the funny, the charming, the one and only John Hamm. He is the main event today. A great conversation about his show entering at second season, your friends and neighbors. But this is a career chat. You're going to enjoy this one. really fun stuff ahead. Before we get to John Hamm, though, a lot to mention. First of all, I don't even know where to begin. We have so many live events all of a sudden that have stacked up that I want to mention that I haven't been mentioning lately. So if you're in New York, if you happen to be in Miami, we've got some stuff for you. So let me run through a bunch of things. And as always remember, patreon.com slash happy, say I'm confused, is where you get all the early announcements on our live events. You get discount codes. You also get early access to all of

our podcasts, bonus materials, merch, autographed posters, all sorts of cool stuff, Patreon.com slash happy, sad, confused. Okay, off top of my head, let me see if I can get this all right. Live events coming up. This Thursday, April 9th, I am sitting down at the 9th Second Street Y with Daniel Radcliffe for the podcast, live taping of Happy Say I Confused with Daniel Radcliffe talking about his new one-man play on Broadway. It's called Every Brilliant Thing, but we're going to talk about so much more. Tickets are still available for that one. Check it out. I also will be in Miami the next day. So if you happen to be a listener to Happy Sank confused and have never gotten a chance to see me in person and you're in Miami in the area, come on out. April 10th, it's me and Matt

Boomer. Matt Boomer, fantastic, fellow travelers, white collar, so much more career conversation with Matt on April 10th in Miami. Then what else? Let's see. Oh, Very soon. This one was just announced. Beef. You guys remember the show Beef, the Netflix series? It is back for a second season, an all-new cast. I've been watching this. It is fantastic. Get a little to this. April 16th at the 9th 2nd Street, Why.

We're screening, I believe, two episodes of the new season, and I'll be chatting, among others, with Oscar Isaac and Carrie Mulligan and Charles Melton. Yes, cast members. We're also having folks behind the scenes, the director. Jake Shreyer, who's going to be directing, I think, the new X-Men movie. Yeah, he did Thunderbolts. So, yeah, cool stuff. A really cool panel. April 16th, and I love this show, the new season of beef. Then, May 5th, the one and only Stanley Tucci talking about his amazing Italy show, but also, of course, Devil Wars Prada. May 5th, 92nd Street, Y. Tickets are nearly sold out for that one already. Big fan base for Tucci.

I don't blame you guys. but get your tickets now. There are a few still available. I'll put all the links in the show notes. And there's at least one other Marvel-related event that I think is about to be announced. So something for everybody and more. Always more. So, okay, let's talk about the main event today, though. John Hamm. John Hamm. It has been a while since he's been on the podcast, I think, like 2019 or so. Great catch-up with John here. His new show, not so new, but. but I guess it's relatively new. Its second season has just debuted on Apple TV.

It is your friends and neighbors. John leads this great ensemble, including Amanda Pete, now James Marsden. This is a disgraced hedge fund trader who dealt with a lot in the first season, who has resorted to stealing from his friends and neighbors to kind of keep up with the Joneses. It's funny, it's dramatic, it's quirky,

highly recommended Apple TV, your friends and neighbors. But this conversation not only covers that one, but everything. Obviously, he made it big in Mad Men about 20 years ago. And we cover that. Top Gun. His Superman audition way back when. Great chat. Funny guy. Smart guy. His 30 rock stuff. Come on. John Hamm can do it all, including give a great conversation in this. So without any further ado, here is me and John Hamm live at the 92nd Street Y. Enjoy. Hi, everybody. How's it going? Welcome. Thank you so much for being here. My name's Josh Horowitz. I host a podcast called Happy Say I Confused. You're inside of it.

Did you know that? You're in a podcast right now. Thank you for being here. I'm so thrilled to be with you guys tonight to host this very special conversation with John Ham. Any John Hamm fans out there? Yes? Okay. That's about 700 of you, I'm going to guess. It's been about 20 years, nearly 20 years, if you can imagine, that Don Draper dropped into our lives. John Hamm dropped into our lives. And ever since then, I mean, the film work, we could talk about the town, Top Gun Maverick, of course. The television work from 30 Rock to Fargo to his new show, entering its second season, Your Friends and Neighbors.

This guy has quite the resume. We're going to celebrate the new season of Your Friends and Neighbors. It's dropping on Apple TV, April 3rd. please make him feel welcome. It's the one and only. John Hamm, everybody. Come on out. Thank you, New York City.

Nice place you got here. Well, well, well. A couple of J-Hs. Go on. Congratulations, John. Welcome back to the 92-Y. Thank you very much. Thank you.

