Welcome to January Jones Fan, your #1 destination for all things January Jones, best known for her work on "Mad Men" as Betty Francis. She can also be seen in the upcoming indie "Sweetwater". We house a detailed filmography, the largest January gallery and video archive on the web and so much more! Enjoy your stay!
Next On Mad Men
6x01-02 | The Doorway
... as Betty Francis
In the Season 6 premiere, Don launches a new campaign, while Roger receives some unnerving news and Betty welcomes a houseguest.
In the late 1800s, a fanatical religious leader, a renegade Sheriff, and a former prostitute collide in a blood triangle on the rugged plains of the New Mexico Territory.
Last night, January and her “Mad Men” co-stars attended a celebration for “Mad Men” hosted by BAFTA New York at The Harvard Club in New York City. Love her look here and so excited to see what she wears for the Paley Center panel tomorrow.
January also appeared on “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon: tonight, wearing a very basic, but chic outfit. I’ve added stills and the captures will be later today hopefully. Enjoy!
Lots & lots of things going on today. First up, I’ve added HQ captures from January’s first appearance on the sixth season of “Mad Men”, along with three fabulous UHQ stills of Jan, donated by Dbiloo at our amazing affiliate Jon Hamm Source.
I’ve also got some “Sweetwater”goodies for you, including a brand new trailer and captures you will most likely see first here! Way more January and dialog in this one. In addition and thanks to Atlas Films, I’ve added some new stills and the promotional flyer for the film. We also found out thanks to Twitter that the movie will be released in the UK under the title “Sweet Vengeance”. You can pre-order it through Amazon now! Me and my region-free DVD player will definitely be enjoying the film when it releases June 03, 2013.
I also added 20+ more images of January from the Coach event and I’ve also got an exclusive treat for you today as part of our month long celebration of our fourth year online! 6 very rare outtakes from an older shoot of January have been added to the gallery.
In the middle of watching the premiere and I forgot to announce our obvious new changes. We have a new site and gallery layout thanks to the beautiful work of Megan at Perfectly Insane Designs. I’ll fill you in on the rest after the premiere. I hope you enjoy our new look as much as I do. Are you enjoying the premiere so far?
January Jones Talks MAD MEN Season 6, Betty’s Parenting and Weight Issues, Her Preparation Process, the Possibility of Betty and Don Reconnecting, & More
Not much in the ay of appearances, but January is still making the rounds promoting the newest season of “Mad Men”. She gave another fantastic interview, this time to Collider. Some highlights below, click here to read the full article. You can also listen to the full interview here.
On Betty connecting with children, but not her own: Yeah, I definitely think that’s why she connected with children, specifically with the Glen character, and I think that’s why she also butts heads with her own children. Especially Sally and Bobby, too. I think she’s a bit easier on the baby, cause he’s a baby but…. Yeah, I think very much so. She is on the same emotional level, and I think now Sally is even surpassing her emotional maturity in a way, and has become almost Betty’s parent. Sort of weird, but.
On the fat suit and Betty’s transformation: It was extremely challenging just physically and time wise because I had 6 or 7 hours of prosthetics, so I’d have to arrive at work at 3 in the morning and then an hour to take it off at the end of the day. And I was nursing a baby. It was just very physically challenging and it was also physically limiting in what I could do on screen. The DPs and lighting everyone was very frustrated with the whole situation. I could only turn my head so much, and if I turned my body and not my head… I didn’t want to look robotic, so it was a whole new set of skills I had to learn acting wise. I felt like it was a lesson in showing emotion without moving your body or head. So it was challenging and still is. But I loved how I felt in it, too, because I just felt that it leant so much to Betty and made her a bit more sympathetic. People empathize with her a bit more, I think.
On wardrobe envy: Well, yeah, I never missed my girdle so much, as much as I complained about it. But, no, I love what Janey does for every character. The outfits that Christina [Hendricks] gets to wear and Jessica Paré’s outfits are awesome – she’s a bit more mod and that’s something that Betty would never get to do, because she’s sort of stuck in 1955. But, I don’t go crying about it or anything.
On memorizing scripts: I mean I think all of us have exercised our brains in a way where we can… I can pretty much look at my sides in the morning and have it down. Cause we don’t get rehearsal either. Unless, I have some sort of big monologue or something specific, like the Italian, or something to learn. All of us sort of just wing it. But, you get really good; I mean I’ve gotten really great at memorizing just very quickly. But we don’t have time to break it down or think ‘What I’m gonna to do.’ It’s sort of instinct on the day.
On Betty’s style: We sort of… we’ll do things in the hair and makeup trailer, without permission sometimes, where we’ll do something a little more current with hair and makeup. Cause I do think Betty is very fashionable, I think she looks at her Vogues and I think that she would try to evolve a little bit. But I just don’t think that she is at an age where she’s going to do little miniskirts and stuff. Especially not at her size at this moment.
