The Mad Men Role January Jones Auditioned For Before Betty Draper

It's hard to imagine "Mad Men" without January Jones as Betty Draper. While early versions of the pilot kept Don Draper's (Jon Hamm) wife in a much smaller role, the version of the show that ultimately made it to air on AMC was just as much about the fraught suburban home life of Don and other "Mad Men" characters as it was about the politics of high-level New York City advertising — especially in the early seasons. Betty anchors that entire storyline, and it's Jones' precise, frequently devastating performance that brings it all home.

All that said, Jones actually auditioned for a different "Mad Men" role at first — the character of Peggy Olson, which ultimately went to would-be "Handmaid's Tale" star Elisabeth Moss. In an extended piece on the origins of the show published by The Hollywood Reporter in 2015, Jones explained that she actually went out twice for the role of Peggy, but series creator Matthew Weiner had other ideas in mind.

"Matt said, 'Well, there's another role, but I don't really know what's going to happen with her,'" Jones told THR. "He didn't have any scenes for me, so he quickly wrote a couple." At the time, the role of Betty was only "three lines" in the pilot script, according to Weiner, but he quickly pulled together a new scene to flesh out the character and give Jones some room to experiment.

After Matthew Weiner zeroed in on January Jones to play Betty Draper, he quickly began adding more material for the character in his pilot script. In the same THR piece, Weiner explained that this move was originally met with some pushback from the studio side.

"Most of the fighting came [in] episode two," he explained. "They were really annoyed that I was paying attention to [Betty]. I wanted to branch the show out, and I felt that if Don was cheating on this woman, that was the story. They just wanted it to be a formula in the office."

The domestic life of the Drapers was treated throughout the early seasons of the show with equal parts idyllic drudgery, tense drama, and a quiet sort of "Stepford Wives" horror. It's impossible to imagine the show reaching the thematic depth that earned it fame and acclaim without this aspect, so clearly the "fight" between Weiner and the AMC executives was worth it.

On the Peggy side of things, casting definitely had things right, hiring Elisabeth Moss and placing Jones in the role of Betty. The initial waifishness of Peggy, carried off brilliantly by Moss in "Mad Men" Season 1, gives way to one of the greatest character arcs in modern TV history. Both actresses were nominated for Primetime Emmy Awards for their performances by the time "Mad Men" came to an end.