It would be too much of a spoiler to reveal the dark secret at the heart of the new comedy drama Small Town, Big Story, but I can say that it’s huge, weird and unbelievable. In the six-part show, Christina Hendricks plays Wendy Patterson, a Los Angeles TV producer who is back in her small home town in Ireland to shoot a big Hollywood production. She has returned, successful and glossy, to the place where that weird experience changed her life – not least because nobody believed her and she was laughed out of town.
Hendricks plays Wendy spiky and tough. “She’s got a real defence mechanism,” says the actor. “Something extraordinary happened to her and no one has ever believed her. She’s built up a wall, not letting people get too close, because then she’d have to reveal this big secret that, again, they are not going to believe.”
Written and directed by Chris O’Dowd, Small Town, Big Story is a fun, eccentric show, full of misfits, beautiful Irish scenery and great characters. Paddy Considine plays Seamus, the local GP, who was Wendy’s teenage boyfriend and the only person, she thinks, who will reveal the full truth of what happened. “He’s one of those interesting actors that you see a lot in dramas,” says Hendricks, “so it’s fun to see him in this lighter, quirkier role.” She met Considine years ago, when he was about to direct a film. “He ended up not doing it, which I told him made me feel better that he didn’t cast me,” she says with a laugh.
We’re talking over Zoom, Hendricks at her upstate New York home by the woods (you can follow its renovation on Instagram – all whimsical wallpaper, quirky antiques and heritage paint). There has been, she says, “a lot of nomadic living recently. I’m starting to wonder where I live.” She filmed this show in Ireland for five months, then spent five months in Scotland where she was making the Apple TV+ period romcom The Buccaneers. Her husband, cinematographer George Bianchini, and their dog travel with her. “That makes all the difference. I have my little family unit, which makes it an adventure. If I was alone, it would be a little bit heartbreaking.” She’ll soon be back at their other house in Los Angeles.
Hendricks was born in Knoxville, Tennessee. In her early life, because of her father’s job in the US Forest Service, she moved around a lot. “I think it prepared me, or trained me, and gave me a respect for new places – I’m a guest, and try to fit in and contribute, rather than ruffle. Many actors will say they moved around a lot – so their job was to fit in quickly, to find friends.” By the time she was 18, Hendricks was working as a model in New York. After living in London for a while, she spent her 20s building up her acting work, before getting her big break in 2007 as confident, smart office manager Joan in Mad Men, the hit period drama about advertising agencies.
Did she base Wendy – who is handling the shoot by herself – on any of the Hollywood executives she has worked with? Not really, says Hendricks, although maybe in elements of her resilience. “Hollywood is still very much a boys’ club – changing hopefully more rapidly now. But Wendy has that toughness, to prove that she can take the role a man would normally have and hold her own. I’ve certainly seen that in Hollywood.”
Although it’s quirky and funny, underlying the show is a serious thread about how damaging it is to not be believed. “When you are gaslit, you start doubting yourself, because it’s such an outrageous experience,” says Hendricks. “It’s a very uncomfortable thing to think about. I think it comes out in snarkiness and [Wendy] displaying her authority to gain strength and respect – an exhausting way to live.”
In flashbacks, teenage Wendy is a goth – a look based on Hendricks’ own school years when she dyed her hair black. Red is not her natural colour, although she is now entirely committed to it. “Any time I try to change it, to go back to blond, I like it for a month or two, then I don’t feel like myself, which is the weirdest thing. I’ve always felt like a redhead.”
Hendricks, now 49, wanted to be a ballerina first. “I studied for a long time and realised I was probably never going to be good enough. It was also incredibly masochistic and brutal on your body, your mind, everything.” Discovering community theatre, she realised she could sing and dance in musicals instead, but then she became a model. Doing this, instead of going to college, was “a great disappointment to my family, mostly to my father. I felt I had to prove that I was making the right decision, that I knew what I was doing. And the only way to do that was if I was really professional and worked really hard.”
Now that so many women have spoken out, that era seems rife with danger for young actors and models. “I was young and travelling alone – always had my spidey senses up,” says Hendricks. She felt lucky to have been around people who “had no other agenda but to give me good advice and help me navigate”. Moving into acting, she was again fortunate, quickly finding a part in a series: for two years in the late 1990s, she was in Beggars and Choosers, a comedy about network TV.
“I didn’t have to go to as many auditions and have as many of those experiences that left me in a vulnerable place,” she says, “so in a way, I avoided some of that stuff, but I was incredibly aware of it – the comments, the power differences and all those things. It’s such a part of everyday life as a woman growing up.”
When Hendricks got the Mad Men role that would change her life, she was in her early 30s. Would it have been harder to have had that sudden fame if she had been 10 years younger? “No, I would have loved it!” she says with a laugh. “I feel like my 30s were all about Mad Men. I would have loved it to have happened sooner – I would have had more opportunities.”
Has anything of Joan remained in her? “I think so – a confidence I got to appreciate through Joan. Also, I saw so many women around the world speak about, and tell me, how she influenced them and gave them strength. It was the character that moved them, but hearing their stories emboldened me and made me feel more confident and proud.”
Still, it felt strange to become so recognised. “No one teaches you how to be famous,” says Hendricks. “No one tells you how to be or act or answer questions, or how not to fall on your face. You just have to learn how to stay above water. And then no one teaches you how to not be famous after you were famous. There’s a lot of ebb and flow. You really have to ride that river, because it’s ever-changing and you can’t count on anything.”
During the Mad Men years, things were definitely in full flow: “There was a decade where every weekend was a photoshoot, a premiere or an award show. It was an absolute whirlwind. And then the show stops, and all that stops, and you adjust to your new and different life. Sometimes you feel blindsided, sometimes you miss certain things and sometimes you’re relieved.”
These days, the people who approach her are just as likely to talk about Good Girls, the comedy series in which Hendricks plays one of three mums turned criminals. Are we now beyond wondering if there are enough interesting roles for women in their 40s and beyond? “There’s so many wonderful roles these days,” she says, “and more and more developing.”
Mad Men allowed Hendricks to break out of the “cute” roles she had often been lumped with. “I think there was a ‘sweetness’ to me,” she says. “People didn’t think I had this strength, so that opened up for me. And what Good Girls did is get me a lot of comedic roles.” She is sure that’s how she landed Wendy in Small Town, Big Story, a part she now says she was craving. “It was just my weird cup of tea.”