It's great to be here. I was thinking back on my time here on this stage, and I think I've done every version of this thing. I've been in your seat. I've done a couple of staged readings and now this is completing the circle of being I get to be interviewed so I'm very excited You're in the hot seat tonight.

First of all, there are going to be some audience questions later on I solicited some. This is from an Adam Scott. He wanted to know, have you ever seen the movie Master and Commander? This is a very inside joke between Adam and I which makes me laugh and no one else in this room in the best way of an inside joke. Adam and I have been asking each other

if we've seen Master and Commander since Master and Commander came out, which I don't know if you, the full title, Master and Commander, the far side of the world. The wonderful Russell Crow sailing epic. It's a great movie.

You really should see it. But yes, I have. It's really wonderful. This whole conversation is going to be about Master and Commander. Oh, good, good guy. You guys are in for a treat. Let's roll a clip.

No, okay. Congratulations on the new season of the show, John. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. It's wildly compelling in that trailer. I hope it stands up to it. It lives up to it from what I've seen.

So talk to me first about, look, you've obviously done a lot of television work since Mad Men, but correct me if I'm wrong, this is the first ongoing starring role in a series that you've taken on. So is that a big decision? Was there a resistance for a while? Tell me what brought this one to fruition

where others maybe didn't? I wouldn't say there was necessarily a resistance to, to, to, to, doing it. I certainly knew what it entailed. I knew the, um, kind of how heavy a lift it, it has the potential to be. Uh, most shows, uh, listen, don't, don't have the great fortune to be madmen and go the better part of 10 years and seven or eight seasons, however you want to describe it. Thank you. Um, so, you know, when you get into any, anything like that, you think, well, if it goes, it goes a year, I'll be happy. If it goes, if it

makes it past the pilot into episode two, I'll be happy. So to have it go for the better part of a decade and to be the cultural touchstone that it was, was tremendous. So you don't necessarily think that every time you embark on such a journey, it's going to end up like that. But, you know, hope springs eternal. So there was always the kind of thing. But the deciding factor in everything that I've really chosen is who do I want to spend the day with? Who do I want to work with?

And when I met Jonathan Trapper, the incredible writer and creator of the show, I thought, this is a guy that I could get in bed with. Which is a long list. It's not that long. So this is a guy. I really feel like we could make something better than some of it. parts. And that's what I hope that we've done and continue to do. You know, and as opposed to look, on Mad Men, your creative input grew as the show continued.

This from the start, you're a producer, you're of a certain stature now where you can have that kind of creative hand right from the start. What was important for you in kind of creating this world, fleshing out this character right from the start? Well, and I'm also, I think my experience in history in making television has, has an enabled me to be confident enough to let other people do their job. And I feel like that has certainly been the case with Jonathan in this particular thing. It certainly was with Noah, Holly on Fargo, another brilliant writer who I was here interviewing at one point. Another exciting time at the 90th century. Why?

Look it up. It was pretty fun. Is that the real John Hamm voice? Like this is the other one? It's pretty much that. Oh, boy. I got up a plane like two hours ago, guys. No, but I think that part of that, part of getting into a place in your career where you are that comfortable to just say, look, I'm not trying to do your job for you. I will, if you have anything that you need me for or anything that you want to bounce off me for, for sure.

And that's a great place to be. Matthew and I, for sure, on Madman, we would have one or two discussions at the beginning of every season. to just kind of say, where do you think Don is? Where do you think? And we would have what ended up becoming like a three and a half hour, very relatively boozy lunch on brand. It's for the show, guys. It makes sense.

It's for the show. But yeah. And so, you know, and then it's like, okay, well, go do it. And I've never considered myself much of a writer. I get confused and distracted if I have to write. anything longer than a greeting card or an email. So for me, I'm very comfortable with allowing the professionals to handle that. We'll be right back with more Happy Said Confused.

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The whole family can listen now wherever you get your podcasts. How do you look at Coop as a character? I mean, disgraced hedge fund manager is not necessarily the archetype of like a hero in any story, but you find, I mean, look, you're no stranger to playing, obviously, kind of anti-heroes, for lack of a better term. Do you view him as such? Kind of. I mean, you know, the funny thing about Koop's situation is that he is not the architect of his own demise necessarily.

