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The SNL Staff Surprised Jon Hamm By Dressing Mad Men-Style for His Table Read: PHOTO
John Mulaney's star-studded photo of the day includes Bill Hader, young Colin Jost, and Amy Poehler, who gave birth days later.
Friends and Bridesmaids co-stars Kristen Wiig and Jon Hamm recently sat down for a new installment of Variety's "Actors on Actors" interview series. During their conversation, they reminisced about their time together on Saturday Night Live, and fondly remembered a gag the cast and writers pulled during Hamm's first time hosting.
Wiig was an SNL cast member from 2005 to 2012, while Hamm has hosted three times, once in 2008 and twice in 2010.
The week before Hamm's very first SNL episode on October 25, 2008, he got a surprising — but flattering — introduction to the cast. Mad Men mania was in full swing, as the award-winning series premiered on AMC the year before. With Don Draper coming to host SNL, the cast decided to go Hamm — ahem — and dress in their best Mad Men outfits.
"On Monday, when you come in as the host, there was a big meeting in Lorne’s office," Hamm told Wiig. "And all the writers are there, and the cast is there, and everybody jams into the small office, and everybody was in Mad Men drag. Which was very strange."
"We never do that," Wiig admitted. "I don’t think we’ve ever done it since."
"Bill Hader was in drag. [Writer] Paula Pell had a cigarette taped to her finger because she didn’t know how to smoke," said Hamm. "Colin Jost is two years out of Harvard and looks like a total Staten Island dirtbag." As the photo shared by John Mulaney in 2018 reveals, Jost sported a dark beard and much longer hair back then.
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John Mulaney's photo of the cast and writers as Mad Men is SNL history
Comedian John Mulaney, who famously wrote on SNL from 2008 to 2012, posted photographic evidence of the Mad Men fever dream on social media back in 2018.
"Wait! But on the Monday when Jon Hamm first hosted in October 2008 all of us went to the pitch meeting dressed as Mad Men characters," wrote Mulaney in a post on X (formerly Twitter).
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In the picture, you can see SNL legends like Wiig, Hader, Pell, Seth Meyers, Fred Armisen, Andy Samberg, and Jason Sudeikis doing their best Joan and Pete impressions, complete with cocktails and cigarettes in hand. Also there, inexplicably wearing a tiara: A very pregnant Amy Poehler, who didn't wind up making into the episode as she was giving birth to her son Archie that Saturday night.
There's also the bearded Jost, Bobby Moynihan, The Lonely Island's Jorma Taccone, 30 Rock actor and Late Night with Seth Meyers writer John Lutz, and then-cast member/Bitch Sesh podcast host Casey Wilson.
"Then 'as part of the joke' everyone started day drinking," Mulaney's 2018 caption continued. "Jon Hamm, new to the show, walked in to be greeted by drunk Comic-Con. It was the best."
