Jon Hamm Auditioned for the Part of Sandy Cohen on ‘The O.C.’

Jon Hamm has always looked a bit like someone’s dad. As such, he had to go out for roles well outside his age group like Sandy Cohen on ‘The O.C.’

January 12, 2021

Have you ever looked at a yearbook from before 1965 or so and noticed how everyone looked like they already had a mortgage on a Staten Island home and a pack-a-day habit? Jon Hamm is like that. He’s one of the last actors whose jawline made him 40 while he was still barely old enough to drink.

The actor revealed on an episode of Rolling Stone’s Too Long; Didn’t Watch podcast that his inborn dadliness lead to a drought in roles as a young man. Hamm started going out for father figures early on, even auditioning for the role of Sandy Cohen in The O.C. way back in the early aughts.

"I never looked young enough to be in high school, even when I first got out [to L.A.] and I was 25, so I missed out on all of the Dawson’s Creek and all the early WB shows,” he said of his early adventures in auditioning. “So then they were like, ‘Come play one of the dads,’ but I wasn’t old enough to be that, either. I had to wait around a long time.”

As for the role of Cohen, Hamm told host Alan Sepinwall that going up against the considerably older actor was surreal.

“I was probably 31 or 32,” Hamm said of the part that went to a mid-40s Peter Gallagher. “I remember walking in and going, ‘Is that Peter Gallagher? Why am I here?‘ I love Peter Gallagher, but I was just like, ‘Dang!'”