Question about January Jones acting performance in Mad Men

[Leiko]

@ftg

Any particular reason her prior performances don’t count? (In addition to what’s been mentioned before, she was also in a little thing called “Love Actually”.) There might even be a problem with future performances due to type-casting. (The “Gilligan Effect”.)

Wasn’t her role in Love Actually limited to being a sexy American lady fawning over Colin’s accent?

I think that between the production elements January Jones has no control over (writing, set dressing, costuming, lighting, cinematography, etc) and the ones she does (her own acting), the creation and existence of Betty is about 75% pre-fabricated and 25% acted. That’s not a statement against Jones- it’s a credit to the production staff. January Jones gives good performances, stays as consistent as she’s allowed by the plot developments, and makes Betty feel like a believable (if occasionally repugnant, bratty, selfish) person who matures- or fails to- as the script dictates.

Also- she’s better at the subtle stuff than the bigger/more over-the-top emotional outbursts. Definitely a screen actress, who would have trouble transitioning to the stage.

[Cliffy]

@Leiko

Wasn’t her role in Love Actually limited to being a sexy American lady fawning over Colin’s accent?

Yeah, but in those 45 seconds she established a character that was about the exact opposite of Betty Draper.

–Cliffy

[ftg]

Speaking of Liam Neeson (?), JJ is reportedly going to co-star as his wife in “Unknown White Male”. (A mere 26 year age difference, btw.)

[Serenata67]

Control is sometimes the hardest part of acting.

[Sampiro]

I have wondered whether it’s the actress or the character that makes me have so little sympathy for her. If I were Don I think I’d cheat on her too- she’s such a whiny little dishrag of a character and when she does show personality it’s snobby and annoying.

[Hilarity_N.Suze]

Yeah, it might be I’m being harder on the actor because I have no sympathy for the character.

And her character turned for me when she got mad about people laughing because she bought that beer (was it Heineken?) in season 2. Her little, “Oh, that is funny. Ha ha,” and then laying into Don later for making fun of her, made her seem not just humorless, but stupid.

[kevja]

She’s playing a character to perfection.

That the character is not popular is a testimony to how great she is.

Sort of like Louise Fletcher in “One flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”

[Dorothea_Book]

Nicely put kevja

[Zoe]

How strange to me that you see her as bratty, cold, heartless, and stupid. I see her as the typical unliberated woman in the days before the women’s movement. She just seems empty of herself…unaware that she has a self.

Every woman that I know that watches the series talks about January Jones and what is going on with her. Has she buried her rage?

I thought that Jones showed some of the complexity of her character in the way she related to the child who had the crush on her. She seemed bewildered and needy – very puzzled.

Does anyone else not like January’s chldren? I’ve been a little hostile about them since the beginning and I’ve just realized that.

[astro]

@Zoe

How strange to me that you see her as bratty, cold, heartless, and stupid. I see her as the typical unliberated woman in the days before the women’s movement. She just seems empty of herself…unaware that she has a self.

Every woman that I know that watches the series talks about January Jones and what is going on with her. Has she buried her rage?

I thought that Jones showed some of the complexity of her character in the way she related to the child who had the crush on her. She seemed bewildered and needy – very puzzled.

Does anyone else not like January’s chldren? I’ve been a little hostile about them since the beginning and I’ve just realized that.

Even for the 1960’s Betty Draper (as a character) is kind of strange. She’s an odd combo of being quite well educated and fairly intelligent on one hand, and being this immature, spoiled, sometimes quite nasty and malicious adult child on the other.

One thing it’s easy to forget in the series storyline is that there’s almost an 8 year spread between Don’s age (38) and her’s (30). Not quite robbing the cradle but based on the age of the kids she got married when she was 21 or 22.

[Sampiro]

Bump.

Anybody else watching her on SNL? I’m going to officially decree “plays one character and that one character happens to be monotone and expressionless”.

[Mehitabel]

Well, not quite, but she did have two sketches where she stood around looking increasingly uncomfortable (the farting Grace Kelly and Dairy Queen girl hit on by flaming female reporter) and she did look uncomfortable in opening.