You know, his divorce is not directly his fault. We can get into the weeds of how maybe he wasn't the most attentive person in a relationship, and that may have led to whatever. but the inciting incident wasn't necessarily his. And then, of course, losing his job, it turns out we find out not to spoil anything, but it's been over a year, guys, that it really was a little more of a corporate machination that was happening to him rather than something that he did,

whether wittingly or unwittingly. So there's plausible deniability for Coop being a bad guy. Now, the robbery part... I'm interested in your case for this one, yeah. It's a little more tricky to defend. But so, I mean, that is, that is, that is what makes, I think that's what makes the, that's the secret sauce that makes the drama, you know, Fizz. And it's, it's really, it's really fun to play.

And it's very, very fun to have something that is so tenuous, the sword of Damocles is, is consistently hovering and to really, to really have that as a, narrative, you know, device is great because every scene is loaded. Like, what's happening, especially as you saw when we have someone like the brilliant James Marsden come in and really disrupt everything and become this real agent of chaos. It's very, very exciting. It's also obviously a resonant show to our times. It's very much about, you know, like keeping up appearances, presenting one face to the world,

feeling like you have to kind of present something that may not be your true inner life. I mean, it seems like you're someone that hasn't, I don't know, to worry about that, to worry about image is going to drive you insane as an actor. I mean, how do you connect with the broader themes of this work you think? I think, you know, I guess that's,

I think some people do that worry about their image or present something or Primp or however you want to say it, more kind of outwardly and proactively. And some people sort of just, it happens. I don't know which one I am necessarily. I don't spend a lot of time on stuff. I've never really thought about acquiring

as a metric to kind of rate how important I feel. It doesn't necessarily, maybe that's coming from where I come from, relatively humble beginnings, and certainly hoping to be in beautiful places in New York City and have all the cool stuff, but never really making it a definition of who I was. So you never... I mean, when I moved to L.A., so here's the perfect example. When I moved to L.A., I drove a 1981 Toyota Tercell.

Jealous, just wait. It was also a five-speed, and it had vinyl interior, and windows you had to roll down, and no air conditioning. So in St. Louis, that meant that your chance of getting a third-degree burn on the top of your thigh was 80 to 90% every summer. But I filled it up with the stuff that I had and anything that didn't fit in this two-door hatchback didn't make the trip. So that's all I really needed. That was kind of what it was. I had spent the previous two years kind of living in friends' basements and other places.

So stuff just never really was that tremendously important in my life. Sure, there was certain sentimental things that made the trip, of course, but if it didn't fit in the 81-turcell, it didn't make it out there. So there wasn't like a big splurge early on. You land a commercial, you land a guest spot, and you just... No, in fact, the first... God, what was the first time... The first time I did a movie called We Were Soldiers, which is based on a book called... We Were Soldiers Once and Young, which sounds like a weird law firm.

The law firm of We Were Soldiers Once and Young. Thank you. It took me 30 years to come up to that job. It would have been so good on the press tour back then. Starring Mel Gibson and Sam Elliott and Greg Kinnear and a cast of all these young, and I was one of the young soldiers in it. I turned 30 on that movie, and I was able to, to pay my bills after that movie, pay off my student loans,

pay off my six to eight months of back rent. Thank you, Marilyn and Alex, for never kicking me out of my house in Los Angeles. But yeah, that was kind of the first time I was able to pay off stuff and become solvent as a person and not in crippling debt. And again, I went to a state school, so my student loans were like 3,000.

But I didn't have enough money to pay them off and and therefore I didn't answer the phone a lot We've all been there Especially in a pre-caller ID moment I don't know who? Sorry, sorry So yeah, I I that was We are all stuck at whoever we were at 15 or 16 something like that right? I think something like that But it but it's um this is way better I'll say that so you're saying better

definitively you're saying this yeah yeah yeah I prefer this I remember when we were trying to get James to do this now James Marsden is having a moment to say the least I mean between jury duty and paradise and of course saving the world against Dr. Doom

Cyclops we were like he's not gonna he can't be in two places at once I don't care how awesome a superhero is he can't be in two places at once but we he he chose to to to make it happen. And I was like, here's, well, here's the only selling point. You will never look better than in this show. You are going to have awesome clothes. And he did. And he does. Did this, did this come through your connection through your fantasy football league? Yes,

basically. I am in a fantasy football league with most of the Marvel universe. Oh, you're in that week. Yeah, I've heard of this. So I'm the only non-Avanger. I'm one of the only people that doesn't wear a cape. But yeah, that was how. And I had known James for a long time. It's, you just, if you're hanging around in Hollywood for long enough, you tend to meet pretty much everybody at some point. So it was, it was, I was, we were thrilled to get him.

Obviously, he's such value added and he just knocks it out of the park this whole season. Can I do my obligatory superhero digression because I'm such a nerd? We talked in the past, you told me once, you auditioned for Superman a thousand years ago. I did. That was like, when you were 30. you said, I think, about... I was too old. 30.

