{"id":388022,"date":"2026-01-24T13:23:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-24T13:23:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/388022\/"},"modified":"2026-01-24T13:23:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-24T13:23:08","slug":"jon-hamm-and-john-slattery-gail-daughtry-and-the-celebrity-sex-pass-interview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/388022\/","title":{"rendered":"Jon Hamm and John Slattery Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass Interview"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tJohn Slattery was in Budapest filming post-World War II drama Nuremberg when he got a call from Jon Hamm<\/a>. His former Mad Men co-star told him that David Wain, the comedy filmmaker behind Wet Hot American Summer, Childrens Hospital and a cadre of other absurdist-leaning comedies, was trying to get a hold of him about a role that only Slattery could possibly play: John Slattery.<\/p>\n

\n\tIntrigued by the proposition and also jetlagged, Slattery texted Wain asking for the script and stayed up reading Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass. The film follows a Midwestern bride-to-be who, after her fianc\u00e9 has sex with his celebrity \u201chall pass,\u201d is on a quixotic quest through Los Angeles to track down with her own \u201chall pass,\u201d Jon Hamm. The film\u2019s John Slattery, who has fallen on hard times after the halcyon days of Mad Men and is skulking in the Valley, is enlisted to help with the endeavor.<\/p>\n

\n\tRemembers Slattery of that first reading, \u201cIt was funny and weird and like nothing I had done before.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tFor his part, Hamm was already signed on to the project, having known Wain and his longtime creative partner Ken Marino for over two decades. \u201cI saw Wet Hot American Summer in theaters. My friend Paul Rudd was in it. Nobody knew who Amy Poehler was. Nobody who Bradley Cooper was. It was so many fun and funny people that were forming this nucleus of hilariousness,\u201d says Hamm, who was later cast in a \u201cblink and you miss it part\u201d in Wain\u2019s The Ten and also worked on Wet Hot American Summer spinoffs.<\/p>\n

\n\tGail Daughtry, which had a working title of I\u2019ll Take the Hamm, proved an irresistible opportunity for the Emmy winner. \u201cI mean, having yourself projected through the lens of Ken Marino and David Wain is pretty fun experience,\u201d he says. \u201cWhen you get an offer to go to work and it\u2019s, \u2018Come and laugh for 12 to 14 hours, and you\u2019ll also get a very meager paycheck, as well.\u2019 You go, \u2018OK, that sounds fun.\u2019 That\u2019s the kind of goodwill that both David and Ken have engendered over the course of their careers. They can get people to come and play at that level that really pay dividends.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tA hallmark of a Wain production has been known for building an impossibly large ensemble of rotating A-listers, and Gail Daughtry is no different. Says Slattery, \u201cYou would run into people in the parking lot or in the makeup trailer, and you\u2019re like, \u2018That\u2019s crazy.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBut new to the troupe is star Zoey Deutch, playing the titular Daughtry. After most recently playing Jean Seberg in Richard Linklater\u2019s Nouvelle Vague, which bowed at last year\u2019s Cannes Film Festival, Deutch will be back in front of festival audiences in a decidedly different role. When asked what attracted her to the movie, Deutch says with a laugh, \u201cI\u2019m not gonna sit here and be like: \u2018The emotional vulnerable journey she goes on.\u2019 No, it\u2019s just, tops to tails, a wild ride.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tA highlight for the entire cast was being able to film on location across Los Angeles, including Chateau Marmont, Elysian Park above Dodgers Stadium and studio backlots, at a time when production in the city has been in a years-long downswing.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAs somebody who grew up in Los Angeles, I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve ever actually walked down Hollywood Boulevard,\u201d says Deutch. When shooting scenes on the Walk of Fame, Deutch says, the cameramen were hidden so that the production could move freely through the throngs of tourists. Miraculously, they went unnoticed.<\/p>\n

\n\tHamm says that Wain is a master of stretching a dollar, \u201cmaking $100 look like $10,000.\u201d Adds Slattery, \u201c[David] told me at one point, we were sitting at lunch, and he said, \u2018This is the slowest I\u2019ve shot something in a while.\u2019 Meanwhile, I\u2019d never shot anything faster.\u201d Gail Daughtry is filled with the type of humor that is unique to a Wain production, from absurdist visual gags and plot points to joke-heavy dialogue and socially inept characters. \u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIf you are listening to a speech, you would go, \u2018That sounds like Aaron Sorkin.\u2019 Or if you\u2019re watching a movie, \u2018This looks like the Coen brothers somehow,\u2019\u201d says Hamm, who points out that Wain\u2019s filmmaking can also be immediately identifiable. \u201cDavid is fearless, and it is always in service to the laugh and to the joke. It never punches down. It\u2019s always just goofy for goofy\u2019s sake.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe movie will now screen at the Sundance<\/a> Film Festival, 25 years after Wain and Marino premiered Wet Hot American Summer at the fest. And while the festival has launched a handful of standout comedies (see: Napoleon Dynamite), it is rare that a straight comedy premieres at the festival.<\/p>\n

\n\tGail Daughtry was produced independently and is seeking distribution at a time when Hollywood is seemingly coming back around to the idea of releasing comedies in movie theaters, where they have been absent for the past decade as midbudget genre films fell out of financial favor. Last year, R-rated comedies like One of Them Days, starring Keke Palmer, and Liam Neeson-fronted The Naked Gun, were well received by critics and grossed over $50 million and $100 million at the box office, respectively. \u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tSays Deutch, \u201cThere are so many great, funny people in Hollywood who want to make funny movies. And I feel like I hear this question in this conversation all the time, amongst so many of them, is like, \u2018Why can\u2019t we get great funny movies made anymore?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHamm runs through a list of favorite comedy moviegoing experiences, including seeing the South Park movie in a sold-out screening in Lincoln Center, remembering, \u201cBy the time \u2018Uncle Fucka\u2019 ended, the place was in an uproar.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAfter its Sundance premiere on Sunday at the Eccles, the hope is that Gail Daughtry can make its way into movie theaters. He adds, \u201cI don\u2019t think, for my money, there\u2019s nothing more gratifying than being in a room where everybody is laughing, wholehearted and full-throated.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"John Slattery was in Budapest filming post-World War II drama Nuremberg when he got a call from Jon…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":388023,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[6491,96,146501,145242,92718,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-388022","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-celebrities","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-jon-hamm","11":"tag-sundance","12":"tag-sundance-2026","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom","15":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388022","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=388022"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388022\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/388023"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=388022"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=388022"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=388022"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}