[AuntiePam]

It was nice to see that she does know how to smile.

I wouldn’t judge anyone’s acting ability by what they do on SNL. I don’t know how much rehearsal time they have, but it seems like most of the guest hosts are reading from the teleprompter. That’d make anybody look wooden.

But I suspect that Christina Hendricks would have done better. She’s bubbly and confident and funny in interviews. Lots of personality. Jones seems a bit introverted compared to Hendricks.

[alphaboi867]

Here’s the how to throw a cocktail party sketch. I though it was funny.

[MovieMogul]

I don’t remember the last time I saw a host so nervous and self-conscious (and she also had quite a few minor line flubs).

[Brandus]

That was one of the worst hosts I’ve seen in a while. Stuttering all the time, and I heard her say, “where’s the camera?” once… She does know it’s LIVE doesn’t she??

[corkboard]

I was wondering if there was going to be an SNL thread, but I guess it wasn’t worth it. As someone who loves JJ on MM, I have to say she was terrible on this show. I was amazed at how uncomfortable and wooden she was. Even in the Rear Window sketch, all she had to do was show a couple facial expressions or maybe some body english to indicate that the sounds were coming from her, but instead she was just waiting for the sound cues to end so she could say her next line. It was the sort of acting performance you’d expect from a non-actor host, like a sports figure or politician or something, not the lead on a major TV series.

Terrible.

[Sampiro]

@alphaboi867

Here’s the how to throw a cocktail party sketch. I though it was funny.

I wonder why they didn’t make it MAD MEN specific though; all of the characters were clearly MAD MEN characters (Don, Betty, Sal, etc.) and they used MAD MEN characters when Jon Hamm was on.

[friedo]

@AuntiePam

It was nice to see that she does know how to smile.

I wouldn’t judge anyone’s acting ability by what they do on SNL. I don’t know how much rehearsal time they have, but it seems like most of the guest hosts are reading from the teleprompter.

Shows what you know. SNL uses cue cards.

[Cat_Fight]

That was a dog of an episode. But it’s not like she’s one of the hosts who’s going to be writing all her own sketches and having a laugh with the writers over her Groundlings days.

Regarding her Mad Men character, here’s a really interesting look at Betty hate.

Oh, I can't imagine what it must be like to be a social conservative invested in that show. You must flinch every time Betty walks onscreen, looking pained, bored, and miserable. That she herself is a petulant brat doesn't make up for that, because the show is making the point that oppression isn't suddenly right because the oppressed aren't perfect people. And the show implies that certain ugly character traits are the result of oppressive systems, that Betty Draper is a miserable person because she's been turned into one. How dare the show suggest that bitchy women might be more pleasant if they weren't treated like second class citizens? And so [Benjamin Schwartz, writing for the Atlantic] gave you an out: Betty's character makes you uncomfortable because it's not realistic, and January Jones is a bad actress, and women in the 50s were never bored because being someone's sex-and-domestic appliance is what every woman really wants! It's not you, it's January Jones and the evils of feminism. [...]

And really, Schwartz's contempt for the character and his scapegoating of the actress—-and especially the applause he got from social conservatives for it—-shows the underlying contempt for women in the paternalistic platitudes about how women were happier when being a housewife was mandatory. Dreher's being upfront about it. Asking us to spend time on the feelings and thoughts and fantasies of Betty Draper is boring, because the whole point of wives is that they're in the background, making it possible for the real actors—-mostly men—-to make things happen.

The conservative reaction to the Draper marriage shows exactly how effective that storyline is in making its point. A lot of liberals, I've found, are bored with Betty for another reason entirely. They can't understand why she doesn't just pick up and leave already, if she's so unhappy. We're on the other side of it—-so feminist that it's hard to wrap our minds around the psychology of someone who isn't. But conservatives flip the fuck out, get defensive and start scapegoating January Jones, going so far as to argue that her dull affect is evidence that she can't act, when in fact it's evidence that the actress is being fearless in her portrayal of someone whose entire personality has been flattened out by boredom.