Come on. Nice try. That was, I believe it was the, was it the Brandon Routh one? Yeah, I think that makes sense. It is shocking to me that, like, because there was talk that we were going to be, I'm sorry, guys, I'm going to get geeky.

Buckle up. Mr. Sinister and that new mutants. Yeah, yeah, that was supposed to happen and didn't. I think there was some corporate craziness that went, and they sold the studio and Disney bought the studio. It was a lot of stuff. I kind of dodged the bullet on that one. That was okay.

movie didn't turn out with all the respect. Well, listen, I mean, you know, I don't pick them. It's, no, it's, uh, my pitch that for the Superman thing was like, what if Superman was funny like he used to be with Christopher Reeve? And they were like, great idea. We're going to do that two more Superman's later. Um, but, uh, no, uh, so I didn't. There enough.

Okay, so back to this. So you, you, uh, did you come out of the womb with this voice? Cause that voiceover, you give good voiceover, John Henn. Thank you. Thank you. Mercedes-Benz, the best. Or nothing. turns out nothing because they went with Lucy Lou recently, but that's okay.

Did you have that kind of Will Arnett early career? Was Vio like something that helped you? You know what was funny? It's funny you mentioned this because one of my dear friends whose name is Tall John, because he's very tall. Six-10, it's real. And he's a hilarious comedy writer. He writes for Bob's Burgers, one of my oldest friends in Los Angeles. he used to write the interstitial, what do you call them, bumpers, I guess, for the WB. When Michigan J. Frog was doing his thing, he would write, coming up next on the WB. And he was like, you want to do these?

I was like, does it pay any money? And he goes, yeah, I go, then yeah. And so I came in and I did my, you know, coming up on a very special Dawson's Creek. They were like, no, it's really not working for us. And I was like, I didn't get that either. Where are they now? Where's the frog now? Exactly.

So, Did. Coup had an eventful first season to say the least. Yeah. What's in store for him this season? What can we do? Well, what I love about this season is that there's no time jump. We pick up where it left off.

And where it left off was there was a lot. lot of fallout essentially from the first season, not only in Coop's life, but kind of in the neighborhood. There was a fairly significant murder slash suicide scandal. And Sam is played by Olivia Munn, and this is still in the neighborhood. There's a lot of people who are, by perfectly normally, a little distrustful of her, given that she tried to essentially frame one of one of their friends and neighbors for murder. So there's a lot of unease, we'll say, in the friend group. And there is still this nagging mystery as to what keeps happening to people's luxury goods. If only we knew the answer.

If only someone put their finger on it. So there's a lot happening. And then into all of this, as we just saw, drops a very well-heeled agent of chaos in the shape, the very appealing shape, of James Marsden. And he's so, I just, I can't stop talking about his performance in this because it's so perfect.

He is this perfect addition to this group. He's this Gatsby-esque outsider who has it seemingly all buttoned up and looks amazing. And of course, like quite a few of the people in this neighborhood, but if you scratch the surface a little bit, it starts to get very weird indeed.

So that's kind of what ends up being the prime mover of the second season. And I can't remember how much you've said you've seen. It's the first two. Okay, so you're in for a treat then, as are all of you. The good news is... I hope you like treats. There are a lot of treats to come because you're doing the season three, too. It's already been announced.

Yes, yes, we got... Thank you. Thank you. Keep applauding. and Apple might pick us up for season four by the time we're done with this. No, Apple has been truly amazing and

really supported the show. We were picked up for a second season before we even aired a first season. The first season aired, and we broke all the records for viewership and numbers and subscriptions and all the things that they measure these things by, which was a tremendous feather in our cap.

We were kind of paired with this studio, which had such an amazing first season as well. So it's been a nice comfy ride with this fledgling, I suppose you could say still at this point, streaming platform but they've been tremendously supportive and yeah, it's nice to be able to

get ready to do another season. There's nothing better as an actor than being on vacation but knowing you have work. And that was, That's been great. Yeah, no matter what level you've accomplished in the industry. No, it really is. It never gets old.

You're like, oh, man, this vacation is so much better because I know I'm going back to work. Yeah. I felt that way when I was a teacher, though. So that was pretty cool, too. So speaking of fledgling platforms, that segues back to Reminis for a second. As I said, it's been nearly 20 years since Mad Men came on the air. Another fledgling platform. That's what I'm saying.

I mean, when you think back to the early days, as I recall, you'll remember better than me, but it was pretty much an immediate critical and ratings hit, which is kind of unprecedented, given the platform you were on, the subject matter, all of it. Do you remember the early days of just a reception being shocking?

