The Los Angeles Times talked to January Jones (“Mad Men”) about playing Emma Frost in the Matthew Vaughn-directed X-Men: First Class, opening in theaters on June 3. She said she was surprised to hear that the movie takes place in the same time period as “Mad Men.”
“When I heard that this installment of X-Men’ was gonna take place in the ’60s I was like, Oh my God, you must be kidding me!'” Jones said. “But I read the script and familiarized myself with the character of Emma Frost. She’s so, so far from Betty and from Mad Men,’ and it takes place in that time but it doesn’t feel like a period movie.”
“The costumes are insane,” Jones added. “It’s a lot of very body-conscious stuff. If you look at the comic book, she’s barely dressed. She’s got quite the bod, which is very intimidating.”
Jones headed for the “First Class” set the day after “Mad Men” wrapped. “I’m thinking, I’m supposed to be doing crunches on the plane,” she said. “How am I gonna get buff in one day? I’m a petite person, so I didn’t want to go into a strict workout and eating regime. I would have disappeared entirely, and she’s very busty, very voluptuous, so I didn’t want to get rid of any of my curves.”
She did have some advantages over the other actors when it came to costumes. “I don’t have to do all the crazy prosthetics… When I morph into my diamond form, it’s all done on computer.”
Jones said that one of the first things she wanted to understand was the source of Emma’s anger. “Emma was a bespectacled, mousy child who had this power when she was young that she couldn’t quite harness, the telepathy, the mind-twisting stuff,” Jones said. “She had a falling out with her father and went her own direction.”
