John Slattery agreed to play a washed-up version of himself in David Wain’s new comedy after getting the pitch in Budapest late one night, right after a day shooting the 2025 drama Nuremberg. Jon Hamm texted him about the part, and Slattery read the script while jet-lagged, only to hit the line that his character had not worked in 10 years.
“Hasn’t worked in 10 years, huh?” Slattery recalled thinking. Then came the reflex that sounds like an actor who has spent enough time on his own resume to know where to look: “I had to go: Wait a second. Let me IMDb myself.” The joke landed because it cut against the real timeline. Slattery is 63 and best known for his four-time Emmy-nominated turn as Roger Sterling on Mad Men, but he has also racked up some 30 film and TV credits since that series ended in 2015.
Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass premiered earlier this year at Sundance and opens Friday, giving Slattery a fresh chance to lean into the kind of self-parody most stars avoid. In the film, he plays a sour, out-of-work version of himself, while Zoey Deutch plays a Midwestern woman who goes to Los Angeles to cash in on a celebrity sex pass with Jon Hamm after discovering her fiancé cheated on her with Jennifer Aniston. Slattery said he was happy to detonate his cool, unflappable persona for the role, and he did not frame the choice as a gamble. “I never considered it risky,” he said.
What sold him was the silliness of it and the director behind it. Slattery said he was already a fan of Wain and the people around him, and argued that the hardest comedies often look the lightest. “These kinds of comedies take skill and experience,” he said, adding that you have to be “really smart to make a movie this stupid.” The part also offered something he said he is always looking for: a different way to depart from himself, even if that means playing himself. “It seems like the wildest character I’ve played in a while, and it’s me,” he said.
That is also where the film’s joke sharpens. Slattery said there was almost nothing for him to research, because the whole premise was to send up his own public image. “What kind of research am I supposed to do? Am I supposed to watch myself and imitate myself?” he said. “But there was really nothing to do. You just learn the lines and show up.” He added that what makes the comedy work for him is the confidence of stupidity, not the performance of cleverness: “There’s nothing funnier to me than a confident moron.” That instinct helps explain why he trusted the setup, even while making clear he prefers to know the hands he is in before he dives in. In the end, the movie’s release Friday makes the joke public: a well-known star with a long post-Mad Men résumé is now inviting audiences to watch him play the man who stopped getting calls.
