‘Before Mad Men, I was living on five bucks a day’

John Slattery speaks to Adam White about his friendship forged in whisky with Jon Hamm, working with Philip Seymour Hoffman and his infamous role in Sex and the City

- Adam White

John Slattery looks terrible. I hate to dash your hopes,” the 60year-old tells me down the phone from New York. I’m in sweats. I’m making a cup of tea. I’ve just exercised. I...” He pauses, grasping for the right word to describe his current ghoulishness. He sighs. I look like shit.” I can’t verify the alleged horror show that is his appearance, but I’m not sure I believe him. Not John Slattery? Not Mad Men’s impeccably tailored bon vivant Roger Sterling? But he’s the king of pocket squares! With hair as white and well-coiffed as a Dulux dog!

Slattery is ruining his public image while at home with his pet dog circling his feet, his voice, at least, just as we remember it that smooth, honeyed cadence that makes him Hollywood’s goto for raconteurs, statesmen and authority figures. Tony Stark’s industrialist dad in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The politician who tried to introduce the decidedly unkinky Carrie Bradshaw to golden showers on Sex and the City. The suburban mayor who romanced Eva Longoria’s character in Desperate Housewives before being impaled on a white picket fence.

Still, it’s Roger Sterling that looms largest. Not that he was particularly eager to play him back when Mad Men first went into production in 2007. He’d initially been brought in to read for the role of Don Draper, the impossibly good-looking, disgraceful-slash-damaged star of the show ultimately played by Jon Hamm. Then the producers asked him to read for Roger instead. He was momentarily bruised. They said, Here’s the thing we have this guy’,” he remembers. Hamm] claims I was in a bad mood the whole time we shot the first episode because of this, but I don’t think that’s true.” He digresses. Eventually I saw him, and I was like... Oh they sure do have that guy”