Small Town’s big star
Mad Men star Christina Hendricks discusses her latest role in Sky comedy Small Town, Big Story, why she likes ensemble dramas and her ambitions to appear in a romcom.
Christina Hendricks is best known for playing the iconic role of Joan Holloway in Mad Men, the long-running series set in a 1960s New York advertising agency. But in the decade since that show finished, she has also taken up starring roles in thriller Tin Star, crime comedy drama Good Girls and period drama The Buccaneers, which returns for a second season this June.
Now she’s on screen in her latest project, Sky comedy Small Town, Big Story, created by Chris O’Dowd. She plays Wendy Patterson, a Hollywood TV producer who returns to her hometown of Drumbán in Ireland after a 20-year absence with a film crew in tow for her latest epic production. Soon after, a secret that has been hidden since the eve of the Millennium resurfaces, bringing Wendy back into contact with Séamus Proctor (Paddy Considine), a local doctor and respected pillar of the community who finds himself in the eye of the storm.
Lead director O’Dowd also appears in the series as Jack E McCarthy, as part of a supporting cast that includes Eileen Walsh, Leia Murphy, Patrick Martins, Evanne Kilgallon, Andrew Bennett, Ruth McCabe, David Wilmot and Michèle Forbes.
Hendricks and O’Dowd are also among the executive producers on the six-parter, which is produced by Playground, FilmNation Entertainment and HotCod Productions in association with Sky Studios. NBCUniversal Global TV Distribution handles international sales.
Following the show’s launch in the UK last month, Hendricks was in the French city of Lille last week where she discussed making the series ahead of a gala screening during television festival Series Mania.
Wendy Patterson is a “quite different” character from those Hendricks has played in the past.
Hendricks: She’s very closed off and a little tough, and so often I play people who are quite vulnerable and open. I thought it was interesting that she had to live with this secret – she had to have her community and her family not believe her. What would it feel like to never have a support system? I’ve always had one, and I’ve been very lucky that way. But if you had to leave your home and start afresh and reinvent yourself and travel the globe and try to find where you fit in or who your people were, and you couldn’t find your people because every time you told the secret, people thought you were bonkers, you would really be very careful with what you revealed about yourself.
The challenge was playing someone like that, who has this defence mechanism, but she still has to exist in the world and she has to be likeable. So she’s come up with this weird sense of humour, which I thought was so funny about this character. She makes jokes all the time, and sometimes they’re terrible jokes. I know people like that, I’m like that. I try to make a joke and no one laughs, and I don’t think that’s depicted very often.
But Hendricks didn’t need any convincing to take on the role.
Hendricks: I didn’t take any convincing, I really loved it when I read it. I love ensemble shows. Mad Men was a great ensemble show, and I love watching those kinds of shows. I’m sure we’re all addicted to The White Lotus. We love seeing all those different stories play out, and I thought this was done really well. I literally laughed out loud, and I like weird stuff. I like quirky, weird stuff. I’m weird, so it spoke to me, and it’s my kind of humour, where I [had] a side smile the whole time I was reading it, so I didn’t really need convincing. I was pretty excited about it right away.
In the series, Wendy and Seamus are reunited after not seeing each other for many years – just like Hendricks and co-star Considine in real life.
Hendricks: I met Paddy about 10 years ago when he was about to direct a film. He was in LA and I just went to have a meeting with him. Other than that, I didn’t know Paddy. And he’s an extraordinary actor. I know lots of people love him in all sorts of projects. Chris was really great about having some rehearsal time beforehand, which in television you don’t always get. So we arrived a little bit early and we actually rehearsed scenes that were a little bit closer to the end of the series so we got to get this familiarity with each other that then we had to forget a little bit.
But it was nice to have that basis of rehearsal, because then there was a connection between us. We had a little bit of history, more than just showing up on the day and being like, ‘Hi, I’m Christina. I’m going to be in the scene with you,’ and we have to pretend that we used to have a crush on each other and we used know each other when we were 15 and all these things. So at least we had a bit of time.
The series blends elements of comedy, drama and science fiction, but Small Town, Big Story maintains a singular tone throughout the six episodes.