On Betty and Don reconnecting: I liked the idea of that relationship. And I loved working with Jon and acting out those sometimes very heated arguments or passionate moments. We work really well together, and so I liked that. But, I just don’t think that it’s realistic, and Matthew doesn’t think that it’s realistic. I think that she would have been able to deal with infidelity and things like that, but finding out that he was someone else just ended it for her in her head.
On Jessica Pare: I’ve had a few scenes with Jessica which have been really fun. She’s fun.
Matthew Weiner gave a fantastic interiew to the Denver Westword regarding January and the character of Betty. Some highlights below and you can read the full article here.
By Mad Men’s fifth season, Betty Draper had walked out of our lives, and a much plumper Betty Francis had waddled in. The audience response to this swollen version of a once-slender character: a collective cringe. Suddenly Betty became a joke. In no time, a parody of Ram Jam’s “Black Betty” hit the Internet, spoofing the ice cream–guzzling former beauty queen as “Fat Betty.”
“I think people were shocked she was still on the show,” Mad Men creator and executive producer Matthew Weiner concurred in a recent sit-down at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel. “I never want to do the show without January,” Weiner says plainly. “She’s such an interesting actress, quite honestly, and she originally signed on for three lines.”
Betty appeared only at the very end of Mad Men’s pilot, and she was purposely left out of the season-one promotional campaign. Weiner wanted the very existence of the fool-around ad man’s stunning wife to be a surprise.
Betty is part of a “wasted generation,” he says. “She’s educated, and she has the best job in the world, which is living in the lap of luxury with all these conveniences, and not having that much housework to do.
“It’s hard on her,” he adds. Hard on her mostly because Betty is, as Weiner says, “caught in between.” She earned a degree from Bryn Mawr at a time just before society might ask her to use it. For Betty, beauty was always her most logical path to success.
Attention Mad Men fans! The eagerly awaited sixth season of Mad Men premieres this Sunday night on AMC, and we’re giving away ultra-cool Mad Men Prize Packs to five lucky winners! Read on for your chance to win…
With big thanks to affiliate Jon Hamm Source, I’ve added scans from the newest TV Guide to the gallery. January also spoke in-depth to to Zap2it and the London Eveing Standard on Betty and the return of “Mad Men”. These are really meaty interviews about Betty and some of January’s thoughts on the period – not the standard “fat suit” questions. Out new layout will be up this week as well a some exciting site changes. Enjoy the interviews and scans until then!
On whether or not Betty may ever reconnect with Don…
“Like a lot of audience members, I liked the idea of that relationship. And I loved working with Jon and acting out those sometimes very heated arguments or passionate moments. We work really well together, and so I liked that. But, I just don’t think that it’s realistic, and Matthew doesn’t think that it’s realistic. She would have been able to deal with infidelity and things like that, but finding out that he was someone else just ended it for her in her head.”
On what the cast knows about the season before filming begins…
January Jones: “We don’t find out [anything] until we get that first script for each season, which is a couple days before the table read — or a day before the table read sometimes. The only time I’ve ever gotten a little bit of knowledge is if I had to learn something specifically and I’d needed to learn it before we started. Before Season 2, I was taking months of English horseback riding lessons, learning to jump and do all that, not really knowing why. I thought I was going to bite the bullet or something. Before the episode where we were in Rome, I had a few weeks to try to learn Italian. Things like that. But otherwise, no. And I don’t ask. I know some of the cast members ask and try to needle info out of [Matthew Weiner]. But, I’d rather be surprised.”
Read all of the Zap2It Interview by clicking here.
“I don’t think Betty is a villain. I don’t know that she has a black heart,” says Jones. “I disagree with her, a lot. I don’t know if I necessarily like her, and I don’t know if I would be her friend, but I defend her, fiercely. I remember at the end of season two, when she had that random affair in the bar, and the reaction I had to that from fans was ‘How could she do that to Don?’ I just thought: ‘Do you watch the show? The guy has been sleeping with so many other women’. I think that’s a little bit sexist. I would have divorced Don long before Betty did. I’m a bit old-fashioned when it comes to infidelity.”
Read all of the London Evening Standard Interview by clicking here.
As the wait for the Mad Men’s sixth season is finally coming to an end, The Paley Center for Media is hosting a panel of the show’s cast and creative team to discuss all aspects of the peerless television drama. Jon Hamm, Christina Hendricks, Kiernan Shipka, John Slattery, Vincent Kartheiser, January Jones, Jessica Paré, and Matthew Weiner will all be there in person.
Tickets went on sale yesterday for the event which will take place in Tuesday, April 23, 2013 at 6:30 pm ET in New York.
Thanks to our always amazing “Mad Men”affiliate – Jon Hamm Source – we now have some more images of Jan from the “Mad Men”Season 6 Press Conference in our gallery. 7 MQ have been added to the gallery.
You may have also noticed some additions to “Mad Men”Season 2 section of the gallery. I’m desperately trying to get the “Mad Men” section complete before the new season starts, but you all (or at least regular visitors) know I say that every year…lol. There is hope this year however, as I have everything capped already. Just finding time to upload and add, so be on the lookout.