I remember trying to tell people that was on AMC, not A&E. Right. That was an early, tricky thing for people to... So A&E, tell me about that. It sounds great. We're not on it, but I...

But two things about the sort of relatively slow growth of Mad Men was that, yes, as soon as the world at large saw it, people were very excited about it and especially excited to talk about it and really kind of, it was right at the beginning of sort of blog culture as well. So that was the thing that people would get online and recap it and talk about it and get in the comments and hash it out with all of their theories and whatnot. But the real problem was it was a relatively expensive show. And it was still a show about advertising, which you just, the rules were that if it wasn't a show about doctors or lawyers or cops, then it's not a TV show and it doesn't happen.

Because there's no stakes. And we've evolved as TV consumers past that at this point. We have shows that are about stealing things in wealthy bedroom communities now. But that was kind of, people still were having a hard time with that. And so, yes, it got, we got picked up kind of season by season until the fourth season. And we won the Emmy for Best Drama every, for the first four years in a row. Thanks. Thank you. But yeah, so finally that's when we got picked up for the rest, the final three seasons. And they said, okay, you guys have proven it.

Thanks. And for you personally, you know, we've talked about this before, I mean, you were a jobbing actor. You weren't, like, out of nowhere. Like, you'd been working for it. Where my division fans at. Oh, my God. Exactly. But where was your head at?

And, like, in terms of where your career was right before it and reconciling the fame and accomplishment that came. Right before it, I had just been fired off of a pilot of a show that when I did it was called Sister. and then it was eventually when it went to series without me was called Related. It went for, I think, a season, maybe a season and a half, two seasons, something like that, which I was devastated about. But I was fired from that pilot. And that put me back into the swirl of what used to be called pilot season, where you would audition for all of these shows and hope to get one, that then you would hope would go to series, that then you would hope to,

it would be, you know, multiple years. So I had auditioned for six pilots this pilot season and got all the way to the end of every one of them and did not get cast. So Mad Men was the seventh pilot that was for a network that no one had heard of, and people kept calling it the wrong network. and I was at the very bottom of everybody's list

because it was casting out of New York and I didn't know the casting directors. In fact, when I drove across Los Angeles in the rain on a Friday, those of you who've spent time in Los Angeles know that that's a very dangerous and long journey. And I ended up at the place where the audition was being held,

a place called Radical Media, which was a commercial house. They did commercials. And I came in and it was raining and I was wet and I was pissed and I was sitting in traffic for an hour and a half and I was just like, fuck. And there's a kid in there waiting and he's like, are you here for the toothpaste commercial? And I was like, what? No. What the fuck? No. Wait, what toothpaste commercial? I'd be perfect for that.

I was the only person there because I was at, like I said, at the very bottom of the list. And slowly over the course of the next two months, I started climbing my way up the ladder, which is fun and nice that you keep getting asked back, but also at every stage, if you do it, you could have done it 18 times great in a row, and if you do it once bad, you're out. And I was terrified that that was going to happen because that was what had happened the last six pilot auditions that I had gone through. Fortunately, it didn't happen that way.

I was able to at least put the bat on the ball in each of those auditions. And here we are. Clearly. Amazing. Amazing. Thank you. More happy, say, confused coming up. This episode is brought to you by FedEx. These days, the power move isn't having. having a big metallic credit card to drop on the check at a corporate launch.

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What's that like for you as an actor to see that live on? I mean, it's, it's been a minute since I've seen that actual scene, not seen the scene, it clipped out. But yeah, I mean, when you're, there's a million of those throughout the course of the show. Just the level of writing that Matthew and his staff were able to consistently produce was just unprecedented and impressive. I just, it was great to come to work every day and have. scenes like that loaded up. That particular episode too, just top to bottom, was a pretty

high watermark. And I think if you actually go through the thing, it's literally right in the middle of the show. Like there's leading up to that and then there's leading away from that. And it's, I don't know if that happened on purpose. I don't think it could have, but it was pretty, it was pretty cool that that's how that worked. As much pride as you must taken dramatic work. I mean, I remember distinctly when 30 Rock happened and I saw you in that show and like how unbelievable you were in that show. And the comedy career you have since charted, whether it's bridesmaids, being a staple of S&L, et cetera, is pretty remarkable. How much pride do you take? Because you love comedy. You were part. You went, you were, you knew, you had friends in the

comedy scene in L.A. early on. Still do. So being a part of you. part of that, just having that part of your career must be so thrilling. Yeah, it was great. I mean, the the reason I got, and so the pilot of Mad Men and the pilot of 30 Rock shot in the same studio. They shot at Silver Cup. 30 Rock made it on the air before we did by a year because they had a giant network behind them and we had A&E, AMC.