Hendricks: The use of science fiction is almost just a tool to bring these characters together and reveal secrets about them. It obviously adds some quirky humour, but it’s really about how these characters then incorporate that into their life. It’s definitely a comedy, but we play it straight. We’re not trying to do slapstick, big, broad comedy. We’re playing it as it’s very straight, but the jokes are funny, and the people are funny and the characters are funny. So we play it like a drama, but inherently it’s just goofy and fun.
Filming took place near Dublin, and the production even visited O’Dowd’s hometown of Boyle.
Hendricks: We all lived south of Dublin because we shot in County Wicklow, which is just a little less populated, [it has] less of the big buildings so we could be more remote. But we never really stayed in one place for very long. Chris O’Dowd is from Boyle, so we definitely shot in Boyle a day or two because he wanted to honour his hometown. His parents came to set. It was very sweet. But really [it was] just all these beautiful little towns in Wicklow, and often forests, different places. Often we weren’t in a town at all, we were just in a forest or in a lake. They’re very remote.
But bringing a big production to small-town Ireland didn’t mirror the chaotic impact shown in the series.
Hendricks: Mostly, like the story actually, people are excited and supportive. There’s a few times where you have to stop traffic in the main street and they [local residents] want to get home and they’re like, ‘Move your stupid cameras.’ That happened only once that I can think of. But for the most part, people were peeking out at us and we tried to be respectful and not disturb too much and move down the road quickly. We didn’t shut down a town for months at a time or anything like that.
When it comes to choosing her next project, Hendricks is led by the script.
Hendricks: I have to respond to it in a way that I can imagine myself in it. When I start reading a script and all of a sudden, I’m not looking at the page but I feel like I’m inside of it, and I’m looking out of my eyes at the other characters – it’s a strange feeling, but I know it when I feel it – then my second question is, ‘OK, who’s involved in this?’ You could have one script in the hands of many different people and it would be fun to watch three different directors direct the same script and see how completely different they could be.
But I knew it was Chris O’Dowd and I’m a huge fan of his, and I love working with directors that are actors as well because I think they give incredible notes. I knew he could create a world. He’d had a successful series before, Moonboy, which I loved, so I thought, ‘I trust this guy and I trust that he’s gonna continue to be this funny and this quirky.’ It felt like the right fit.
She also prefers series with 13-episode seasons.
Hendricks: We just did six episodes on this. I do feel a difference, and I’ll be really honest, I like it when it’s a little longer. On Kevin Hill [in 2004], that was back when you still did 22. That’s too much, I think. And then on Mad Men, I think we did 13, and then on Good Girls, we would do 10, 13, 11, 16, around there.
For me, I find writers start to wear out after 12. I think they start to get run down, everyone’s exhausted, and I feel like possibly sometimes the scripts are sacrificed a little bit because of that. There could be a bunch of writers who would be really mad at me for saying that. But I’m friends with many writers, I have great respect for them. I think they would say the same thing. I think that 13 is a really nice amount to be able to tell your story before you’re just dragging things out, just to drag them out. I would have loved to have done more than six [on Small Town, Big Story], but hopefully we’ll get to do more.
Hendricks doesn’t have a dream role, but she does hope to star in a romantic comedy one day .
Hendricks: I would love to do a Meg Ryan-type love story about someone who’s 50. That would be really fun. I’m really enjoying mixing drama and comedy. I’ve been able to do more and more of that, but I think I could take that even further. So I would love to do a romcom.
Hendricks also has ambitions to direct herself, but hasn’t found the right project yet.
Hendricks: I’ve been offered several times and I’ve been encouraged by a lot of people to do it. It’s something I would really, really enjoy. And I’m terrified. I’m absolutely terrified, if I’m just going to be really honest. But it doesn’t mean I’m not going to try it. I just don’t know when that might be. But I do fantasise about it a little bit.
tagged in: Christina Hendricks, FilmNation Entertainment, HotCod Productions, NBCUniversal Global TV Distribution, Playground, Sky, Sky Studios, Small Town Big Story