‘Good Girls’ and 'Toy Story 4' star Christina Hendricks on her first major TV role since ‘Mad Men’ and the show's darker tone

Many know Christina Hendricks from her work on AMC’s hit series ‘Mad Men’, which took its final bow after seven seasons in 2015.  After starring in films like ‘The Neon Demon’, ‘The Strangers:  Prey at Night’, ‘Bad Santa 2’ and appearing on Amazon’s anthology series ‘The Romanoffs’, Hendricks was ready to take on another series that could potentially last for years to come. MEA Worldwide (MEAWW) had the opportunity to speak with Hendricks, who opened up about her hesitation with signing on to a network show and what it is that really drew her to the series.

“When I read the script, it was just this really different tone than anything I had read and I really loved that it was walking this tight rope of comedy and drama.  But I was like, ‘wait a minute, this is on NBC how are they going to do this?  Are they going to be true to this script?  Are they going try to tone it down?’ Jenna Bans, our creator, and I spent probably a month talking where she was trying to convince me to do it and I was like, ‘I just don’t trust this network thing and the show is so edgy…are you sure they are going to do it like this?’  And she said the network promised they would and that they really wanted to do something cool and different.  So after a lot of talks and convincing, I was like ok…let’s do this!”

‘Good Girls’ follows Beth (Hendricks), Ruby (Retta) and Annie (Mae Whitman), three suburban mothers who find themselves in desperate situations and decide to risk everything and rob a supermarket. The series certainly has a fun and unique premise, however, one of the things that Hendricks really loves about the show is the theme of female comradery.  While yes, this is a show about how this unlikely trio turns into criminals, but it’s also about the unique bond these women have, which Hendricks expanded on.

“I think that people love the adventurous nature of the show, but most of all I think people love the comradery between these women. They could do a bunch of different things but with the combination of the crime and them being completely out of their league and then them being horrible at it…I think it’s just fun to watch these people figure it out.  It also has a fantasy element where you wish you could just rob a grocery store too, it’s dreamy in a way.”

Hendricks couldn’t speak more highly of her co-stars, including Matthew Lilliard who plays her cheating husband Dean.  One of the best parts of the series is that these characters are all extremely flawed and no one is completely good or completely evil.  Many fans of the show give the character of Dean a lot of hate for everything he has put his family through, that said, Hendricks finds humanity in Dean’s character where others may not. 

“I love my character’s relationship with Matt Lillard’s character because he is set up to be the villain but it’s more complicated than that, there is history there and there is family. There’s a reason people fall into things and there’s a reason people mess up. I mean, you can’t just hate Dean, he’s a good dad and he’s trying. I think it’s really nice you get to see all of the different, human levels of him, he’s just a phenomenal actor.”

While the second season of ‘Good Girls’ is currently airing on NBC, many people didn’t even know about the first season of the show until it was put on Netflix just a few months ago.  After it was added to the streaming platform the show did better than ever, which is something that Hendricks has definitely taken note of.  In her opinion, more and more television viewers are moving over to streaming platforms as opposed to network television, which is both a good and bad thing for the show.

“I don’t really think that people watch very much network television anymore.  So many people come up to me and say, ‘I love your new show!’ and that has been in the past couple of months.  They will be like, ‘is there gonna be a season two?’ and I have to tell them, yes it’s already on the air now.  Some people just love binge watching and they love streaming, we do really well on Hulu as well.  So I think people are just finding it other places, I think if they found it on NBC they would still love it, but many people just didn’t even know it was there.”

For the binge watchers, the second season of ‘Good Girls’ has yet to hit Netflix, however, it is still, of course, available on NBC and Hulu.  This season is almost already hitting the halfway point, but some are still yet to watch it live.  For those that are holding off on watching the second season until it is bingeable, Hendricks gave us a taste of what to expect and how the show evolves in its the newest season.

“The second season is darker, it has to be really.  I mean these women are getting in deeper and deeper in the crime world and into more trouble. They are also testing their limits more and getting falsely confident and it also goes into the relationships with their significant others.  So it’s really just the organic path that would happen if you continue to do what you’re doing.”

If you didn’t know the second season of ‘Good Girls’ was out, now you do.  So make sure to catch the new episodes on Sunday nights at 10 pm on NBC, or catch up on Hulu!