So it was very, we had kind of parallel lives as as drama and comedy and so a couple years into both of our runs I had I had started I had gotten the offer to host Saturday Night Live and we finished the read-through of all of the sketches my first time I'm freaking out I'm nervous I'm sweating we had 45 sketches that we read for like four and a half hours up on 17 it's this bananas caldron that you're pitched into that you have no concept of what it is and people are running to you and go can you do this kind of but that's sort of Jamaican but not offensively and also can you sing and do you know that and you're like yeah sure yeah yes okay right which one right

okay and they're holding a stack of scripts that are like this 40 sketches and you're sitting directly next to Lorne and in my case I think it was Kristen Wigg was next my other side of me and there's 75 people in the room including the cast and you read all of these things out loud in front of each other. No pressure. So after that happens, the powers that be go and sort of just determine what they can and can't do and should and shouldn't do and by the beginning, the end of that evening you have the rudiments of what the show will look like. And they say to the host, go down and do some fittings and wigs and all the stuff that you have to do and come back up in 25 minutes and we'll talk

about what the show is going to look like. So down you go, down to eight and you get your wig cap on and you get all fit in your little dressing room and the phone rings and the phone rings I'm like I don't have a phone how do you mean the phone rings it's just a ringing phone in this dressing room in 30 Rock you're like this has to be a mistake so I pick it up and it's hey is this John yes you called me hi this Robert Carlock I'm a executive producer of 30 Rock we were bumping this idea around do you want to come join us it's a we have this idea for this guy is going to be Liz's love interest to start in a couple weeks.

Do you want to do it? Hi. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I do. Okay, great. Well, we'll work it out and we'll see you in a couple weeks and thanks and it's really great. I'm like, okay, click. Anyway, back to the wigs and did that just happen or did I dream that?

What was happening? And what had happened behind the scenes, of course, I find this out many moons later, was that Tina called Lorne after read-through and said, is that guy funny? and Lauren said in his typical Canadian understatement you yeah he'll do and that that got me on to 30 Rock now when I started 30 Rock I was a practicing physician with a daughter when I ended 30 Rock I was a buffoon

who had lost both hands and had them replaced by comical pirate hooks because I was in in a medicine San Fronter flight in Africa helicopter and I thought I saw my old football coach so I waved when you say it like that

it sounds weird it sounds it does feel like you've achieved like the sweet spot of being able to go back and forth because I remember the last time you were on the podcast you were saying like even like your agents at the time were like you're doing a lot of comedy John but like you found like you know in recent years you get to do something

like Fletch and you also get to do Top Gun Maverick and that's like a really rare. It's a nice thing to have, the way I describe it or I have described it in pass is having credibility kind of on both sides of the aisle. So you're not forced to only play one note. And that's great. I mean, the whole point of getting into this business is not to do the same thing over and over and over again. There's plenty of factory jobs you could do if you wanted to do that.

but I've just been tremendously fortunate I've been able to put myself into those positions often against the wills of my representatives but there was also kind of I came along like I said the beginning of blog culture but also the beginning of how this whole business sort of shifted

I think when I got into this like you weren't allowed to be a guest star on other shows it wasn't like a thing that you were able to do because they wanted to kind of own you and keep you in your lane that all went out the window in the early 2000 because of, I think, the necessity of there was just so much stuff, people had to do it.

And I kept my options open, and I said yes to a lot of silly, goofy things. Everybody, please go and watch Gail Daughtry in the Celebrity Sex Pass, if you get a chance. I'm very curious about this. That's a very, in the column of silly, goofy things. Is that David Wayne? David's, David and Ken Murray. Reno's latest movie, which is a very weird take on, let's call it, the Wizard of Oz, except if Dorothy wants to fuck the Wizard of Oz at the end of the movie.

Are you playing The Wizard of Oz? Yeah. Of course you are. It's one of the funniest things I've ever seen. But, yeah, so, I mean, stuff like that. And, yeah, any agent worth their salt would be like, please don't do this. don't do this. Like, I'm going to do it.

But you also name check, like again in recent years, I would imagine working with Noah Hawley on Fargo, Roy Tillman, it's got to be a really special character, really special experience in the career. That happened because I had seen the first... Hello. Thank you. Thank you very much.

