Christina Hendricks on Wonder Woman, Mad Men spin-offs and Victorian corsets: ‘People always think I’m going to be much more of a lady than I am’

By now, Christina Hendricks is comfortable being uncomfortable. For the better part of eight years, the actor contorted herself into waist-nipping dresses and stiffly boned undergarments to play Joan Holloway, the smokeshow secretary of Mad Men who’d flick away admirers with the swish of a wrist. And years on from the HBO show’s 2015 finale, Hendricks remains an enduring emblem of girdled glamour and Sixties sass. The Victorian corsets worn by her latest character, then, were no sweat.  

“Honestly, I could wear a corset every day of my life,” the 48-year-old laughs over a video call she joined as “Christina’s iPhone”. She’s in frosty Ireland on location for Chris O’Dowd’s comedy-drama , and swaddled in a soft knitted sweater with a bird embroidered on the chest. Her copper red hair, as much a part of her image as her silver tongue and signature sashay, is be a lady but that’s not really who I am.”