Across Mad Men’s run, viewers saw characters transform along with the times: the show started in the 60s, and then, towards its close, leapt into the 70s. Now, at least one of its actors will be continuing the chronological tracing of America’s personal and national (and surely sartorial) histories: Christina Hendricks has joined the cast of SundanceTV’s upcoming 80s-set dramedy, Hap and Leonard.
Hap and Leonard is a six-episode original series that follows Hap Collins (Episodes’ James Purefoy), a rose-picker (yes, rose) who’d formerly been in prison for resisting the draft during the Vietnam War and is now destitute, and Leonard Pine (The Wire’s Michael Kenneth Williams), a gay black Vietnam veteran. The two are life-long best friends, and find solace in their bond amidst the hardships of poverty, racism and homophobia. Hendricks has been cast as Hap’s ex-wife Trudy, who turns up with a “proposition for Hap that he cannot refuse.” A press release describes the show as both “funny and shocking,” saying it “provides an unpredictable and side-eyed look into race, class and friendship.”
Hap and Leonard, which will air in 2016, was created by Jim Mickle and Nick Damici, who adapted it from a series of writings of the same name by novelist Joe Lansdale.