Noah Hawley, ladies and gentlemen. No, not. I had seen the first season of Fargo and I thought, like most people, I thought, this is a terrible idea. It's never going to work. And then I watched it, and I was like, this is amazing.

Who is this guy? And I met Noah, I think either that year, the year following at a holiday party, and we were just happy to be standing next to each other at the bar, and I said, hey, man, I like your work. And he said, I like your work. So we should work together sometime. Okay.

And lo and behold, we did three times. So, yeah, he said, I want you to play this guy who's, the Marlboro Man and but he's really really really really bad and I said okay I can do that

and it was fun uncold Calgary Calgary cold Worth it though worth it yeah it was some questions from the audience here in your career what's the most memorable scene you've ever shot what's the one that you're gonna be stick with you

till the end of your day well there's there's quite a few from Mad Men that I could go with but I think and it's more recent than that the one that I've really was really kind of blown away by and it's it's I didn't really have that much doing it. It's just sort of circumstantial.

I remember walking on to the set of Top Gun Maverick and there's like a four-story American flag to my left and a Tom Cruise walking toward me in full Maverick gear with a giant

smile and there's like three F-18s in the deep background and a hundred naval aviators in the foreground and he's clapping and he's got his hands out ready for a hug and he's like, I'm so glad you're here. And it took everything in me to not look behind me like, is he talking to me? And we had a conversation and I said,

this must be bizarre for you. You were here in this exact space 35 years ago playing the same character and he's like yeah it's pretty it's pretty wild ready to shoot I was like okay let's go

and we shot and I was like I was having kind of an out of body moment of like I cannot believe that I top gun to me as a 14 year old in St. Louis Missouri was more than a movie it was a religion I guess

I mean I saw it with my friends a hundred times. And again, in the age before streaming and everything immediately on demand with the press of a button, you had to go out to go see these movies. And we did. It was so defined cool for us.

And so to be a part of that and be inside of that and looking around at it and then for the movie to be so tremendous also, that one I think, I'm still kind of blown away that I was in that movie. That movie, Maverick, yeah. I mean,

Maverick is a miraculous movie. I mean, I'm not, I can't say enough about it. It is like a perfect movie of that type. It really is. It's a great film. And, yeah, I was, I was, yeah, so I know it's a weird

answer to that question, but I really do think about that a lot. Just going, and the fact that we started shooting that movie before the pandemic here. So that movie was, sitting in a room in Paramount, cooling its heels for a solid two years.

What's the word on Top Gun 3? It's a happening. I think. I mean, I'd make it. Cyclones around? I don't know. Better be. All right, we're going to end with this, John.

Okay. Happy Sack, confused, profoundly random questions for you. You ready? Yes. Dogs or cats. Dogs. No judgment on cats, except I don't. don't like cats.

I just want you to be very careful. Jesse Buckley answered this and got into a lot of trouble when she started saying she didn't like cats. There is literally a movie called Don't Fuck with Cats. If you haven't seen it, don't fuck with cats. What do you collect, John, if anything?

What do I collect? Memories. I have a pretty solid collection of baseballs. and here's the reason why. I know this is a whole rapid fire thing, but guess what? It's going to get up.

I can't answer a question other than cats or dogs shortly. Jesus. English major. When I was growing up, my best friend's dad played professional baseball, and they had this really cool house, and it had art everywhere,

and had books everywhere, and I was like, this is a cool house. One of their rooms, they had a piano. I don't think anybody in the family played piano. But they had a piano, which was also very cool.

On top of that piano, they had this low, large basket that was filled with baseballs. Not just normal baseballs. These were baseballs that had been used in Major League Baseball games. They had things like Ted's first hit, Ted's 100th hit, Ted's 1,000th hit. All of these things had amazing little notes on them.

And I thought, man, Man, that's really cool. So I have a collection. Now, I did not play Major League Baseball. I have never caught a ball in the stands, although I've almost caught a ball once, twice. But I get given baseballs a lot. And so this collection is burgeoning, I'll say that.

So that's the long answer to your very short question. Great answer. Do you have a favorite video game of all time? Favorite video game of all time. coin operated or console whatever you like this might be a very controversial there was a game in the 80s

called Defender Defender I did not expect that to get an applause break it's more than the division got Yeah it was better than the Divender Defender was an amazing game because it had so many buttons and things

and it was incredible difficult to play. And I was not very good at it. But I really wanted to be good at it. And it also had just a button that was kind of a panic button called hyperspace. And if you got in trouble, you just hit the button.

It was right in the middle of the thing. This was the... This was forward and backward. And then this... And shooting. And then if everything went to shit, you hit hyperspace. And there was...

