One of Ben Affleck’s most infamous roles was in David Fincher’s Gone Girl, but it actually almost went to Jon Hamm.
During Tuesday’s episode of Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen, Hamm made an appearance with his Mad Men co-star John Slattery. During one of the show’s segments, the actor was answering a question from a fan, who asked if he was initially meant to star as Nick Dunne in the 2014 mystery-thriller.
“Yeah,” he responded. “I was down to the very end of that. It was meant to be me, but we had to film the continuing adventures of Mr. Draper.”
Hamm’s confirmation comes after a 2015 report from Page Six that claimed the actor wasn’t allowed to do Gone Girl because Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner wouldn’t let him out of his contractual obligations to the series.
Although Hamm didn’t go into detail on WWHL about what all went down, he did note that he would have been perfect for the lead in the film because the main character is from St. Louis, which is where he was born.
“Poor Ben, a Boston guy, had to wear a Cardinals hat,” he quipped of Affleck. “He was not very happy about it.”
The Argo actor starred opposite Rosamund Pike in the psychological thriller, which followed a seemingly blissful marriage between Nick (Affleck) and Amy (Pike). But everything gets turned upside down when Amy goes missing and Nick becomes the primary suspect in her disappearance. Pressure from the police and media quickly causes the couple’s happy image to crumble, leading to questions about who they really are.
Hamm played Don Draper, a talented and mysterious ad executive at a prestigious New York ad agency in the 60s, in the hit drama Mad Men. The show ran from 2007 to 2015.