I don't even know what the percentage was. When you ever you would come back from... It would take you to a different part of the thing and you would just zap over there. But, I don't know, a certain percentage of the time, you would just blow up too. So it was kind of like, it was an oh shit button and also the, well, now you're really, now you're dead. We can all use a oh shit, hyperspace button now and then.

Yeah, if you didn't have to die. Right, that's true. The Dakota Johnson Memorial question, she asked me this. I ask everybody, would you rather have a mouthful of bees or one B in your butt? Where exactly in my butt? Oh, I've never been asked that. Like between the cheeks? I can handle that all day.

Yeah. In the hole? No thank you, sir. Thank you for that. You've got to clarify, guys. I mean, I regret so much. What's the wallpaper on your phone? Oh.

You guys won't be able to see this. Well, maybe you will. It's my dog Murphy. Yes. He's getting a little scratch on his chin because he's a really good boy. Yeah. Who's the last? actor you were mistaken for?

Oh, this is a good story. John Hanna. Now, I don't know if you guys know who John Hanna is. Wonderful actor. Scotsman. Balding. Older than me. Really looks nothing remotely like me. The only thing maybe we have in common is finessellivan.

phonetically our names. He's a J-O-H-N. I'm not. He's an H-A-N-N-A-H. Palindromic, very cool. But no M's. Whatever. Hannah, Ham, close enough.

I went on an audition for something very British at one point in my career. It was before Mad Men, but after I had worked on things. So I was a known quantity. And I prepared this whole thing, in a very, in my mind, fantastic British accent. And the lady was like, this is great.

You're great. I had no idea. You were from the United Kingdom. I said, that's because I am not. But it's nice that you think that I am because my English accent is so good. She said, that's not why I thought you were a member of the UK. You have to be a member of the UK to be in this thing. I said, well, I am not. Where does this leave us? She calls the assistant in and says, John is not a citizen of the United Kingdom. And there was a lot of hushed whispering,

and the lady said, I'm terribly sorry, we thought you were John Hanna. And I said, oh, no, nope. And she goes, okay, well, do you want to do the second scene? said, no, why? No. And I walked out with my tail between my legs and drove home. But that's the last person I was mistaken for. Do you have a worst note a director has ever given you that sticks out? What's the one that jumps out? No, I mean, I can't really think of any, a terrible note. I remember early on in my career

working with a television director who had not done a lot of television. And they were setting the camera up in the wrong place. Because to do the reverse of it, you would have to remove a wall that was not removable. It was a cinder block wall, in fact. We were shooting in a gymnasium. And I said, you're probably going to want to move this over here. And he said, thanks. I think I know where to put the camera.

Okay. So that was and of course we couldn't get the reverse of it and that person was fired But that was probably the worst note I got and finally we're gonna wrap up with this in the spirit of happy say I confuse an actor that you see on screen that always makes you happy You're immediately in a better mood Jeff Bridges Great great A movie that makes you sad Terms of Endearment That's one of mine yeah

I was raised Catholic and I lost my mother very young. So if there's a dead mom or the devil in anything, forget about it. I'm either weeping or under the couch. Those are the two things that, so confused, I don't know, Protestants? I don't know. And finally, what's a food that makes you confused?

You don't get it. Zucchini noodles? What's the fucking point? Yeah. Have some vegetables. Who are we fooling, guys? Who are we fooling? Right.

You could put shoe laces in pasta and be like, look, their shoe? It's shoe pasta. No, just because it's that shape, come on. Come on. It is confusing. We've learned a lot about you tonight. We sure have. Everybody's going to see Master and Commander.

No, they're going to see your friends and neighbors, April 3rd on Apple TV. You've seen a sneak peek. More to come. a season three to come, spread the good word and give it up one more time for the one and only John Ham everybody. I truly want to thank you guys for spending your Sunday with me. This is really, really great.

It's a tremendous honor to be here. And thank you guys very, very much for coming out. Please do enjoy the show, but thank you. It was really meaningful to me, guys. Thanks so much. And so ends another edition of happy, sad, confused. Remember to review, rate, and subscribe to this show on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm a big podcast.

I'm Daisy Ridley, and I definitely wasn't pressure to do this by Josh. Oh, please, not that music. That music gives me nightmares from my childhood. Could we get something a little bit lighter? Some lighter music here. Are you a fan of true crime TV shows? And what about Unsolved Mysteries? The show that jumped started all of our love of true crime. I'm Ellen Marsh. And I'm Joey Taranto. And we host, I Think Not, a true crime comedy podcast covering some of the wildest stories from from your favorite true crime can't be TV shows,

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